December 2006/January 2007

Volume 47, Number 3

What Did you Want for Christmas?

by Stephen Wertzbaugher

As I write this column I can’t help but marvel at the love affair our society has for technology. That same love affair seems to include the Technical Communications profession as well. After all, where would we be as technical communicators without our technological toys? Some of us, me included, might answer, “still sane.” But humor aside, like it or not, our technology drives both our private and our professional lives.

And how could it be otherwise? Who among us can say with a straight face that we prefer to write with a manual typewriter than with a computer? I don’t mean that as a slight against manual typewriters; it was a fine tool in its day, but its day is past. Time as well as technology moves on and so too must we, like it or not. And if we do not keep up with technology in our own profession we, like the dinosaurs, may find ourselves extinct, which begs the question, “what tools and technologies should I embrace as a technical communicator?”

The answer is simple: select the right tool for the job. Implementing that answer, however, is never as easy as it may seem. That’s because writing environments are as individual as writers and despite marketing claims to the contrary, no writing tool currently exists that “does it all.” So how do you choose the right tool for the job? With great consideration and care.

Don’t rush your decision and don’t let others make you rush your decision, because the tool you choose today will be with you for a long time, maybe years; unless your company doesn’t mind making capricious and expensive decisions. Maybe your company has money to burn and they don’t mind lighting bonfires with their cash. If you work in a company like that, how do I get a job there?

Trust me on this, though. Most companies hate spending money for things that, in their mind, have no direct relation to their profitability. And if management perceives that you have wasted their hard earned profits they will squish you like a bug, which brings me to my most wished for Christmas gift this year, a 30GB video iPod.

The iPod topped my Christmas wish list this year and like a giddy five-year-old I couldn’t wait to wake up Christmas morning and open my presents to see if I had gotten one. But I didn’t wake up one day and say, “I want an iPod.” I knew that I wanted a portable music player, but I also knew that I wanted the right one for me. I researched the market, read specifications and reviews, spoke with friends who owned portable music players, went to the stores and played with the different players that were available, including the new one from Microsoft. And in the end, I chose the iPod as the best fit for my current and future needs as well as for its flash and pizzazz.

With that in mind, if you, as technical communicators, are searching for that cool new tool to make your job a little easier I ask you to use the same care and plodding consideration that I used to select my iPod. You won’t regret it. Now go forth and communicate complicated technical information in a form that the common people can understand; I want to play with my new iPod.