I got an interesting query from Matt, a student at Miami University in Ohio, where I received my master’s degree in Scientific and Technical Communication (MTSC). Miami University also has an excellent bachelor’s degree program in Technical Communication. Matt’s a Technical Communications major from Akron, Ohio. My MTSC classmate Janel Bloch is Matt’s teacher. Matt has read my blog and has an assignment for his technical writing class where he should conduct an investigative report assignment on the types of reports and proposals written by professionals in his area of interest, which is Computer Science. So, we emailed back and forth and he came up with these interview questions. Here are my responses to his interesting questions.
What is your title at BMC Software?
My title was Information Developer II until BMC decided to standardize more job titles recently, and then my title was changed to Sr. Technical Writer. I’m not much for focusing on titles, instead I prefer to focus on the interesting nature of my assignments, so you could give me any title and as long as the work is interesting I’ll be content with any title. 🙂
What is a typical day like (I know this is probably a stupid question)
It isn’t a stupid question, I often like to ask this one when trying to find out more about a person’s job because daily activities are a good indicator of whether I’d like the job or not. So here goes…
I’m the type of person who likes to have a couple of different assignments going on at any given time, as long as I know the priorities for each and approximately how to chunk the tasks down to sizes that are manageable. I check email constantly throughout the day and try to respond immediately when supporting others in their work (such as “what’s now broken in this help system that used to work?”) I also attend about five hour-long meetings a week, which in my current corporate environment is not too many meetings compared to the number that many other writers and managers attend.
Right now, I spend about half of my day working on a user manual, whether it’s asking questions of development, making changes to the document, or trying out the user interface or command-line utilities to test procedures I’ve already written. The other part of the day I am working on the information architecture planning tasks we are working on for a DITA implementation for some pilot projects. Recently I have also been finishing up white papers that are related to Business Service Management topics. I like to have a variety of work options in front of me in a typical day.
When a product release is coming up, I focus much more on the product documentation and keep up with the development and especially quality assurance/testing team’s daily activities. So my daily routine would be much more focused on communicating with the team, finding out testing progress, and looking out for software bugs that might change the documentation.
What kinds of things do you write at work? outside of work?
At work, I write user manuals, release notes, white papers, blog entries, and painstakingly craft email messages when I need to. Often I write “how to” documents for other writers, such as how to install Epic Editor for our environment, or describe how I have found efficiencies for a certain internal procedure, such as how to zip up help files. Sometimes those get turned into blog entries even. In addition to my external blog on talk.bmc.com, I maintain an internal blog called “Geeky Tech Pubs Tips” where I post information that’s only relevant to people who work at BMC.
Outside of work, I write email messages to friends and family, I write lots of commentary for photo albums I’m maintaining of our family’s activities, and otherwise I don’t do a lot of writing. I have a secret stash of children’s book ideas though and I might get to writing those some day. I also write blog entries for our STC chapter’s blog, http://stcaustin.blogspot.com/.
What kinds of media do you use when you write? (online or print)
I nearly always have an online media in mind when I write, which may or may not be the best mindset. However, most of the products I’ve been working on tend to ship more online PDFs and HTML documents than printed documents, so I think it’s the right mindset for what I’m currently assigned to.
For white papers, though, I have a printed media in mind and page count really matters, which makes you write and do layout at the same time, paying close attention to line breaks and page breaks and graphic placement. As for the type of tools I use while writing, we use FrameMaker for printed manuals and white papers, and Dreamweaver for HTML editing. I am also using Epic Editor to write DITA topics as I do the research for our structured authoring projects. I use Word to write internal documents or early drafts of text where I might want to use the Track Changes feature.
Do you write any proposals and/or reports? Are you required to do any research?
I typically only write internal reports and can’t think of any proposals I’ve written. Wait, a few years ago I worked on a team that wrote a proposal for embedding online help into a product’s interface. So I do write proposals as part of my job description. I have done a lot of research on technologies that matter for technical publications, sometimes related to online Help presentation, sometimes related to XML implementations, and so on. I’ve written up reports and do presentations for both internal and external audiences for those types of unique projects. Determining whether to recommend JavaHelp for a certain product is an example of such a research report.
Who is in charge of reports and proposals?
I tend to think of several examples of reports and proposals in my current company’s setting. Here are some examples and who is in charge of those:
Annual reports – A summary of how the business is doing, typically written at the end of fiscal year. I’m not entirely sure who is responsible for that project.
Competitive reports – An analysis of products that compete with our products and how our products stand up against certain features or selling points. These reports are usually written by product managers who talk to customers and sales people, and they may also be written by sales people to help others sell in competitive situations.
Internal research reports – The embedded help proposal I’ve attached was written by a team of writers who researched and reported back to development what we learned about embedded help, and what we would propose should go into the product.
Internal proposals – In our environment, the one type of proposal I’m familiar with is an internal proposal or a business case for justifying an initial investment in order to gain efficiencies or better serve customers. Another example might be the business case to move to structured authoring using DITA. We might need to purchase different authoring tools for the new way of authoring, so a business case would help justify the Return On Investment (ROI) for such a purchase and change in authoring. I haven’t had to write that but our managers are writing that type of proposal.
How much time do you spend writing?
Many technical writers would agree with me that you don’t get to spend the majority of your time writing. Really, the writing time is probably less than 20% of your work time. The rest of the time you’re reading, researching, talking and communicating with team members, going to meetings, and learning as quickly as possible.
Who are your audiences?
Audience analysis is very important so this is an excellent question. For user manuals, the audience depends on the product. I’m currently working on a Recovery Management product where the audience is typically system administrators who are in charge of backing up and recovering critical databases.
White papers also have different audiences. For technical white papers that target one product line, the audience is typically the technical person implementing the information you present. For solution white papers that span multiple product lines, the audience target is closer to Vice President or Sr. Director of IT, a Director, Manager, or purchase influencer. To us, manager-level readers are seeking higher-level information such as ROI, and an implementer or technician seeks more technical details about implementation.
There are also internal audiences for some of the research-type things I write for internal use only. Typically I write for coworkers, development managers, quality assurance managers, or technical publication managers as an audience.
Do you read any scholarly or trade journals?
Currently all of my reading for educational purposes is done online via searches or using RSS feeds, so I can’t think of scholarly or trade journals I read regularly. I can refer to STC’s journals online, such as Technical Communication (their journal). Typically, however, Intercom has articles that are more relevant to my work situation. And I find myself reading white papers and attending webinars more often than I read a trade journal.
I find that the absolute best printed periodical for me is Wired Magazine. I read it regularly which means I’m making the time to read it, even if I take it with me to my doctor’s waiting rooms for prenatal care visits. 🙂 It is an excellent magazine with articles relevant to the future of communications. I also think that by reading it I can stay in touch with many members of the technical audience that I write for.
How involved are you with STC and what exactly do you do as a senior member?
To be a senior member of STC, you basically just have to be a dues-paying member for five years in a row. There aren’t extra responsibilities associated with the senior member title but it does show a commitment to the organization. I have served in several leadership roles in the Austin chapter and the Southwest Ohio chapter, such as Hospitality chair and Membership chair. There are plenty of ways to be involved, though, that don’t require a leadership role. Two of the best and most interesting volunteer things I’ve done with STC are helping to plan programs for the monthly meetings, such as brainstorming topics, requesting speakers, and coordinating locations. I also helped gather proposals and abstracts for talks for the Regional conference held in Austin three years ago which was another great volunteer position because I could read all the interesting things that people were doing in their jobs and wanting to present at the conference.
How were you involved with the MU student chapter of the STC?
Several years ago I was the student chapter advisor. I attended meetings and helped the students coordinate activities with the Southwest Ohio chapter as well as hold their own elections and meetings. I invited students to everything STC and we even ended up hosting a student reception at the national STC conference which was held in Cincinnati in 1999. I took the chapter president to conference planning meetings with me and I think she learned a lot by observing and pitching in her ideas when needed.