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> Let's see if I have this right. A half-dozen disgruntled folks on a mailing
> list versus the small army of technical communicators who find enough value
> in the programs to actually spend the time and money to attend. I wonder
> which audience the STC planners will cater to?
I have no doubt that STC carefully caters the conference to exactly the people
they want to attend. And one of the reasons technical topics are avoided is
because those topics would frighten off a fair number of people. There are far
more people in the world who are technically ignorant (and wish to remain that
way) then technically savvy. And these people are far more willing to part with
their money to attend a meeting that does not require them to "leave their
comfort zone." It's fun to talk about processes and career development. But
mention TCP/IP or object oriented programming (something that could actually
help them write better documents) and people glaze over. Nobody REALLY wants to
learn that stuff because its a lot harder and it requires a greater degree of
concentration.
Moreover, STC has been extremely successful of the past few decades convincing
writers that they don't need to be technically skilled. STC has been telling
people via their careful choice in articles, seminars, and leaders that writers
can offload all technical responsibility to an SME while they focus exclusively
on issues of format, presentation, and process. This has been so successful
that the entire STC conference is now exclusively skewed to management, career
development, English, methodologies. While all of these issues have a place,
they are not the end-all-be-all of technical writing.
The problem with this one-off stuff is that it is like a drug. Once people get
addicted to one-off work, they can never go back. They become consumed by
promises of efficiency and increased usability. They become obsessed with the
fun and exciting concepts of planning and talking about planning.
It makes sense. Pecking out an esoteric manual about object classes is dull and
difficult. It requires a lot of intellectual processing power. But smoking a
big bowl full of single-sourcing methodologies has an immediate and very
satisfying effect. You feel "professional," "proper," and "in control." That
feeling is so intoxicating that people center their entire careers around
one-off work. But like any addict, they have to keep justifying their habit.
Because one-off work does not generate any real output (or the output is
essentially supportive in nature), it requires a constant input of fresh
addicts to keep demand for training and education high. The STC conference is,
in a sense, just a big flea market for new addicts and drugs.
However, good technical documentation will always begin and end with accurate
and appropriate technical information. In the middle there may be fonts,
processes, templates, tools, and career development, but at the end of the day,
the final measure of good documentation will always been the value, accuracy,
and usefulness of the content. So all this justification and one-off work
becomes worth squat. When push comes to shove, the outside world doesn't give a
crap about methods, English skills, management theories, or any of the other
one-off crap. All they care about is the content.
> This is not a seminary for the Society for Tech-savvy Writers. It is the
> annual conference of the Society for Technical Communication. The STC
> membership includes planners, project managers, graphic artists, industrial
> designers -- people from the many facets of the work we do.
It could be argued that not only technical writers, but editors, planners,
project managers, and even artists all become better at their jobs when they
understand the technologies and science that surrounds their work.
Furthermore, how can an organization have the word "Technical" in its title
when that organization adamantly refuses to embrace technical subjects? Why not
change the name to the Society of Communication-Related Issues. STC can't
rightly claim to be a "technical" society when it refuses (either tacitly or
passively) to embrace technical people and topics.
Andrew Plato
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