In a previous post, I referred to an inelegant solution we devised to get my BlackBerry 9800 to sync with my Microsoft Outlook Calendar. Since that post was mostly to complain about Research in Motion (RIM) and how poorly the BlackBerry Desktop Manager (BDM) worked, I thought about all the individuals who posted complaints on the RIM (lack of) support site and how they must be suffering. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to devote one post to the solution we found to get the BlackBerry device to sync with Outlook.
Author: jeffrey
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Why BlackBerry Is Doomed
After repeated insults about my Nokia flip phone, I broke down last week, went to the AT&T store, and purchased a new BlackBerry Storm. I also had a BlackBerry (that I used for mobile email, contacts, and calendar) so I figured I’d stay with what I knew — this despite repeated warnings from my colleagues that I should buy a droid.
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Quality in Technical Writing
In the twenty-five years we’ve been in business, most of our clients have been easy to work with. They mostly appreciate the work we deliver and seek our advice, what you’d expect from consulting. There are exceptions, of course, but given all the companies we’ve touched over the years, there have been few that we’ve regretted ever having met.
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Why We Write
Whenever I can squeeze an hour out of the month, I like to attend the TAG (Technology Association of Georgia) presentations of what they call technology “Rock Stars.” This past week, Val Rahmani from Damballa spoke about her experience moving from almost 30 years at a large corporation to running an internet security start-up.
At Shoap Technical Services, we take pride in our ability to offer our clients fixed-priced bids for technical documentation and training. We feel that this is an advantage to our clients because everyone likes to know how much a project is going to cost before they start. And we feel confidant that we can correctly estimate a project because 1) we’ve done so many technical writing and training projects over the past 25 years and 2) we’ve learned how to break down a project into small enough parts so we can assign numbers (time) to each part to determine a total cost. What we like to say is, “If we can put our arms around the project, we can successfully bid it.” While we have, at times, missed our estimates and had to finish a project at a loss, most of the time we’re pretty accurate. That makes our clients happy because they know from the outset what they’re going to have to pay and it allows us to make enough money to stay in business.
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The ROI of Technical Writing
A client recently asked us to take over the maintenance of a batch file specification she had been updating. She reached out to us because it was taking so much of her time to keep the document up to date.
As part of our proposal to do the work, we suggested that it would be better to convert the existing Word file into an HTML-based solution, such that there would be an HTML page for each XML element that was in the file. In that way, we argued, the developers using the material would have instant access to all of the information they needed when they needed it.
As a student of writing for well over 40 years, I’ve learned one thing: you can’t write about what you don’t understand. This is true whether the topic is Shakespeare’s contemporaries (my doctoral thesis topic), what you did during your summer vacation (a topic I never assigned when I taught Comp 101), or the attributes of an SQL database (which my company has recently done). Or perhaps a more accurate statement might be, you can write about something you don’t understand but no one will understand what you’re saying.
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What does it cost?
The first real question I get when talking to a prospect about technical writing or creating training materials – after the “personal” pleasantries – is “what’s it going to cost?” Of course, the question is usually qualified by “I know you can’t give me an exact price” or “I’m sure you’ll need a bit more information before you can quote the project” but bottom line, everyone wants to know how much they’re going to have to pay.
No surprise there.
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Why Technical Writing is so Bad
Why is it that when people get stuck trying to figure out a piece of technology, they invariably pick up the phone and call a help desk rather than open a manual or, if it’s available, click on the help button? Certainly, it would be quicker to find the answer than wait for the “next representative to become available.” The answer, of course, is obvious, as anyone who has tried to read a technical manual can tell you: Either the answer isn’t readily available (can’t find it) or doesn’t make sense (can’t figure out what’s being said when they do find it).
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Technical Writing Consulting
When I broke into this business in the early 80s, my first gig was as a technical writer for a large electronics manufacturer. I had been placed there by a broker (who received a percentage of every dollar I billed). Thus, when I told my manager at the electronics manufactuer that I had nothing to do and that he was wasting his money (development on the project hadn’t started yet), the broker was not terribly happy with me. In fact, he threatened not to pay me for the time I had been there.
From this unpleasant situation I realized that there was an accountablity issue. I felt accountable to the person I was working for — the electronics manufacurer — not the broker who hadn’t a clue what I was doing so long as I continued to bill. And it was at that moment that I decided that when I had my own company, my writers would be full time employees of my company, be accountable to me, and I would be accountable to my clients.
Over the years, this model has worked well. While scheduling can sometimes be a nightmare — making sure everyone has billable time all the time — at least I know and can assure my clients that if there’s nothing for us to at a particular time, we don’t need to be there and come back when there is something to do. This has worked well for my clients (for obvious reasons), for my writers (they feel like they’re always productive) and for me. Mostly, though, it’s just good business.