TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Only safe way is to hand-carry the samples to the interview, keep them in sight all the time, and hand-carry them away. Any other method is unsafe. It'd be best if you had a permission letter from the former client allowing you to use the confidential docs that way. Anything else makes you careless and unethical.
An "obvious" alternative is to put them up briefly on a web site. For maybe 6 hours they'll be at www.xyzzz.com/sample but then they'll go away. But making them available without tight control speaks volumes about the care you'll give to the next client's confidential material. And the internet does not offer proper control, because there's no way you can *prove* that exposure didn't constitute unethical release.
I suppose you could build a totally different portfolio, but that would take months. Instead, go and work for somewhere that does not make unreasonable portfolio demands.
And what's the use of a portfolio? Wanna see my shell scripts for pasting together a web page? Wanna try to understand them? Wanna look at a bunch of database specification standards? Only the target audience can understand them, and only they can see any value in what I did with them. Most of my actual work apparently happens in
meetings where I ask stupid questions like, "So what part of this is different from the way everyone else does it?" or maybe, "Does anything I've written here actually make any sense?"
Pat writes:
> This is an important discussion. I have recently been requested to produce
> an ePortfolio for posting online. All of the work that I have done for the
> past two years has been for a single client and every document has been
> classified as either confidential or internal use only. It's part of my
> contract not to share my client's documents with anyone. I have a great
> working relationship with this client and I'm not going to risk this
> relationship by trying to sanitize the work for inclusion in an ePortfolio.
Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or
printed documentation. Features include single source authoring, team authoring,
Web-based technology, and PDF output. http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList
Now shipping: Help & Manual 4 with RoboHelp(r) import! New editor,
full Unicode support. Create help files, web-based help and PDF in up
to 106 languages with Help & Manual: http://www.helpandmanual.com
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot-
