October/November 2004

Volume 45, Number 2

When Duck and Cover Won't Do: How to Get Ready for Your Future In Light Of Hurricane-Force Changes

by Rahel Bailie, Region 7 Director-Sponsor

In a recent conversation with an STC community leader, we discussed the changing face of technical communication and the implication for STC members in his chapter. His particular geographic area has been especially hard hit, with a number of community members working survival jobs until they can re-enter the technical communication field, or holding onto jobs they'd otherwise have outgrown. Technical writers, he worries, are hunkering down in their cubicles, and he fears that by the time they come up for air, they will no longer have a skill set that has sufficient velocity in the marketplace.

To say that the changes in the field of technical communication are of hurricane proportions is not an exaggeration. Our workplaces, our careers, our peers in the STC network—if we haven't personally been affected , we have been affected indirectly. Some of us have seen our jobs swept away, others have had work debris dumped on them, and still others face huge clean-ups from projects gone awry because of ill-implemented changes.

What concerns me is that the response to this flurry of change is to sit tight and keep working. Watching Hurricanes Frances and Ivan sweep through the Caribbean and across Florida, we saw the CNN reports of people jumping to action: boarding up the windows to protect their homes and then getting out of the storm's projected path. It involves a lot of hard work, and a fast response, but the pay-off is to get to safety to be in a position to bounce back. When we see the eye of a storm moving toward us, is it in our best interests to sit tight and wait it out? Or should we be hustling to move our skill sets into a safer zone—one where we'll be able to bounce back once the worst of the economic storm has passed?

Economists talk about how, as the jobs we know move around the globe, we must be prepared to "move up the value chain." This means that we need to look at adding more value as strategic contributors. How we can do this is to look up the technical communication profession chain and see what more we can do. For example: Writers can look at other content development skills that bring more value to the workplace or expand their skill set to usability practices. Editors can look at the localization and internationalization field to see where they could add skills. Marcom writing could expand to a broader set of communication products. Departments can learn how to use content management systems to add value to their work. Usability folks can apply their principles to interactive design. Help writers can expand their horizons to interactive design. In other words, we can look for the logical expansion of our skill sets, and for each of us that will be a unique path.

How we come out on top of the professional hurricane isn't by staying in our cubicles with our noses to the grindstone. We can protect our careers and our futures through continual professional development, networking, and life-long learning. We can learn a lot about what we want to do—or even about what we may want to eliminate as a career enhancement—by staying informed about developments in related fields, by attending STC meetings to network with our peers (and the peers with whom we'd like to keep company), and by continually gaining and honing new skills. It's the surest way to survive the storms that regularly sweep through the umbrella profession that we call technical communication.