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.
I didn't see any choices pertaining to documenting APIs. That's the #1
opportunity I've seen over the past eight years, and have missed out on
three opportunities because I didn't specifically have prior experience in
this arena.
On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 8:31 AM, Lin Sims <ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> What I'm curious about is what's meant by using skills "in your job". The
> job I'm currently doing, or over the course of my entire career?
>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 8:28 AM, <mbaker -at- analecta -dot- com> wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "has come to include". When did it ever not
> > include these things?
> >
> > The field of technical communication is and always has been extremely
> broad
> > and diverse. It is also a field of niches in which you can be a prime
> > candidate for jobs in one niche and completely unqualified for jobs in
> > another. This seems to lead people, both in the field and in academia, to
> > look only at certain niches and to ignore the rest, in an attempt to
> > generalize more easily about what tech comm is, who tech writers are,
> what
> > they do, what tools they use, and how they should be educated.
> >
> > Every so often, this deck gets shuffled and people proclaim that tech
> comm
> > how includes some new activity, new tool, or new qualification. In most
> > cases, all this really means is that they have changed the subset of
> > technical communication niches that they are looking at.
> >
> > The Web has profoundly changed how everyone communicates. This is not
> > particular to tech comm but all of tech comm is affected by it. On the
> > other hand, the kinds of things that people communicate about have
> changed
> > far less. We just keep adding or subtracting them from the club to suit
> the
> > claim we what to make today about what tech comm is. The actually
> technical
> > communicating goes on apace, often performed by people who have never
> heard
> > the phrase "technical communication". (I had been doing it for a year
> and a
> > half before I first heard the term.)
> >
> > Changing the definition of who is in or out of the tech comm club is one
> of
> > the fundamental tactics that people trying to make a case for some claim
> > they want to make about tech comm. You can make tech comm suit your idea
> of
> > what it should be by cherry picking the tech comm niches that support
> your
> > argument. (I'm not any different in this: I cast a broad net to reinforce
> > my
> > idea of what tech comm is.)
> >
> > But what this means is that when you put out a survey that claims to
> take a
> > comprehensive view of tech comm, partisans for every partitioning of the
> > field are going to jump down your neck for defining the field differently
> > from them.
> >
> > There is another consequence to this as well. No survey conducted in this
> > manner has any statistical validity at all. It is play science at best
> (and
> > I hope that you warn your students about this). But this is compounded by
> > the skew produced by the set of niches you choose to include in your
> > definition of tech comm. It will be impossible to draw any conclusions
> from
> > your survey results unless you both document the niches that you included
> > in
> > your study, and show how you controlled your result set to make sure it
> > came
> > from those niches.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> > >The field of tech comm has come to include more than tech
> writing--there's
> > >content development/mgmt, grant/proposal writing, social media writing,
> > medical writing...
> >
> >
> >
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy
> and
> > content development | http://techwhirl.com
> >
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com -dot-
> >
> > To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> > techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> >
> >
> > Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
> > http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and
> > info.
> >
> > Looking for articles on Technical Communications? Head over to our
> online
> > magazine at http://techwhirl.com
> >
> > Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions? Search our public
> > email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Lin Sims
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy and
> content development | http://techwhirl.com
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com -dot-
>
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
>
> Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
>http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and
> info.
>
> Looking for articles on Technical Communications? Head over to our online
> magazine at http://techwhirl.com
>
> Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions? Search our public
> email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives
>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy and content development | http://techwhirl.com
