TechWhirl: Technical Communication Recap for November 23, 2012

We know most Americans will be focused on holiday feasting and watching football tomorrow, so our weekly curation coming to you a day early (even though it’s dated for tomorrow). As visions of Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing extravaganzas drift more urgently through our minds, the technical communications pot simmers with good things, and the sideboard is loaded up with content strategy, user experience, and career and life goodies.

Volunteering is usually considered to be the biggest component in helping society, so we’ve decided to survey one final aspect of volunteerism—the benefits we look for in choosing a volunteer opportunity. After looking at the challenges in volunteering technical communication expertise, and the types of organizations technical communicators choose to volunteer with, we were curious to know why you choose to volunteer.

Undead Americans are a rapidly growing market segment, and are predictably attracting increasing attention from technology companies that have recognized the profit potential from this market segment. Before continuing, I should note that technical communicators must avoid using the dismissive abbreviation “UAs”, not to mention the offensive epithet “zombies”, to describe these individuals. Such diminutives lead us to objectify these important members of our audience rather than treating them as individuals, leading to stereotyping rather than the effective creation of empirically derived, audience-focused personas.

One year ago, I graduated from Portland State University with a Master’s in Technical Writing, and set out into the world, sure that a career as a professional writer was within my grasp. Then reality showed its ugly head – I was going into the expertise-heavy world of technical writing with a piece of paper and little practical experience. Every job listing included the soul-killing phrase “5-10 years of experience preferred”.