Re: Clients Who Telecommute

[Carol Atack <carol -at- ANT -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

At 3:00 pm 12/2/96, Kathy Fisher wrote:

>I am curious about how many writers out there have clients out of their area
>or out-of-state, if they telecommute with those clients, and how they obtain
>those clients.

>Kathy Fisher
>Freelance Writer
>KDFisher -at- aol -dot- com

I am based in Cambridge, England and so are most of my clients. I also have
a client based in Glasgow, Scotland, who also spends a lot of time on the
West coast of the USA.

I obtained this client because we both worked on a project by another of my
clients (they did the hardware design and I did the tech doc). The managing
director felt that a geographically remote tech writer he knew was a better
proposition than a local one he didn't.

We send a *lot* of email and faxes. For example, the engineers fax me some
rough sketches of timing diagrams, I draw them up neatly, and mail them an
Acrobat .PDF for comment. Documents get turned round at least as fast as
they do with other more local clients: perhaps it's the novelty of the
electronic transmission? They have also installed a copy of FrameMaker so
that they can look at my files. We also try to get together every now and
then - it is a long day trip by air.

The main thing I feel I miss is the chance to get to know the other members
of the team really well: I don't find any problems from a work point of
view. I would recommend to anyone else working for distant clients that
they tried to visit at the start of the project and spend time with other
project members.

I did have one or two 'sleepless nights' about whether this would work at
the start of the project, but it's been a great success for me. A plus
point is that I don't have to attend boring internal meetings and waste
time hanging around their office when I don't need to, which local clients
sometimes expect.

Carol Atack

--
Carol Atack
01223 518221  carol -at- ant -dot- co -dot- uk  http://www.ant.co.uk/~carol/