http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/solscrivener/ en bkeith@nowhere.com Copyright 2006 2006-06-05T21:01:00-07:00 http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/site/new_job_new_adventure/ http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/site/new_job_new_adventure/#When:21:01:00Z Do you have a “dream job"—the kind that is guaranteed to make your colleagues drool with envy? I do. But read on before deciding whether you would like to trade places. In 2004, I was looking for a new contract, after completing three of them up to September. I have worked in IT and telecoms documentation for 20 years, both in Canada and England (and been an STC member throughout). One day, I saw an ad on an internet job site for a documentation manager “in one of the world’s most exotic countries” so I applied, not expecting any response. Instead, I was selected and within a month, flew to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to start work (the following day) with Fujitsu Transaction Solutions. The company is completing a $9 million (US) project to equip Trinidad and Tobago civil servants with email and internet access. My team’s role is to provide setup instructions and technical support documentation for the telecommunications equipment. So I have been learning more than I care to about servers, routers, and firewalls. The 20-person Fujitsu project team operates from a temporary office in an industrial warehouse—not very glamorous, but surrounded by palm trees and beautiful green hills. The office is air conditioned—a must when it is 32°C every day. Port of Spain is the commercial and industrial capital of the Caribbean, and is a real mix of new and old, rich and poor. I had hoped to pass along some of my technical writing experience to my team of four, but quickly learned that their interests were more technical than writing. They yearned for better job opportunities in IT support, so left for better jobs as soon as their contracts ended. They had better educational qualifications than me, but very little business experience. I focused on teaching them things we all take for granted: planning your work, setting priorities and goals, how they should escalate issues, and so on. The job has been full of challenges. It takes ages to get anything done in the Caribbean; instructions are misinterpreted (or ignored), and people are reluctant to ask for help or admit that there is a problem. Coming from North America, I am fairly organized and self-motivated, and assumed that others would be too. In hindsight, I should have delegated more strictly: set clear targets and deadlines, reviewed assignments daily, and followed up when the work did not materialize. Despite that, the job has been a good career move and I am still learning a lot. The management team comprises both locals and UK expatriates, and we have been coping with high customer expectations, a contract workforce, and little in the way of support. I have coped by reading management books from the library and gleaning support from the internet and STC. One of the books gave me the idea of publishing a project newsletter, so I suggested it to management, who were very enthusiastic, and I delegated the task to my team. I cannot complain about the treatment I have received from Fujitsu—the job came with a two-bedroom apartment in a nice suburb of Port of Spain, a new car, and weekly maid service. My wife Louise and I appreciate the lovely surroundings—our apartment is on the side of a hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and we’re close to beautiful beaches and rain forests. But living in a developing country is not like being on holiday. We’ve had plenty of frustrations, such an intermittent water supply, power cuts, and bureaucratic hurdles with banks and the immigration department. My main area of cultural shock was the way people drive. They seemed to break all the rules of etiquette and decency that I had learned in the UK—although I did perceive more patience and no road rage. But my alarm at what occurred on the roads left me a nervous wreck, until one day, I decided the only way to retain my sanity was to stop getting upset and just accept it. (You know the old saying, “Accept the things you cannot change”? Well, that’s a lesson we’ve learned repeatedly here.) Before coming, we had read the government’s travel advisories and were therefore very afraid of being robbed, kidnapped, or murdered. However, we learned that most places are completely safe and our confidence grew as we travelled around and found out how friendly and welcoming the people are. Louise walks around downtown Port of Spain by herself and has not run into any problems. I must give her credit for sticking with me, despite all the adversities. She is at home and not working, but has met other Canadian and UK women and made friends with neighbors in our apartment complex. The first six months involved many difficult adjustments, but since then, we’ve started to feel more at home. We’ve put a lot of effort into learning about the country’s customs and culture. We still miss many of the amenities we used to have, particularly clubs and associations. Trinidad is a developing country and wants to become “first world” by 2020. We had read many books about cultural adjustment issues, and read about others’ experiences in Intercom. But nothing quite prepares you for the reality of poverty, inequality, crime, corruption, and racially motivated politics, not to mention real-life inconveniences like mosquitoes, ants, stray dogs and roosters barking/crowing all night, unreliable services, traffic jams, and shortages of things. It has been wonderful to escape the northern winter, and we will definitely miss the climate, the beaches and the swimming. Would we do it again? Yes—it has been one of the biggest challenges we’ve undertaken, but an experience I am sure we will remember fondly. If you want to see some of my pictures of Trinidad, navigate to my website. Brian Keith (seated in the above photograph) moved to Trinidad as manager of the Fujitsu documentation team in October 2004. He has been an STC member for 20 years, and was a technical author and team leader in England and Canada. He is currently working and living in Denmark, where he is the lone writer for Nangate, a leading provider of electronic design automation (EDA) software. This article was first published in the January 2006 edition of the STC UK chapter newsletter. Reprinted by permission from the author. Career Paths, Member Stories 2006-06-05T21:01:00-07:00 http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/site/to_blog_or_not_to_blog/ http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/site/to_blog_or_not_to_blog/#When:20:43:00Z By now, we all have read or heard about blogging. It’s everywhere. Politicians blog, pundits blog, celebrities blog, newspapers blog, everybody’s doing it. Are you? I am. It’s a powerful and popular way to get your thoughts “out there”, making the common person a potential equal among the big media outlets. If you’re not already blogging, you probably know someone who is, and you probably already read blogs regularly. What is a blog? In its simplest form, a blog is a website. In most cases, that blog is a journal of an individual’s thoughts and feelings about stuff in general, but blogs can also be much more. Some blogs are like online magazines featuring multiple authors and advertisements, some blogs follow a reader submission model, some blogs are all fiction, some are about child adoption, some are about dogs or cats or cars or Star Wars…the list could go on and on. What do I blog about? The Journeyman Writer, located at www.journeymanwriter.blog-city.com is my second blog. My first blog was essentially an online diary about day-to-day issues like one might write about in a private journal at home. I treat my current blog as though it were a syndicated column, primarily focusing on issues around writing, with a new post every Monday and Thursday. Some of my posts have covered things like the word “blog”, verbal versus written English, and commentary on news items involving major books. In the entries I call “Perfect Passages”, I highlight specific written passages that I’ve run across that I think are excellent. I explain why I think the passages are so well written and what they meant to me when I found them. I also do movie reviews, poetry, and humor. It hasn’t happened yet, but I expect to take some of my fiction and break it into entry-sized serialized chunks in the not-too-distant future. Why do I blog? I love to write. The Journeyman Writer gives me an outlet to share my work. I also see it as a portfolio builder that I might use to help me in the future, maybe with a syndicated column opportunity or something similar. At the very least, I have complete control over what I post. This way, more of my work than just boring old administration manuals or table references gets published, attributed to me, and read on a regular basis. What are the costs? Blogging can be absolutely free, or it can be sophisticated enough to actually need to make money. Blog City at www.blog-city.com hosts my blog and, if I chose that approach, they would do it for free. Instead I choose to pay $25 annually for some extra features. Free sites generally require some sacrifices regarding advertising or branding, but depending on the blog, that may not matter. More expensive packages are also available and offer an enormous variety of useful features and benefits. In short, it depends on the needs of the blog. What are the advantages? The owner of the blog has complete control over content. It’s different from a web site in that many things are pre-coded and pre-automated so that all you really have to do is write. In most cases, you can post from anywhere since there’s no client-side software involved. All you need is a browser and an internet connection. However, there are many blog hosts and many approaches, so no matter what the need there’s probably a finely-tuned package out there. For my DVD, CD, and book reviews, I’m able to draw from Amazon.com’s database for images and product details. My reviews then show up associated with that product on their site. Another feature is that I can create my own categories and assign a post to one or more of them. This allows users to conduct category searches for material. I can also post-date entries or save them as drafts. Regular viewers of the site can also subscribe to my mailing list by entering their email address. My blog then sends out an e-mail to notify everyone that has subscribed whenever I publish a new post. Blogs can also include a lot of other interactivity and interconnectivity. Chat rooms, guestbooks, search functionality, archiving, RSS syndication, multiple authors, secure areas, calendars, subscriptions, and mailing lists are all just some of the things that can be part of a blog. Advertising is also available both to include within your site, so that you get paid; and to drive traffic to your site, so you get read. What are the disadvantages? The disadvantages to a blog depend on the blog. In my case, I’ve given up some look-and-feel control in exchange for ease of use. I essentially just use Blog City’s templates, but even those I can tweak somewhat. I could spend a lot of time on fonts, colors, layout, even doing some CSS engineering, but I don’t have time for that at home, so the templates are good enough for now. Not having access to all the code for the website can be a little frustrating, but not totally unacceptable. I also don’t care for the fact that Blog City includes their own footer and logo on every page. Their interface is acceptable as far as usability is concerned. That being said, it’s still pretty easy for me to use in a spare time situation, and their latest release in June allows me to add my own footer. Another big challenge has been in generating traffic. I could probably pay to advertise but I’ve chosen not to so far. I submitted my site to many blog search engines like www.technorati.com and others, but I haven’t seen a lot of return there. I have seen results from a new local site, www.greensboro101.com. I live just outside Greensboro, NC, so decided to take advantage of this site that collects blogs (this is known as aggregation) from local writers. I did see a big increase in traffic as a result. The disadvantage here is that my posts didn’t necessarily focus so much on local issues. I’d been making a concerted effort to write to the largest audience possible, thinking more on a national level. I suspect I’ll have to develop more of a local flavor to keep things interesting from a local perspective. These disadvantages are symptomatic of a bigger challenge that I alluded to earlier. Everyone’s blogging. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of blogs out there. The biggest challenge will be in finding an audience, keeping them focused on your content, getting them to come back, and making the site work for you. Lastly, since it’s a spare time project, I can’t always post as often as I’d like. Ideally I would like to be posting every day, but I just can’t keep up that pace while the rest of my life places the customary demands on my time and energy. I’ve managed to maintain the twice-per-week posting schedule up since I started the site, and I’m able to queue up posts up to about three weeks in advance. I’m convinced though, that if I were able to post more often, I’d get more traffic. What’s this got to do with technical writing? I’m a lone technical writer. I write boring manuals and Help systems all day, but I want to write something that’s more fun in my free time. I suspect many of you feel the same way. Blogging might be the answer you were looking for. Some of you might feel the need to blog about technical writing. I do write about issues tech writers would be interested in, but I don’t do that all the time. For example, I’ve covered the interrobang and the serial comma. The academics reading this may realize that a blog will be a good vehicle for their treatment of technical writing issues. Chapter officers may realize that blogs might be the key for communicating with their membership. Maybe a blog might be useful in conducting some of the contests the STC administers. Maybe those of us that can’t go to the big conferences would like to live vicariously through a conference blogger’s riveting tales. Blogs have an unlimited number of potential applications. Sites about blogging I recommend On blogging in general: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog www.technorati.com On blog hosting: www.blog-city.com/bc www.ebloggy.com On local blog collection sites: www.greensboro101.com www.nashville101.com On blogging tools: www.microcontentnews.com/articles/blogware.htm www.sixapart.com/movabletype wordpress.org Sample blogs: www.usatoday.com/life/movies/2005-04-20-star-wars-blog_x.htm www.news-record.com/news/local/politicalblogs.html You might consider blogging for fun or for pushing an agenda. The concept is well-suited for both applications. Whether your blog focuses on the merits and progress of the STC transformation, or simply the finer points of the proper use of the tilde, someone will read it. Luckily, not only are there as many causes for blogging as there are people, each blog also has a potential audience. You just have to reach them. Blogs are just like people. They can be boring, exciting, funny, depressing, informative, distracting, or whatever. They’re just like magazines since for just about every interest, you can find a blog about it. They’re communities, cliques, clubs, anthologies, and families. They can be cheap and easy to publish. They’re not just the next big thing on the World Wide Web, they’re the biggest thing on the Web now. An interesting aside: Blogs are getting people book deals. Former actor Wil Wheaton did it (www.oreilly.com/catalog/barefoot). There’s an excellent article from The New Yorker at www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040531ta_talk_radosh about several others that are doing the same. Blogs could become a major jumping off point for some of us little folk. It’s something to think about. Blogging, Career Paths, Member Stories, Tools of the Trade, Trends, Writing 2006-02-01T20:43:00-07:00 http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/site/a_fine_time_was_had_by_all/ http://www.stc-lonewriter.org/index.php/site/a_fine_time_was_had_by_all/#When:20:34:01Z Planning on going to this year’s STC conference? Unsure of what is in store for you, the Lone Writer? Read what two Lone Writers have to say about attending the 52nd conference in Seattle, Washington, and meeting other Lone Writers. Russell Pike The Lone Writers have a tradition of meeting for dinner at some point during the conference. You might want to make room for that event in your calendar after reading Russell Pike’s story. Russell Pike is a technical writer who works for JAE in Oregon. He was declared the winner of the Loners’ Overachievement Award for his drive from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, just for the Lone Writers’ dinner. I have been a member of the Lone Writers’ message board for several years. I have also wanted to go the conference for each of the past four years but something always intervened. In 2005, I thought that it would be a slam dunk to go to the conference because I work in the Portland area and the conference was to be held in Seattle. Budget constraints killed that idea. Then I had a brainstorm. Seattle is only four hours from Portland. If I couldn’t go to the conference, I could at least go to the Lone Writers’ dinner. So I did. My biggest expectations of my conference experience were that I would be able to put faces to names of many Lone Writers, that I would enjoy talking to them, and I would have a great meal. All expectations were met convincingly. I spent three hours talking to fabulous people about central Ohio, the joys and sorrows of SMEs, the booms and busts of tech writer workloads, and many other fascinating (at least to tech writers) topics while munching great New York style pizza, drinking refreshing Northwest micro-brewed beer, and enjoying scrumptious tiramisu. I wasn’t able to attend any other part of the conference, but I hope to be able to go to Las Vegas next year. When I do, I will do everything I can to schedule in the Lone Writers’ dinner. I recommend highly to everyone that you, too, make it part of your plans for next year’s conference. Jennifer Randel Jennifer Randel comments on her expectations of the conference and provides a few tips for potential attendees. Jennifer Randel is a technical writer employed by the Kern High School District in Bakersfield, California (yes…that place where Buck Owens is from). Out of everything she experienced during the conference in Seattle, enjoying a pear gelato with other Loners was the most memorable. What were your two biggest expectations from the conference before you attended? My expectations of the conference were (1) to learn something I knew nothing about and (2) to enhance my understanding of page layout and template design. Were they met and how? My expectations were met: I attended a session about content management, which I knew nothing about and I attended a couple of sessions that addressed various aspects of page/content layout and design. All of these sessions were very informative. What was one valuable lesson that you walked away with? Always leave a session (and attend a pre-designated backup) as soon as you realize that a session holds no value for you. Why was that valuable? I ended up essentially wasting one whole session because it didn’t apply to me. What words of advice about attending would you give to someone who has never attended but is considering attending next year? Make sure you read the messages on the Loners listserv so you are in on the Loner dinner plans. I was suprised by the number of lone writers at the SIG luncheon who had no idea our group had a dinner the previous night. Boy, did they miss out. The dinner was a really great opportunity to meet the wonderful, supportive Loners. How do you feel about the future of tech communication after this conference? I was surprised by the number of technical communicators I saw at the conference. There were so many! The feeling that I got from interactions and overheard conversations is that we are a very in-demand group. What were the characteristics of the best speaker you heard? The best speaker I heard did not let his slide show drive his presentation. Rather, he addressed and involved the audience. He presented real life situations and offered solutions. His slide show was clutter-free. His demeanor was professional, but he delivered jokes and quips that kept everyone interested. Would you considering presenting another time? I don’t think I have enough knowledge on any topic, at this point, to share with others. Member Stories, STC Conferences, Trends 2006-02-01T20:34:01-07:00