April 6, 2009
Identifying Future Skills for Technical Communicators: An Action Plan
Based on a technical article in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal, iexplore
Here are some notes I took from a future skills lecture sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication-Puget Sound Chapter:
Challenges
Why do we need to identify future skills?
• Continuous technological advancements
• Evolution of technical communications means we need to adapt
Process
What process did Boeing use to identify future skills?
• Brainstorming*
• Analyze trends
o Industry
o Technological
• Consult journal articles
• Scrutinize organizational resources
o Current skills
o Customer requirements
o Correlation of skills to requirements
• Work assignments
• Job descriptions
• Talk to our customers
Findings General
• Broaden expertise to include more business-related skills
• Manage contracted services
• Participate in service integration
Customers
• Want proactive partners skilled in leveraging information
• Don’t want support staff
The Ideal Communicator
• Possesses required skills to design, develop, and provide information
• Provides quick turnaround The Myth of Versatilists
• Success in IT will depend less on, say, development know-how or engineering savvy and more on a multilayered amalgam of business connections, strategic planning and marketing expertise.
Recommendations
How to continue to identify future skills
• Analyze current job descriptions and identify changing areas
• Analyze external drivers affecting a company’s goals and mission
• Determine current tools or technologies for acquiring and sharing future skills information
• Join professional organizations
• Attend conferences and seminars
• Adopt mentality of versatilists
• Join SIGs
• Develop a lifelong learning plan to stay abreast of rapid development
• Focus on training that emphasizes skills, not specific tools
• Remain nimble, adaptable, and responsive
*Brainstorming areas of future skills with a focus on processes/skills over tools
• Gestural design
• Animation and virtual 3D
• Editorial
• XML/XHTML
• Mobile development
• Adaptability
• Content management systems
• Collaboration processes
• Telecommuting
• Instructional videos
• Be catalyst for change and showing value added
• Presentation skills (know how to present projects/models for a changing environment)
• International standards and regulations
• Reuse/single sourcing • Localization and customization
• Interactive assistance
• SEO
• Usability
• Entertaining documentation
• Podcasting/webinars/mobinars
• Miniaturization/robotics
• More need to 508 compliance (accessibility guidelines; more alt text is read by computers than people)
• Touch screens versus keyboards
• More reliance on professional associations to update a technical communicator’s skills
• Content analyst
• Functional analyst
• Project/performance manager
• Games (as a teaching tool)
• Speech recognition tools
• Social media technologies
• Multiplicity of common mechanisms (phone, PC, e-mail, twitter, SMS/MMS)
• Company reputation management
• Outsourcing (and understanding ROI & metrics)
• Self-management skills
• Thought leadership
• Learn how to target women, the very young, and the very old
