Hi, James. I don't get to read every ATW post, so I've missed the
zombies. Maybe just as well.
So first my colours: I chair a not-quite-zombied industry
certification scheme (MITC) that was created to further professional
and training opportunities for technologists in the media
industry; At the 2008 ATSC annual conference I was invited to
keynote about how MITC was developing, and to trigger some discussion
as to how certification might apply to Technical Writers. The topic
could well be worth a recap - it's been a while and there have been
intersting lessons learned.
Warning: lots of words in the following response, but I thought it
was worth dropping in one hit. I'd love the opportunity to discuss
around a table. Or on ATW.
What I took from your statement is that you fear the possibility of a
police state applying to this profession, and I share that. But I
don't fear certification - I'd welcome it.
The model that you describe, the one that authorises a right-to-work,
is actually licensing and runs along the lines of "you may not
practice your craft unless you meet agreed criteria, with measurement
and process regulated by law".
Certification is very much different from licensing. A licence is a
form of certification, but it's not the only one.
There are many drivers for certification, and I can think of three:
1. Need for Certification as determined by law. Doctors, dentists,
accountants, and lawyers are all regulated by law. So, for that
matter, are plumbers and hairdressers. And the most common legal
certification: a licence to drive. It doesn't matter whether you
are or are not demonstrably competent, it's illegal to perform the
act without the piece of paper. I can't ever see that applying
to technical writers, although stranger things have happened in the
last year. Legally-mandated certification might lead to the
internally focused self-serving Soviet Writers Union, but that's a
longish bow and it doesn't have to be that way.
2. Need for Certification as determined by consequence. There are
professions where there is no law requiring a Certification, but
where some other consequence falls from not having the
certification. Take, for instance, working in a theatre. No law
prevents you from using an electrical lift to reach and adjust a
light, but if you don't have a yellow card ("working at heights")
then your $10M public liability insurance policy is at risk from
fine-print contravention. Most people would not want to accept that
risk Or if you're a secondary school teacher, no law prevents you
from going up a ladder to adjust a spotlight, but education
department rulings specifically say you may not do that and therefore
you might well lose your job.
3. Need for Certification as determined by ecosystem. Some
professional societies and commercial bodies offer systems of
certification which carry weight within an industry segment because
the certification provides a form of employment currency (the person
is recognised as belonging in the sandbox, and that's worth
something) and a ranking (the person can execute at or above a
specific level). Nothing either legal or consequential prevents the
practitioner from doing the job, but employers and peers have respect
for the certification and what it represents.
Really good examples of ecosystem certifications:
* Microsoft and Cisco professional levelling (MCSE, CCIE, etc)
* Society of Broadcast Engineers
* COMPTIA
* Australian Cinematographers Society
* etc, etc.....
There are many industry-accepted certification schemes. Ecosystem
certifications are often accompanied by postnominals which telegraph
immediately the level of conversation that you might want to have
with the individual. For instance, if you're a cinematographer and
you have an ACS after your name, your reputation is gold. If you
have both ACS and ASC (the US equivalent), you'd be platinum (I think
there are only six people at that level in the world). Those are
highly recognisable peer-recognition certifications related to body
of work; they cannot be gained by purchase or study.
And here's the important bit. your bankability in a creative
industry is ALL about recognition: your right to work doesn't
devolve from licensing or even formal education, and employers
typically don't care about qualification as long as you can
deliver. Hands up: who knows what qualification Elton John has? Or
Brian May? Oscar Wilde? George Miller? Any of the Pythons? We
pay for the work efforts of creatives because we value the work, not
how they got there.
Technical writing, like creative writing, is still creative. If you
get it wrong nobody dies, you just lose employability. If you're
good at it, then why not have a Certification which allows you to
telegraph your skill and level to others who might be interested in
employing you?
Here's another consideration: Certification and Qualification are
quite different processes, and while sometimes they carry the same
meaning, often they don't. A qual shows you've participated in some
training, but too many quals are now bestowed on candidates who are
barely informed let alone able to perform at the time of
graduation. That's an outcome of the system we have today - public
and private - and is driven by commercial pressures. Worse, in too
many of the creative industries the last vestige of formal education
and qualification has been made to go away through a systematic
breakdown of the value chain. Death by a thousand cuts.
Certification works because it can be conferred on any individual,
qualified or not, whose level of performance against metrics can be
assessed. That's quite meaningful enough for employers and peers -
in MITC we branded that as "Show What You Know". Provided the
certification process is trustworthy, and can't be debased, it's a
better indicator than a qualification.
There are two direct outcomes of Certification which are undeniably
good in a healthy ecosystem:
1. your certification sets you apart from others; it's a
recognisable differentiator, and a positive aid to employment.
2. Certification ecosystems drive opportunities for training to
exist, in support of the Certification.
A good, industry-supported Certification system is a healthy thing to have.
John
PS: for anyone who wants to know what has happened to MITC, and why
it's partially zombied: that's another discussion with a heap of learnings!
John P Maizels FSMPTE
Mobile: +61-412-576-888
Media Versatilist: no problem too complex
Governor Asia Pacific Region, Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers
www.smpte.org.au
At 21:46 01/01/2017, you wrote:
I have gathered from some recent posts that certification, which I had long regarded as a zombie issue, is still walking around.
If certification actually happened, what would the consequences be?
The first result would be a certifying agency, with power to enforce its own regulations, and issue and withdraw certifications. There
is no point in passing laws and regulations if they are not actually enforced.
Such an agency could also claim the power to refuse publication of works that were not produced by a licensed person, by issuing
a sort of secular imprimatur.
Australia's 2000-odd technical writers would thus write and publish entirely under the aegis of the certifying agency.
It all sounds rather like the old Soviet Writers' Union. The most important result of certification would be the setting up of a
group of writers entirely under the control of a government agency. The precedent could be very important: if done once, it can be
done again. Who is next? Journalists? Recall that strong push in 2016 for control of journalists? Not to mention all those irresponsible
bloggers. License them all!
The whole certification of technical writers issue could be a thin-end-of-the-wedge device for eliminating the vestiges of free speech
that we retain.
Implausible, you say? The idea that technical writers could play a pivotal role in the political world would be quite strange to many. We
consider ourselves insignificant in the grand scheme of politics, but this may not be true...
JH
