Mavens or Connectors eh? I also saw mention of Belbin so let me tackle that view first.

One thing that constantly irks me about the Belbin team roles is that they are taken as absolutes. You can ONLY be INTJ!! You will not alter your personality to your current interaction!!

Nonsense. I am definitely an ‘E’ not an ‘I’ but I know when to shut up. Similarly I’ve seen typical ‘I’s revel in having centre stage during a small team standup meeting at a whiteboard when they are talking people through an idea.

Guidelines is all that Belbin can offer.

Onto Gladwell then and I agree with Scott. Most (generalising) Technical Writers are neither Connector nor Maven. Some of us (hmmm how about the 100 or so on Writer River?) are more Connector biased, and many (hello Ning!) are Mavens in certain areas… just look at the number of specialist groups in Ning, must be some correlation there.

To round out Gladwell’s model, I can’t think of many Salesmen amongst us! lol.

It’s right to look to the Tipping Point but I’d suggest that our profession is not one which, yet, has enough of these types of people. Hence why our profession has never ‘tipped’ and become well known and lauded, perhaps.

And that is why Web 2.0 is hard. We (the profession) lack the numbers of people with the requisite skills to push our ideas over the edge.

However, I do believe we are pretty good at hitting the Stickiness Factor through application of focussed, efficient language (see Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath).

Sorry it took so long to follow up on this!

I’ve been thinking about this question not only after reading The Tipping Point, but also after reading Sarah O’Keefe’s notes from this year’s WritersUA Pundit panel (WritersUA Pundit Panel March 2008). Bogo Vatovec started a controversial discussion by saying, “Introverted technical writers will not be writing help any more and will be replaced with experts moderating support forums. Companies should focus on enabling search of user forums rather than on help development. Technical writers can no longer afford to hide in their cubes, they must go out and become experts and talk to the users. At this point, they are support engineers rather than technical writers.”

From what I’ve observed, I think there are multiple models, and introverts still have an excellent role to play as enablers of conversation. Plus, if you are an excellent writer, you can remain in your cube and have killer written conversations because, for the most part, text is still a preferred, searchable, findable, mode of communicating, especially on the Internet.

Gordon, please do jump in with your thoughts on why Web 2.0 is hard and whether it has anything to do with someone’s natural skills that just might be based on personality. And thanks, all, for joining in our (written) conversation.

Most technical writers are not Mavens for the topics on which they are specifically working, but quite likely they have Maven-like tendencies in at least a few areas.

Of course, I am generalizing. No stereotype fits everyone in our space. And, we all change as we learn new and different things. Your “ah-ha!” moment may vary.

All these sites looks like experiments. Wonder why these professionals haven’t gotten together in a more formal organized way. Hmm…

I can see that being a Connector could be a useful strategy for a tech writer, and even more so for a user experience designer, to bring together stakeholders. But mostly what I see in tech writers are Mavens who pride themselves on their arcane knowledge, but struggle with building professional relationships.

I’ve been wondering if WriterRiver will ever take off to the point where I check it each morning and see dozens of new stories on the Upcoming Stories tab.

However, despite the small numbers, I have to tell you that the story you added last week about myths in technical writing really got me thinking. It was an awesome read, and I wouldn’t have discovered it myself. It’s times like that where I think that we don’t need 1300 people on WriterRiver. We just need a handful of people with a keen eye for finding and sharing stories.

But like any social news site, it gets better as more people use it.

Twitter is another tool that also gets better as more use it. At my work, approximately 50 people in a dept. of 650 are on Twitter. It’s amazing to read my manager’s tweets, and the CIO’s tweets, the interaction designer’s tweets, etc. It makes work a lot more fun and connected. But of course, if I were the only one on Twitter, it wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding.