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On the DocTrain

On a day-to-day level, my profession as a documentation coordinator is extremely comfortable: Surmountable challenges, perpetually-extended deadlines, and no direct supervision (I’m an autonomous resource attached to an engineering manager). Yet it’s a job that most people can’t feign interest in. I dare not attempt to regale anyone with my job’s crises and dilemmas: How do I deal with customizable workflows and modularized branding? Should I document known software bugs and limitations? In how many ways does MS Word suck? (Is anyone still reading this?)

Today I attended DocTrain at UMass Boston, where I fiendishly networked with people who have opinions about these issues. Even the exhibitors didn’t care about the attendees’ existence beyond potential revenue sources: “Oh, you use Doc-to-Help? And you have no interest in using our tool? Oh, okay. Here’s our product brochure and the corporate swag that lured you to our booth. Enjoy the conference.” (And poor me at the Adobe booth, once they found out I was a lone writer with no need for multiple software licenses, I didn’t even get offered a T-shirt).

The typical technical writer is a follower, not a leader (you make the product, I’ll write about it.) In between panels on perennial doc concerns about content management and the user experience, I found myself around a lot of meek people who flipped through brochures while grazing on the buffet. Not willing to indulge in either activity, I gathered confidence from my Calvin Klein suit jacket and smart, blond bun, and began chatting up writers.

“So, which tools do you use?” is the perfect opening line. Career tech writers can talk at great lengths about tools, and within 5 minutes we’d be laughing like old friends about our shared peeves and horror stories: Last minute product changes, dealing with legacy doc, sharing content with other departments, and reconciling marketing’s description of a product with reality. How I relished in feeling as if my existence is a valid one! Even if it was as pathetic as it sounds!

Posted in The 9 to 5.

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