In the past few weeks, many claims have been made about our new world economy. Perhaps the most thought provoking is an article I just read about how many of us are about to become useless in the next few years. Simply put, “the economy no longer needs us”. Is this the future of technical writing? Are we and our “product” obsolete and no longer needed?

I think we can all agree that most people are already pairing down and learning to live with much less. Back to basics no longer just means buying less fancy food, and belongings but thinking about how those items we do buy impact the environment around us and what footprint our consumption is leaving behind.10 years ago, I am the first to admit, our profession was a sad contribution to deforestation and many claimed it was just a “waste of the world’s tree supply”. It was a wink-wink environment where everyone knew that almost “no one was reading the books” and it was only due to legislation and expectation, that you had to provide a product manual in printed form. So while today, we are in many cases still delivering in the same output formats (namely PDF and Help files), I am relieved to say that Tech-Tav does not have a single customer that is actually printing any of their technical documentation. 10 years ago, convincing a customer not to print was a huge challenge and considered radical and even risky.

So how do we keep our “product” relevant for the future?

Looking back on where we were, we have innovated and some things are already changing. We are transforming ourselves into knowledge engineers rather than technical writers. By working hard to actively change the status quo of the types of information that get shared with the customer and how that information is presented, we can keep the content relevant and needed. Video, audio, voice over, interactive graphics and screen capturing demos allow us to give the user a richer and actually worthwhile “documentation” experience. Telecommuting, VoIP and apps like GoToMeeting allow us to work anywhere, work more efficiently and produce much more content, of more use to the end customer with much less manpower and budget. What would have been a full-time job 10 years ago can usually be paired down into a very part-time sporadic position today. Today we can even train and solve tech support and customer issues using virtualization methods. Gone are the days when senior engineers had to fly around the globe to perform custom installations and many month on-site hand holding sessions. Virtualization is here and here to stay, which is why effective content is here to stay also. Someone needs to create all of the content used for training, examples, explanations and new idea formalation. It is exactly here that I believe there is tremendous value in budgeting for “documentation”. Perhaps we should change the name in the budget to development of user experience content, knowledge engineering, or customer knowledge transfer - but yes, good documentation can save money, help make sales and ultimately be the differentiator between a product’s success or failure.

10 years ago, many customers asked me why I would recommend to them to use a different system or method if it meant cutting down the amount of billable hours we could charge them. They accused me of being penny wise and pound foolish and they were worried about the viability of Tech-Tav if I continued to be so “honest”. In most cases, those same customers that took my advice are still in business, their products have been highly successful and their sales methodologies were non-traditional (and obviously worked!). Those customers who wanted to keep things as they were and do things “old school”, have long since gone out of business. Not because they paid too much for documentation, but because they did not know how to innovate in business and adapt to quickly changing market conditions. Yes, I agree 100% that technical documentation needs to evolve to stay relevant and have significant ROI. The products and services being invented and developed right now are different than those from 5 or 10 years ago and perhaps deserve different (even radically different) delivery mechanisms to keep the content relevant for the product end-user. Still, good content, quality information and effective knowledge delivery platforms will have a place in the world economy for many years to come.