Matt, It's a good idea, though like Christine, I'm tired of being an advocate for some of the people who call themselves technical writers. I've been exploring other directions as well. Still I will think about it and might ask your help in finding journals or newspapers that would publish an article. There was some discussion some years ago about a course in Melbourne (Swinburne?). I don't know if it's still offered. For the record, I have a BA in Communication with a major in Professional Writing but I needed to do a Graduate Diploma in IT to get a job as a technical writer. Even then, it took a year or two to get my first TW job. I sat on Help Desk for a while till someone took a chance on me. Michelle _____ From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew da Silva Sent: Saturday, 21 November 2009 2:13 PM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Re: Audience Analysis Michelle - Why don't some of you guys write some op-ed pieces and get them published in the National Times or even industry journals? If you think you have a case, and if you think that management doesn't 'get it' in terms of the reality of having "writing skills", then you can advocate on your own behalf. After all, a masters in media practice - which I completed - is a year-long degree (full-time). Does any university in Australia teach tech writing? There's a good source for apt quotes, right there. Cheers, Matthew da Silva BA (Hons) MMediaPrac (Merit) Syd p 0434 536 772 | e journo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | w matthewdasilva.com <http://matthewdasilva.com/> | t twitter.com/matt_dasilva From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michelle Hallett Sent: Saturday, 21 November 2009 11:00 AM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Re: Audience Analysis I clearly need to look some more at Google tools (thanks for the link, Peter). Christine, I think the corporate environment has not realized (sorry, English US keeps reasserting itself on my Outlook) the need to collect this data. A lot of job ads still want a writer with a background in engineering or IT, which indicates to me that many out there think writing is still a 'transparent' skill. By this I mean that it is believed that writing is nothing more than what we learned to do at school (and some are better at it than others). We should be acting as advocates for writing as a professional skill and recommending to the management that this type of data should be collected to make the tools we produce more effective and better for the customer. Unfortunately very few of us are high enough in the company structure to have this kind of influence and I think many of us still think of ourselves as primarily engineers or IT professionals. I realize I'm straying into declarative speech here so I should emphasize that this is my opinion. Michelle _____ From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christine Kent Sent: Saturday, 21 November 2009 11:22 AM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Re: Audience Analysis Structure may not always be the answer, but looking at the usage patterns that work is a complex issue. From time to time, I suggest in online docs that we set up some scripts to check hits on various parts of the documentation set. It'd be interesting to see which bits get read, which get ignored etc.. And that should presumably inform ideas on online doc structures. Never seem to quite get anywhere with that one, though. This is another area where the on-line world has taken off without us. It is routine to set something such as Google Analytics to track hits to your pages, entry from and exit to data, etc. This lets you review the effectiveness (usually from a marketing or sales perspective) of each page. You can determine how the page was found (from a Google search, from a related web page, from a friendly link), the geographic location of the reader, data about their technical capacity etc, how long they stayed on the page, and whether the reader exited the page to another page on the site or left the site altogether. This gives you pretty much all the data you need to determine if a particular page is serving it's stated purpose. I have not worked in a corporate environment for over three years now, but I gather, from what you are saying, that corporate has not started collecting this data. Does anyone work in an environment that does, and does anyone analyse either information delivery or training from this perspective. Interesting topic (to me). Christine -PeterM peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx I like a man who grins when he fights. - Winston Churchill ************************************************** To view the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field (without quotes). To manage your subscription (e.g., set and unset DIGEST and VACATION modes) go to www.freelists.org/list/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************