Talks & master-classes

Technical writer 2.0

October 13, 09:30
Room IV|IV зал

Discuss the presentation

During the last year I’ve talked a lot to IT managers and my fellow technical writers. Turns out that both sides often don’t know how a writer can be useful to the business, except just writing the docs. It hurts both sides: business has unresolved tasks and writers make less money and leave out some interesting opportunities for professional development.

In Russia there’s a professional standard for the profession of a technical writer. It assumes three ways of development: horisontal growth, techwriter-engineer and a manager of docs department. I’d like to tell about other ways to employ techwriter’s skills and be useful to the business. I’ll give examples of people who successfully “sold” the new role and goals to their managers and achieved a good and measureable outcome.

This talk might be useful to technical writers and their managers. Both will get to know about new large-scale business goals, which technical writers are best equipped to achieve. Writers will be able to “sell” these goals to their managers, while managers will know how to set well-defined tasks for the writers. I hope that it will result in businesses making more money, writers having greater salaries and more satisfied with their job, and users being happier through better communication.

I will consider my job done, if techwriters and managers will set themselves new global goals for the upcoming year.