Some Thoughts on the Conference

By Suzanne Smith

The International Angle

At the STC conference I was struck by how international our profession has become. First, almost every management or tools session I attended included a discussion of localization. What used to be something on the fringes of technical writing, has become something that a majority of writers must include in their project plans. Conversations included what tools to use for localization and whether to hire full-time translators in-house, hire freelancers, or outsource the work. Another concern was how to manage localization and how to keep costs down for a very labor-intensive process. Everyone seemed to agree that writers who write documents in English that will be translated later must devise a system to write simply, clearly, and avoid slang or American cultural references. (The go-to book on this subject is "International Technical Information," by Nancy Hoft.)

Another big piece of the internationalization of technical writing was the charged subject of offshoring work to countries overseas. Sessions with titles like "The Impact of Offshore Outsourcing," "Successful Collaboration with Team Members in India," and "Offshoring, The Essential Invisible Elements of Success," were largely part of the management track and were very well-attended. Some sessions presented offshoring as a losing investment and others showed how to make it work. I sensed a split between the managers, many of whom it seems have already been asked to establish offshore teams, and non-managers who are nervous and threatened by the trend. Offshoring was definitely something that was on a lot of people's minds. Many technical communication professionals at the conference wanted more information on the subject and wanted to trade stories with peers.

The Question of Metrics

An excellent session at the STC conference was titled "Power in Numbers: Measuring Technical Communication Projects" with Sarah Baranowski from Sakson & Taylor. I had heard of metrics and had even used several different measuring systems at various companies not even knowing that I was actually doing metrics. I knew some people viewed metrics as "the answer" to solving many of the challenges we face as technical communicators, while others viewed metrics as a waste of time and unwanted micro-management. At the end of Sarah's session, however, I became a believer in the use of intelligent metrics. This session is the one that made me actually change the way I do my work every day.

Using metrics is simply keeping track of important tasks that we do. For example, how much time did I spend planning a project versus how much time actually writing. Where metrics get tricky is deciding what to track and who is making that decision. If management decides that writers must log how they spend each hour of their day and then run the numbers through an impersonal quantitative analysis that is used for performance reviews, metrics can become an unwanted chore. If, on the other hand, writers carefully log their hours using appropriate categories that we develop, we have a very powerful tool. Using the numbers, we can prove our worth ("look how much I do besides write!"), quantitatively show what happens to our work when last minute changes are made to the product, and prove with numbers that we need to hire another writer or a contractor.

The reality of our work is that, in general, we are word people, but that we frequently have to interact with number people. This is especially true if we are moving up the ladder and into management positions. Metrics that we decide upon and that we commit ourselves to maintaining (that is the hard part!) can bridge the divide between our somewhat messy qualitative tasks and the number crunchers. To obtain a copy of Sarah Baranowski's excellent handout from this STC session, visit the STC Web site's conference proceedings area at:
http://www.stc.org/52ndConf/session.materials.asp