You’ve just being fired. The Technical Writing dept is closed. What do you do? This is a fact of life for many people today. Indeed, there is now a real fear that US technical writers will continue to lose their jobs to offshore companies, e.g. India & Poland. And it’s true; it’s the shape of things to come, I’m afraid. But rather than moan about it, let’s look at what you can do to re-invent yourself and find new, lucrative opportunities.
7 Ways for Technical Writers to Re-invent Themselves
January 9, 2010 By Ivan Walsh
Filed Under: Career Tagged With: Career, China, Facebook, Flickr, Future, Linkedin, Outsourcing, Project management, Social network, Technical Writers, technical writing. jobs, trends
10 Best Mistakes I Made in 2009
November 22, 2009 By Ivan Walsh
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. If you don’t know your mistakes you’re going to repeat them. Here’s my best mistakes.
Filed Under: Career, Technical Writing Tagged With: Adobe Framemaker, Career, contract, contracts, Facebook, GTD, India, MadCap Flare, Online Help, Podcast, rates, Robohelp, Single Sourcing, Social network, STC, Structured Authoring, Technical Communications, Technical documentation, Technical Writing
How to Get Your Email Answered
October 6, 2009 By Ivan Walsh
Let’s say you’re getting 600 emails a day on average. 50% were people asking me his time, 25% were “really nice people,” 20% were business opportunities, and 5% were friends. A quick bit of math: if he answered 1 email a minute, 600 emails would take me 10 hours to answer. The thing is, we’re […]
Filed Under: How To, Microsoft Excel, Technical Writing Books Tagged With: Chris Brogan, email, Facebook, google, google docs, Google Spreadsheets, Productivity, social media, Social network, Time-wasting
How To Mind Your Grammar On The Web
October 3, 2009 By Ivan Walsh
Ben Parr (Mashable) asks: “Say your project manager comes to you with his proposal that will be going out to investors, business partners, and potential clients. Then you find that your manager has used “4” instead of “four”, “r” instead of “are”, and abbreviations such as lol, atm, and idk. How would you react? “
Filed Under: Style Guide, Technical Writing Tagged With: Arts, business writing, Facebook, Grammar, guidelines, Jargon, Mashable, Social network, Style Guide, technical, Technical Writing, TLA, writing