STC CWC Member Forum

Technical writing survey: what should the profession be called?

2009-09-21T19:22:20-08:00

What do you call yourself? I’ve heard and seen a bunch of job titles, including:

*Technical writer
*Technical communicator
*Information architect
*Content developer
*Content strategist
*Instructional designer

Abelard Consulting, a technical writing consultancy in Australia, is running a survey to find out what we call ourselves. Participate here: http://www.abelard.com.au/survey.html. The survey closes on October 15, 2009.

And, of course, feel free to pipe in on this lovely forum.

Web Content Development

2013-03-12T13:39:40-08:00

I want this form to be for technical and creative writers interested and/or working in the world of web content development (aka. writing for the web). Introduce yoursleves, your interests, topics of discussion, as well as dialogue on issues like job opportunties, networking, pricing, etc. Web content in this case can be anything from podcasts to blogs to producing an “about us” writeup for a local dog bakery website!

Translation, Localization, and Internationalization

2013-03-12T13:33:29-08:00

I want this thread to be for technical writers interested in cross-cultural communication through translation, localization, internationalization, and writing for international audiences. It’s a niche market and skill set that is becoming evermore increasingly important to technical communication, and I want more dialogue on the subject, regardless of whether you work in/with Japanese, New Zealand English, Uyghur, or Klingon. If any of the above sounds like its up your alley, feel free to introduce yourselves, job opportunities, general website links, conversation topics, etc.

Ladies Learning Code comes to Vancouver

2012-07-02T12:00:57-08:00

I am quoting from an email that I recently received. This sounds like a great chance to improve your tech skills.

Ladies Learning Code
Heather Payne of Ladies Learning Code is doing an inaugural session in Vancouver at The Launch Academy on August 24 and 25th, 2012 with intro to HTML/CSS. She is calling on all HTML/ CSS enthusiasts to come and volunteer and help the participants follow along with the instructor. It is VERY intro, but the model of the workshop is one instructor per session and one TA per 4 students. She would need 10 volunteers per day.
If interested, please sign up under tech help at http://ladieslearningcode.com

Free Library of Icons and Symbols

2012-04-19T12:08:50-08:00

I thought I would share this with the STC as I found it to be a useful resource.

I recently came across the Noun Project. It is a free public domain library of symbols and icons (covering a really eccentic range of topics)

http://thenounproject.com/

I also wrote a bit about it here and linked to an interview with the project’s creator

http://joshstubbs.com/2012/03/11/a-hazard-symbol-is-worth-a-thousand-words/

Josh

Recent Salary Survery for BC?

2011-10-25T09:43:24-08:00

Does anyone know of or if there has been a recent salary survey for BC or localized to Vancouver or Victoria? The last STC survey I have that includes Canada is from 2005 or 2006. I know STC has a recent one, but it is US based and costs money. I read somewhere that STC Alberta also did one, but again it is localized to their area.

What do you think of doing a survey for the STC Canada West Coast chapter?

Thank you,

Randi

Canadian salary survey

2010-01-05T19:20:42-08:00

As a contractor, I always find it strange to set my rates. Am I charging too much? Too little?

STC has, for many years, produced a salary survey. The results are available here: http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/salary-database.asp?SSOToken=XXLA6uFnXAYCabUtnFAB3ghB3cY=. You need to log into your STC.org account in order to access it - one of the many perks of being an STC member!

Alas, the “survey” is U.S.-only. This is because the data are pulled from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment Statistics (OES), which classifies technical writers as a separate profession from other types of writers. A similar distinction is not made in Canada, so it makes an equivalent survey difficult to do. Regardless, the salary surveys are still worth looking at.

The Canadian chapters are working on a Canadian salary survey. We’re fine-tuning the questions and hope to unleash it in a few months. Yes, the survey will be self-reported, but I sincerely hope that it will give us a glimpse into salaries across the country.

Commuting from Gibsons to Vancouver

2012-01-25T21:05:26-08:00

Was curious if there were any Gibsons commuters on the board, and if they’d be willing to relate their experience commuting. Thanks! Chris Bolster

Chapter offering new information interview service

2011-08-12T11:37:07-08:00

This year our chapter is bringing an exciting new information interview service to the technical writing community in Vancouver.

The information interview service connects volunteer senior technical writers with people who are requesting information interviews, whether they are tech writing students who are required to do interviews for their programs, or people considering entering the field of tech writing. The service offers a 30- to 60-minute interview (length is at the discretion of the senior writer). It could be in person or on the phone, depending on what the two people decide. This service will raise awareness of our chapter, bring new people to program meetings, and hopefully generate new memberships for the chapter.

As information interview coordinator, I will match up the requesters with senior writers, by going sequentially through a roster of volunteers. This service will be advertised on our STC CWC website starting in September, and I also invite you to advertise it or link to it on your own websites, as I’m sure many of you get requests for info interviews each year.

We are going to ask for a donation of $10 for the service. The donation will be optional, so that money is not a barrier to those seeking an interview. In return for the donation, the requester will receive the interview and possibly admission to the next program meeting after the interview.

Requiring less of a time commitment than mentorship, this is an opportunity for you to share your valuable experience and insights with people who are new to the field of technical writing. It’s also a chance to help raise money for our chapter. I hope you will see the value in this service and be willing to offer your help. At this point I am estimating that each volunteer senior writer might be requested to do one or two information interviews per year.

I’d like to thank the chapter executive and program team for their support in working out the details of this exciting new service. We’re almost there now! And though all the nitty gritty details haven’t been totally ironed out yet, we’ve already got 10 volunteer senior writers and have two interviews completed or in progress. Clearly this service is answering a real need in the community.

Please let me know if I can add your name to the roster of senior technical writers for this service. Either reply here in the forum, or send me an email: info-interview at stcwestcoast dot ca. I am excited about this opportunity to strengthen our chapter’s bonds with the Vancouver community at large, and I welcome you all to be a part of it.

Warmly,

PEBKAC - Lighter moments in technical writing

2011-09-19T13:35:59-08:00

Pronounced peb-kack, this charming acronym stands for Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about this occupational hazard for tech writers, tech support staff, and users of technical documentation:

User Error and related phrases such as PEBKAC (“Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair”), PICNIC (“Problem In Chair Not In Computer”), PIBCAK (“Problem Is Between Chair And Keyboard”) or ID-10T error (“Idiot error”) are also used as slang in technical circles with a derogatory meaning.[1][2] This usage implies a lack of computer savvy, asserting that problems arisen when using a device are the fault of the user. Critics of the term argue that the problems are caused instead by a device designed in such a way that it induces errors.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_error

It’s one of the joys of our job to poke fun at our end users, but who among us hasn’t had a PEBKAC moment of our own? I invite you to share a story from either end of the PEBKAC spectrum. To start things off, here’s one of my less stellar moments:

I had just purchased a great new wireless keyboard and mouse, plugged the thingie into the USB port, and was ready to go. Everything seemed to be working fine as I typed some exploratory text. So I dialed in to my client’s site using my regular remote access log-in. So far, so good. Then I started running the client’s software on my remote desktop. The software requires a username and password in ALLCAPS, and both the username and password are masked with asterisks. I tried logging in, and it didn’t work. I tried again, and got the same error message. Since software under development is often buggy, and sometimes the system goes down, I sent out an email to the whole team to find out if anyone else was having trouble logging in. I got back a bunch of messages, and guess what? PEBKAC! It turned out that during the remote log-in, my keyboard was set from ALLCAPS back to non-ALLCAPS, but the Caps Lock indicator was backwards. So I was logging in using lowercase letters. Was my face red! Especially when I had to send an email to the whole group explaining my error. At least a few people got to laugh at my expense that day.

This story kicks off the 2011 program year for STC CWC. Join in the forum fun and share a PEBKAC story of your own! :-)