This week’s update on technical communications and the TechWhirl community is supported by Platinum sponsor ComponentOne & their Doc-To-Help Help Authoring Tool | http://bit.ly/doc-to-help
In honor of National Passive Voice Day:
A conflict has appeared concerning career prospects for technical writers. It was reported in the US Occupational Outlook Handbook that job growth will occur in the 16 percent range and is considered high growth. Information was published by Careercast (publicizing was done by Gurpreet Singh) showing growth in technical writing will be poor, on par with mathematicians and statisticians. In addition, a drop has occurred in the ranking of technical writing as a career from 26 to 37. A reason for this conflict has not been determined, but research should be done.
Discussions on moving into related careers are happening in technical writing this week, which indicates that tech writing skills are highly transferrable. Satisfaction is elusive unless goals are clarified and actions are taken. However, this knowledge is known by many in our community because of sharing. Insight can be gained from the email discussion list, and a range of excellent technical communication blogs. And it is to be believed that growth in our community can be had from exploration in these related fields.
Valuable information is to be gained from reading Al Martine’s interview with Dmitri Ragano, and improvements can be made to online help using guidance from Julie Grady’s review of Patrick Calnan’s Madpak session at Writers UA. Votes should also be cast in the weekly technical writing poll.
Thanks are given to Larry Kunz for alerting us to this important holiday.
The weekend is to be enjoyed.
-The gang at TechWhirl
In Case You Missed it: This Week @ TechWhirl
New features and articles on TechWhirl.com:
- Tech Writer This Week for April 26, 2012, by Craig Cardimon
- The Global Content Value Chain: Technical Communication Perspective, Interview with Dmitri Ragano, by Al Martine
- Technical Writing: Best Writer Resources – Poll Question
- Enhancing Online Help with MadPak Suite Components, by Julie Grady
Tech Comm News on News.TechWhirl.com
- Siemens PLM Introduces Teamcenter 9 for Product Lifecycle Management
- TechExcel DevSuite 9.0 Supports Global, Hybrid Development
- Safeharbor Releases Improved SmartSupport™ Knowledge Management Solution
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We want to send a very special “thank you” to our sponsors for their support.
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Gold: ComponentOne Software, Madcap Software
Silver: Society for Technical Communication (STC), Vancouver Island University
