atw: Skills form for technical communicators [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Some of you will have seen the document 'Mapping the Field of Technical 
Writing' that I produced, with assistance from many helpful people, 
including contributors to this list. This was part of a personal project 
to find out more about the skills and activities of those of us who call 
ourselves technical writers or technical communicators. (You can see the 
document at 
http://members.iinet.net.au/~howard.silcock/TechWrSkills_HSite.html.)

I'm now inviting all technical writers/communicators to contribute further 
to this project by completing an online form at 
http://members.iinet.net.au/~howard.silcock/skillsform.html.  Please 
consider setting aside a bit of time soon to do this - and please help me 
to publicise the form and get more people to fill it in. Talk to anyone 
you know who does any form of technical communication and give them the 
URL -  the more participants I get the more useful the exercise will be. 
I'd also welcome suggestions of other ways I could recruit participants.

Respondents will remain anonymous - I don't ask for names and have no way 
of knowing who's filling in the form. Each time someone submits the form, 
I get an anonymous email from my ISP with a list of what's in each field, 
but nothing else. I chose this approach deliberately, as I think it may 
encourage people to fill it in honestly - I know that in building up our 
careers we often feel we need to 'grandstand' a bit and play up our skills 
and play down the gaps, so I hope this will provide a respite from that. 
(I hope this will also dissuade recruiters from trying to persuade me to 
help them build up their databases - all I'll have is a set of numbers!)

The data collected will, I hope, let me get some idea of the relative 
importance of the different skills that go towards making up the field. 
I'll be reporting on the results as part of the talk I'll be giving at the 
ASTC (NSW) 'New Horizons' conference in Sydney next month, and will also 
post a report on my website. 

As a personal comment, I'd like to add that creating this form has been a 
real labour, as it's my first venture into server-side scripting (with 
PHP) on a website! I hope the form continues to behave as it should. 
You'll have an opportunity to give me feedback on the form, if you fill it 
in, so its shortcomings will soon be revealed to me...

Don't forget to tell people that URL: 
http://members.iinet.net.au/~howard.silcock/skillsform.html !

Howard


Howard Silcock
Technical Writer
Zare Pty Ltd
Ph  02 6261 2073
Fax 02 6112 2073

Other related posts: