I don’t mind wearing multiple hats for most of my projects. Like my four-year-old son says, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” Hee. I’m happy to roll up my sleeves and do diagrams or SEO work as part of my job.

But the example I’m thinking of is the One Laptop Per Child documentation for kids – they’re pursuing something like the Lego documentation, perhaps even via a wiki. And without a great illustrator, there’s no way to pull off Lego doc with a writer alone.

But, the neat thing I’ve learned since writing this post is that the OLPC wiki has a page where you can request illustrations or artwork. So I plan to write up my request and post it and see what I get (and not throw a fit, ha). I’ll let you know how it goes!

In fact, as my team moves into our next, media-rich release, I’m thinking my best people are those who have the skills of screenwriters. They understand how to “show, not tell.” They have strong visual skills. They are especially good at “killing their babies.” And still they know their basic tech writing inside out.

Does this mean we have to learn a bunch of new skills to be useful?

Yup. But isn’t that what we said we loved about tech writing in the first place?

The communicator thing is interesting, it’s currently a footnote on two of my blog posts.. I don’t JUST write so why should my title reflect that?

And yes, I think that the writer that churns out page after page of raw content, whilst still required, will increasingly be filtered by editors and IAs. The impact of Google on both WHAT we write, and HOW we write simply can’t be denied. If you work in software, with an audience that is tech-savvy, then the old adage of ‘I ask the person sitting next to me first’ is slowly dying out.

People fire up Google first, and if they can’t find your information (because it’s not been structured properly, and doesn’t use the correct terminology) then they won’t look any further.

As for minimalism, it’s that audience thing again. Although I will need to go and check the Lego documentation now.