Miriam's blog

Wishing you and your family a happy, healthy and sweet new year. We'll be back next week with our top 10 Technical Writing New Year's Resolutions. Here's a sneak peak:

10. Lose at least 5 pounds (from any printed books still in circulation). Trust us, your customers will thank you.

For the next three weeks, I am going on vacation with my family. I’ll be checking my email and working part of the time, but I hope to spend the majority of my days with my kids and my extended family. My trusty assistant will make sure that all of our customers’ and writers’ phone calls are answered and that any documentation emergencies will be taken care of in my absence.

I’ve tried to take a handful of vacations throughout the years, most of which end up with me working full-time but from a remote location. This year, I’m really hoping that our excursion will be more vacation and less work than in the past. And wiith that in mind, I present you with the start of my Top 10 list of what NOT to say to me (or anyone, for that matter) before or during summer vacation:

This week, Tech-Tav sponsored our largest Israeli Author-it Users Group meeting to date. The day before the meeting, registration was complete, food was ordered, presentations tweaked and the supplies were packed up and ready to go. More than 50 technical writers from cities around the country were all coming to hear about upcoming product features and news from the latest build that I was to be presenting.

But the small tickle in my throat that I had been trying to ignore grew noticeably more irritating and my fever spiked. A rapid strep test confirmed that I was indeed infected with strep throat, was contagious and would be in no condition to get out of bed in less than 24 hours, let alone travel and give my presentation.

From a management perspective, it was really, really difficult to make the decision to be absent from my own event rather than cancel it. But because I have confidence in my employees and a network of peers that I know well, I was confident that people would teach and learn from one another. At 10PM, I was able to turn over the reins at a moment’s notice so that the show could go on.

We sponsor these free meetings because, in my opinion, better informed and trained writers benefit everyone: the writers themselves, their customers/employers and the end users who read our documentation. And that just makes good sense for our profession as a whole and for our business. Even though the agenda had to be shifted around and new presentations added at the very last minute, I was hopeful that the peer learning and sharing that was bound to take place would be of great value.

I didn’t mention it last time, but this is going to be a three-part-series. I already covered some of the great reasons to outsource your technical writing in my previous post, mainly focusing on how the peak-and-valley nature of the workflow in hi-tech lends itself to outsourcing. Now let’s talk agility and experience.

Picture it, if you will…a lone technical writer (or even a team), full-time, in-house. Spending 188 hours a month sitting at the same desk, working with the same SMEs and managers, documenting the same technology. Day after day, year in and year out. Yawn.

From the perspective of the employee (as the commenters from last week pointed out), the benefits of outsourcing are many:  flexible schedule, pick and choose your projects, be your own boss, gain exposure to a wide array of new technologies, writers, writing and management styles…the list goes on and on. Looking at things from the employers side, the view is just as attractive.

Outsourcing your technical writing means more to you as a manager than just “pay your technical writer for the hours she works and not one minute more.” You also get the added benefit of a writer who, by the nature of her work as an outsourcer, is constantly exposed to a wide variety of new and changing technologies, management styles, applications, authoring environments and fresh ideas. During your downtime, the outsouced writer can easily work for 5 or 10 other customers in the course of a year. She brings back to you a breadth of experience that simply could not be gained by sitting in the same company at the same desk year-round.

Here are my top ten eleven management DO’s and DON'Ts. Let's start with the DOs:

1. Do keep in mind the old Yiddish proverb “Man plans, God laughs.” But you had better plan anyway. And make sure you have a contingency plan so the joke won’t be on you.

2. Do your homework, make offsite backups and don’t procrastinate…and then you won’t need to call us for help at 3AM from India because your laptop got stolen and you have no files for your customer delivery tomorrow. (Yeah, you. You know who you are.)

3. Do follow the rules of my first grade teacher:  Finish what you start and ask for help when you need it.

4. Do step up to the plate. In a place where there are no men, be the man (or woman). But whatever you do, check your attitude at the door and don’t let your ego get carried away.

5. Do put the Green Jello Theory into practice:  Make everyone an owner, not just a participant.

And now for the DON'Ts...

6. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. 

7. Don’t make people work on the weekends. Five-day work weeks make for happier employees.

8. Don’t try something new on opening night. When I was in drama club, the rule was “Be on time, know your lines, and don’t bump into the furniture.” The time to deploy a single-sourcing solution or move to new tool is not in the middle of a GA schedule.

My first leadership experience within an organization was a total bust. I was involved in a youth group as a pre-teen and decided to plan a “social” – you know, a group of guys, a group of girls, some music and some food. After hanging fliers and making tons of phone calls (this was before the days of SMS and Facebook), you can imagine my disappointment when a just handful of people showed up. Myself, a few losers and the girl who was helping with refreshments. It was a pretty lame crowd. What happened to all the people I spoke with that had committed to come? Dejected and ready to resign my post as social coordinator, someone told me about The Green Jello Theory.

It’s no secret that if you want people to feel invested in any kind of project, they need to feel responsible for the outcome. They have to perceive themselves to be an integral part of the process without whom success would be impossible. What does this have to do with green Jello? The story goes something like this: a shy girl was invited to participate in a club. She was seriously considering bailing out, but she remembered that she was asked to bring green Jello to the meeting and had agreed. She had no idea why, but she knew that her Jello was important to whatever activity was going to take place. So reluctantly, she shows up with her bowl of Jello and it turns out that the Jello wasn’t all that important at all. What was important was that she showed up, had a great time and become involved in the club. The rest is history.

Innovation is one of my favorite subjects. I have the utmost respect for those who continually stay at the top of their game and never rest on their laurels. Every day, I strive to do the same.

Rick Newman’s article 6 Strains On Your Financial Future is a must-read. Instead of taking things as they come, he outlines how each and every one of us can be proactive in facing the future head-on. Here is an excerpt:

"Uncertainty is here to stay. The recession is over, but it's not back to business as usual. The U.S. economy is fundamentally changing, as foreign competition gets tougher, technology revamps the way companies operate, and old skills become obsolete quickly. There will still be good opportunities for workers who are able to adapt, but those expecting a paycheck for simply showing up every day and doing the same old thing will be the first to go when things change. "Be flexible and work outside your protected comfort zone," says Susan Goldberg, a New York executive search consultant. "The individuals willing to take risks and operate differently will succeed.""

How to prepare: "Ask what could go wrong with your job, income, and finances. Anticipate changes instead of simply waiting for them to happen. Identify your vulnerabilities and address them, whether that means getting more education, changing careers, or downsizing your lifestyle so you can save more."

Drumroll please...the results of Star Search 2010 are in. Besides a few worthy standouts, the quality of respondents was underwhelming, to say the least. So without further ado, here are a few friendly pointers for getting your technical writing CV noticed instead of being sent directly to the recycling bin. To those of you who recognize yourselves in one or more of the examples below, no need to thank us for the free tips:

Save your CV as a PDF or as a well-formatted Word Document. And by all means, pay attention to the file name! We really don’t need or want to know which version this is or when you revised it. If your name is Joe Smith, then save your CV as Joe Smith CV or even Joe Smith Technical Writing CV. But whatever you do, do NOT name it “Resume IT-Tech Update 10-07 Rev IL2b-1” It may make sense to you, but to a hiring manager it simply looks ridiculous.

Why can’t I go anywhere on the Internet anymore without annoying Google Ads popping up everywhere? I recently went to Target.com to buy booster seats for my twins. I knew exactly what I wanted because my mom sent me a direct link. I expected to go to the page, confirm that she is the world’s best shopper and proceed straight to checkout. But as I scrolled to the bottom of the page, I found something kind of shocking. On not one, not two, but on THREE different sections of the page (see below for two of them) were Google Ads lulling me to other sites that promised “great bargains,” “fast delivery” and “huge selection” of car seats and other items! Hello, Target! Is it just me, or are these ads irritating your customer base and sending your potential consumers to do their shopping elsewhere? Why in the world would you want to do such a thing?

Tech-Tav does run a Google Ad campaign. It almost guarantees that we appear on the first page of results when people search for relevant keywords, which is beneficial even if the searcher doesn’t click our ad. (And please don’t try it out now to be cute, we pay per click!) But we would never run ads on our site for other technical writing services or documentation companies on our site. It just doesn’t make sense and I am baffled as to why any business would agree to participate in such a scheme. Why spend all that money and time building and promoting your site in order to attract customers if you’re just going to send them away via another vendor’s Google Ad? Is it just me, or does that sound like a bad sales strategy?!

Serif or sans-serif? Normal or narrow? Choosing the right font for a technical document is not as simple as just going with your personal preference. I read an interesting piece on Yahoo! about large organizations that are literally saving thousands of dollars by simply changing their font type. For example, when printing thousands of pages, a narrower font can reduce your page count, saving paper and slimming down your document. And Serif fonts use considerably less ink so your printing costs will be lower.

However attractive the cost savings may be, it is most important to keep in mind the requirements of your end user. If your User Manual will be accessed electronically, you better make sure that your chosen font is one of the well-known classics. If you opt for an obscure font (no matter how great it looks on your screen), you may find that it is substituted for something really awful when your users open the PDF on their machines. For printed documents, you need to weigh the cost- and tree-saving potential against the ease of readability for the end user. A document that no one wants to read because the font is too small is of little use to anyone.

One thing is for certain – there is a lot more to font selection than meets the eye. Here are two fun and useful font-related links:

Periodic Table of Typefaces

Typeface Decision Tree

A font walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender shakes his head and says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your type here.”   (Groan)