Re: New Term for Tech Writers?

[Mark Baker <mbaker -at- OMNIMARK -dot- COM>]

Sarah Carroll writes


>And more and more of the larger companies,
>principally hardware companies, are looking
>for ways to re-use existing material. I seem
>to be constantly hearing the cry that "this
>stuff has all been written before - we just
>want somebody to retrieve it and present
>it in a slightly different format".
>
>Is this a trend others have noticed? Is it
>a reason for the "information developer"
>rather than "writer" or "communicator"
>status?


Noticed it? The company I work for develops the systems and methodologies
that make this possible.

But I don't think that the need to multi-purpose information is the thing
that is directly driving the current change in names. When technical
communication groups really begin to break away from the document-project
model and move to the information set-content management model of
development, I expect we'll see another set of new titles. Maybe "content
manager" or "content management specialist". We don't know how the job
categories will break down yet, but I begin to suspect that the profession
to organize itself into three broad job categories something along the lines
of "content creator", "content manager", and "presentation builder".

---
Mark Baker
Manager, Corporate Communications
OmniMark Technologies Corporation
1400 Blair Place
Gloucester, Ontario
Canada, K1J 9B8
Phone: 613-745-4242
Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- omnimark -dot- com
Web: http://www.omnimark.com