The bubble has burst.

A while ago, I blogged about one of the largest technical writing teams here in Israel and my surprise at their unpreparedness for what seemed inevitable. Here’s some of what I wrote:

“I recently spoke at an Israeli company that employs 25 in-house technical writers. This company is far from Israel’s biggest by a long shot, so how do they justify maintaining the country’s largest technical writing team? The answer is that they don’t. Because they can’t.

My hour-long presentation on staying ahead of the curve in the technical writing world (one of my favorite topics) eventually touched upon the important subject of metrics. To me, it always been a given that objective measurements are of utmost importance – otherwise how do we assess and plan current and future goals? So you can imagine my shock to receive, at that point, a lot of flak from an audience that didn’t know their metrics, never had to calculate their metrics and were never asked by their finance people for metrics. They therefore contended that this portion of my presentation was not relevant to them.

I’ve been super busy for the past few days tweaking and preparing my plans and getting ready for three full days of training at NICE. Monday morning, the technical writing team was working in Word and Framemaker in the same old fashioned way they have been since 1998! But come Thursday afternoon, when our training session is complete, they will be creating modular content in their very own Author-it CMS.

Training and moving a big team of writers is a challenge, but when people walk in the door with good attitudes and ready to learn, lots of good things happen. I am excited for everything we achieved today and am proud to be part of helping this fantastic team move forward into the 21^st century.

The dynamics of training a team from one company, where three different authoring tools are currently deployed, is interesting. And even though some people work in the same building with other writers, some had never met each other before they walked in the door today. In just a few short hours, I began to see a shift from ten largely independent content herders into a team of fearless knowledge managers. Understanding the power of your content when shared is truly inspiring.

If you have not taken the time to learn something new this year, I urge you to try it. Find a course (online or human) or teach yourself a new writing concept, tool, method or whatever else interests you. But never stop aiming for better. Having the chance to apply a new skill makes the workday a lot more enjoyable and always enables you to do things faster/smarter/better than before.

Blogging has taken a back seat to training, but just for the next few days. See you next week! Happy Single-Sourcing Wednesday!

I recently spoke at an Israeli company that employs 25 in-house technical writers. This company is far from Israel’s biggest by a long shot, so how do they justify maintaining the country’s largest technical writing team? The answer is that they don’t. Because they can’t.

My hour-long presentation on staying ahead of the curve in the technical writing world (one of my favorite topics) eventually touched upon the important subject of metrics. To me, it always been a given that objective measurements are of utmost importance – otherwise how do we assess and plan current and future goals? So you can imagine my shock to receive, at that point, a lot of flak from an audience that didn’t know their metrics, never had to calculate their metrics and were never asked by their finance people for metrics. They therefore contended that this portion of my presentation was not relevant to them.

I then asked how they justify headcount or the need to bring on additional resources. I got blank stares. And when I asked how they would know who to let go if they had to make budget cuts? More blank stares. Apparently, this company did not lay anyone off in 2009 and no one there can fathom a reason layoffs should happen in the future. When I told them they were working in a bubble, they took offense. I hope, for their sake, that they never need to come up for air in the real world.

So if you have found yourself a job in a recession-proof and outsourcing-proof bubble, I suppose you can skip this post (and probably all of my future posts). But if you don’t work in a crazy bubble, then keep reading. It may help you keep your job.

Year after year, people around the globe make the same old New Year’s resolutions… lose 10 pounds, spend more time with the family, exercise more, quit drinking/smoking/swearing etc. etc. etc. How about some Technical Writing Resolutions this year? Here’s my Top 10:

9. Reduce stress: IMHO, the best way to reduce on the job stress is to learn and use your personal job metrics to correctly plan work, schedule tasks, complete projects and plan for the future. So if you don’t already know them, learn your metrics. (I’ll explain how to calculate them in my next post.) And if you if you know them already, figure out at least three ways to improve on them.

8. Evaluate your worth: Figure out what you bring to the bottom line in your organization and quantify it (so you can ask for a really great bonus at the end of the year!).

7. Spend more time with family: Take your vacations and take your down time. No one ever got to the pearly white gates and said, “Hey, wish I had spent more time at the office.”

6. Exercise more: Get your tush out of your office chair and stretch. Being a technical writer does not mean you have to sit and vegetate in front of your screen all day. You won’t always have this job, but you’ll always have the same back. So take care of yourself.