Old Media, Technical Writers, and the Evolution of Documentation
I’ve previously discussed the evolution of technical writing and documentation on this blog, in fact that’s one of the primary topics I tend to orbit around. Regular readers will by now understand my fundamental belief that technical writers are an important and underutilized asset to most businesses; however, I also believe that technical writers have to fundamentally alter the way they approach the problem of educating users and helping them find the answers they need before they will be properly valued by the businesses that employ them.
The ground is shifting in another major industry, old media, caused mostly by the rise of social media and the desire of users to find the news they want online, and there are some interesting parallels that should be considered.
In a recent conversation with Anne Gentle she shared with me some of her thoughts on the future of technical writers and the similarities that might be drawn with the downfall of old media. Quoting from her recent blog post on the topic:
>Previously the best way to get your news was through journalism and your daily newspaper – but the publishing systems have changed and allowed for citizen journalism and news updates through various channels.
>I naturally draw a parallel between citizen journalism and user-generated content. After all, in software, technical writers are like the journalist is – finding the relevant story for a particular audience, interviewing to get the facts, presenting in a fair, nonjudgemental manner, and writing to a deadline.
I think Anne is on to something here. Let’s consider this for a moment.
Journalists help define the debate within a community (most generally, our country). They source, investigate, and write about current news (things the community might find interesting), and the community members (citizens) take the debate and run with it.
Journalism helps create the seeds of modern social debate. Social media helps to highlight the fact that once that seed is planted the journalist, who used to be a position of power to control where the story goes, now becomes much more of a peer to the community–contributing additional thoughts and ideas but with no great advantage to distribute those ideas any more effectively than any other community member.
This is fundamental to the future of technical writers and documentation.
Helping People Learn from other People
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Patty Seybold recently wrote an interesting post entitled “People Learn from People”. At the beginning of her post she writes:
>Another pattern I noticed among our Visionaries was the various ways they connect people to people in the online world. As one participant said, “People don’t learn from information; they learn from people.”
Patty goes on to say that a sense of mission to help customers connect with other customers to share and learn from experiences is a critical criteria for companies to make effective use of social media to drive customer acquisition. In my own words, I would suggest that this all goes back to growing happy users.
The Modern Technical Writer
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The enlightened technical writer understands the implications of the downfall of old media and how it relates to user education. They also understand that the ultimate goal of their work product is to build an engine that educates users using not only the words they write, but also the words and experiences of the community. To take Anne’s points and expand on them, here is the description that I believe begins to capture the technical writer of the future:
1. They plant the seeds of discussion by writing answers, not documentation.
2. They publish in a medium that brings users together, ultimately by building a learning community around their company’s content.
3. They understand the documentation is never done and iterate on it as needed by creating new content internally and accepting content from the community.
4. They value, but temper, the wisdom of the crowd to ensure the content is always correct.
5. They are part writer, part community manager, and part user experience advocate for their products.
Newspapers might die but journalism will live on. The value of journalism can never be questioned, but it is clear that the ground is shifting beneath the old media industry. Much the same can be said for technical writing. There will *always* be a need to help users understand how to use products, but there must be a realization that the “old documentation industry” will ultimately wither away entirely. Users are demanding answers in new ways, and writers need to adapt their means of providing that content. Ultimately, a new platform to help technical communicators write, publish, and manage the community debate is needed: social media, blogs, and wikis all provide the fundamental concepts and tools, but taking advantage of them is more easily said than done.
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