Certification--
I have rejected Technical Communication certification for a long time, and I have recently changed my mind. The field of technical communication has had a "We don't get any respect" chip on its shoulder for a long time. I think we have failed to communicate our value in many cases because we ourselves have not understood that value. To our credit, we have evolved from "We produce well-written, correctly punctuated documentation" to "We support user task-based information requirements." In other words, we did a good job of moving from documenting products to supporting what users do with those products (please, I'm using the term product very broadly). What we haven't done so well is understand and articulate how a better-informed, better-performing user benefits our employers.

We hear a lot that we want STC to "tell our compelling story" and I have participated in board discussions about what level of management STC should target with articles about how technical communicators add value. To me, this is like asking our mother to come to school with us and tell the other kids they have to play nice with us (well, not as humiliating, but about as effective). The only ones who can tell our compelling story is us (yes, yes, I know it should have been we, but that sounded too, well, like who we were twenty years ago).

So what does this have to do with certification?

• Certification programs, when done well, focus on employer value. Certification will help us communicate to ourselves what our value propositions are--in terms of value added for employers. Once we understand that value, we become better able to communicate and demonstrate that to our employers.
• Certification can increase jobs within a profession, as employers understand better what value those jobs add.
• Certification can create revenue potential for STC.

So if I get elected as 2VP for STC, I will have 4 active years to work on this. And by the end of that 4 years, my goal would be to have a fully defined body of knowledge in place and a certification program launched that demonstrated multiple levels of competencies within that body.

I have a new column out in UXmatters.com: Hockey Sticks and User Assistance: Writing in Times of Resource Constraints. I blogged on it earlier, but this is a more thought-out (and better edited) version than what you saw in the blog.

I've also updated my web page to include my "platform" for my STC 2VP campaign. Take the STC Campaign-2008 link. In short, my focus as an officer would be to

• Maintain a balanced budget that funds the programs that add the most value for members
• Ensure that our publications and conferences provide the content that helps members do their jobs
• Create a collaboration where members, vendors, employers, and academic communities help technical communicators keep up with the ever-changing demands for tools and technology knowledge
• Support a certification program through STC that helps our sponsors trust and understand our value and that creates sustainable careers for technical communicators

I'll blog more on why I have decided to get on the certification bandwagon after staying off it all these years.

A rose by any other name might have more syllables--
Two blogs in one day! But my last blog was 14 hours and another Board of Directors meeting day, so that's got to be 3 dog days at least.

I annoyed some folks today by referring to what we do as technical writing and by referring to myself as a technical writer. Then I totally blew it by referring to the people who consume what I produce as readers. Seriously, I could tell that I was a major disappoint to them, so it made me pause and think. I have noticed lately that I have been referring to myself that way, not necessarily consciously, but purposely enough to notice that I was doing it. Now that I know I'm disappointing and alarming some folks by doing it, I've decided to reflect and try to understand why I have reverted to these somewhat retro terms.

I think there are a couple of things going on. For one, I'm a little embarrassed by the sometimes pretentious sounding titles we use. My current job title is user assistance architect. I just feel less pretentious telling folks I'm a technical writer. I'm not particularly embarrassed by its more blue collar appeal.

But mainly, I think I am rebelling somewhat against the idea that people didn't respect the job we did because we were called technical writers, and somehow changing it to technical communicators will get us the respect we deserve. It just seems to take our eye off the real ball: When we truly add value and articulate it in real terms, people notice. It has nothing to do with what we call ourselves.

For example, I am aware that businesses need a lot of advanced products and services to support their analysis of data that goes well beyond the need for calculators. But it doesn't bother me that the company I work for that provides all of those advanced needs is called International Business Machine. Nor am I concerned when using an ATM that it was made by a company called National Cash Register. I know their names are somewhat steeped in the technology of their origins, not in their technology or business practices of today. Granted, their names have morphed into acronyms, but they serve as examples (along with the NAACP) that if your actions and results clearly communicate your value, out-of-date names don't seem to be so problematic.

So in the close circle of associates who know my body of work and who see me in my professional environment, I'm going to keep calling myself a technical writer; it's clear, and "writer" is only 2 syllables whereas "communicator" is 5. Plus it's a designation my dog can understand--I think "communicator" throws her. And in my case, it's what I do: I write about technical stuff. I further suspect it's what a LOT of us do.

But I also realize the benefit a name change can have in supporting a changing vision, so I will use technical communication in my public communications--if for no other reason so it quits being an irritant to my professional colleagues.

I'm also going to keep pushing that we focus on defining how we can add real value and quit worrying so much about what we call ourselves.

I Visited the Sausage Factory (and did't throw up)--
Otto von Bismark said, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. " I was wondering if seeing how STC really runs from the inside would be a similar experience. I'm serving as an interim director for the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and I am attending my first board meeting in Arlington, VA. Since I am also running for 2ndVP, this is my first reality check to see what I could possibly be getting myself into. I was pleasantly relieved to see that the process and the environment are pretty sane. (I'm not saying I expected them to be anything else, I'm just saying...)

I am very impressed with the caliber of the STC members serving on the board. I know we're a smart group of communicators, but I did not expect the breadth of business acumen and management skills. I was also impressed with the consultants who reported to the board on several areas of analysis the board had commissioned. One had been done by a CPA who specializes in associations, one by a publications consultant--once again who specializes in association and non-profit organizations--and one by an economist who had done a comparative study of the role of a formal body of knowledge and certification across four benchmark organizations. We also heard some impressive reports from member committees, especially one that had done a similar study of our publications from a more internal perspective. That study dove-tailed nicely with the one done by the consultant.

My impression is that we have a skilled set of professionals in the STC office, a mature set of governance principles, and some exciting challenges ahead of us. The two primary objectives that seem to be emerging are to create a stronger business model that mitigates fiscal risk and to move aggressively to defining our body of knowledge--a hallmark criterion for being a profession. The good part of that scenario is that "fix a broken organization" is not on the list.

So, if elected to executive leadership, I see a clear path emerging before me:

• Continue to improve STC operations that will provide greater fiscal security. (Not that we are in trouble in that regard; it's just that we received some excellent advice about how we could improve.)
• Implement recommendations to improve the effectiveness of our publications
• Aggressively support the Body of Knowledge project

I know there has been some turmoil over the past few years, and I have certainly seen threads of discontent running through some of the forums and blogs. As a profession, we have some great challenges as we see our roles changing, and I think STC is as relevant and necessary as it has ever been for technical communicators. I think the professional and volunteer leadership is as ethical and expert a group as you could ever hope to assemble to meet these challenges.

So I'm going on record: If you are looking for a candidate of discontent (the throw the bastards out platform)--Don't vote for me. I'm pretty happy with what I saw.

And if you've felt alienated or discontented, let's give it a new try. Don't just look to STC to solve our problems, become active and make yourselves part of the solution again.

The Writer with 3 Brains!!! --
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Anything worthy of discussion can be divided into three parts. As a technical communicator who works a lot in collaborative work groups and who serves on several professional committees, I get to see (and participate in) my fair share of technical communicator fights. I'm beginning to understand that the core of many of these conflicts is that technical communicators have 3 parts to their brains, and most of us have a dominant section (one having a disproportionate influence over the other two) or in some cases a subordinant one (two sections in balance and the third just along for the ride). The analogy is very close to right-brain/left-brain scenarios in that the more we can understand what part of our brain dominates us and what parts seem to dominate others, the better we can understand conflicts (within ourselves and among others) and assemble teams that collectively work with "whole-brain" efficiency.

The Parts
To more easily differentiate this metaphor from the right-brain/left-brain model, I'll divide the writer's brain into rear-brain, middle-brain, and front-brain. Each third respectively represents product focus, process focus, and content focus. (By the way, this is strictly metaphorical and is not based in any way on real brain activity--something I have little experience with.)

Product focus (product in the sense of the deliverable we the writers produce) concerns itself with the mechanics of the document and the language. When we are designing templates, editing for consistency, and making sentences obey laws of grammar, we are engaged in rear-brain thinking. I chose the rear of the brain as the analogy because that's where the medulla oblongata is located. It goes its whole day saying things like, "I'm not sure what you are doing right now, but breathing in and out would be a good thing."

Process focus concerns itself with how communication happens. When we architect what channels we will use for specific tasks and users, plan review cycles, write documentation plans, we are using our middle brain.

Content focus concerns itself with what we are writing about. I choose the front of the brain for the analogy because that is where our personality--who we are-- lives, and the content defines who our document is. As in any metaphor, riding that horse too long is sure to put the ship on the rocks and shut down the show. (First hint of the blog: If you wanted to comment on the mixing of metaphors rather than laugh at it, you might have way too much rear-brain action going on.)

An Example
I think I have an underdeveloped rear brain, which any consistent reader of this blog should have realized by now, and a dominant middle brain. I love information design and architecture, I'm largely indifferent to what I'm writing about, and I'm a terrible editor because I don't value things like formats and language rules unless they are in the immediate context of understandability. When a homeless person tells me, "I ain't got no money," I don't correct his grammar because I understand perfectly well what he is telling me.

There is nothing wrong with having a brain imbalance like this but I need to do a couple of things:

• Realize that when I get in conflicts that the underlying struggle might deal more with focus, i.e., product, process, or content, rather than with logic and rationale. In short, I need to be nicer to and argue less with rear-brainers.
• When putting teams together, I need to try to surround my middle-brain dominance with front-brainers and rear-brainers. In short, I need to make sure I'm on a team with someone who will actually figure out how the product we're documenting works. And I need a good medulla oblongata there as well, someone who takes care of the necessary mechanics.

Sweeping, Unsupported Generalizations
Hey, what's the good of having a blog if you can't just shoot your mouth off and have some fun with it? Here are some traits (some legitimate, some tongue-in-cheek) that will help you spot brain sector dominance.

Rear Brainers (Good and Bad--you figure out which is which)

• Like to design templates
• Worry about presentation issues, e.g., how wide this margin needs to be, how much white space should go above a heading 2, etc.
• Make good editors
• Can suck the life out of meaningful discussions by correcting someone's grammar in the middle of it
• Can bury documentation in mediocrity by insisting that all sections be consistent with the weakest element

Middle Brainers (Good and Bad)

• Help boost a department's process maturity rating
• Create efficiencies
• Like to analyze users and their information needs
• Lose STC competitions a lot
• Say "Whatever" to editors

Front Brainers (Good and Bad)

• Make documents meaningful and useful
• Do a lot of the heavy lifting on a team project
• Insist on sharing every nuance and implication of a technical feature (often ad nauseum)
• Have trouble with deadlines because there is always more to know and say

Conclusion
So where are you on this list? Hopefully and probably everywhere. The point is that we should be more aware of these facets of our thinking and behavior and know when they are helpful and when they are not. Where weak, we should seek to bring the missing factor into the team by recruiting members who are strong in those areas. And when we do, and when we inevitably fight with them, remember we are really externalizing our internal struggles. In other words, I don't fight with my editors because they are too rear-brained; my fight is the result than I am underpowered in that sector. Go ahead and fight, just make sure you fight fair and allow yourself to be influenced by the other.

And don't try to tone down so much if you think you have a dominant sector; rather, work on strengthening your weaker ones.

November STC Presentation Posted---

For those who were not able to catch my presentation on Task Support Clusters at the November STC meeting, here is a Camtasia podcast of it.
http://mschoen.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=288750

Hockey sticks in Flatland...
The principle is called the law of diminishing returns and its graphical representation is shaped like a hockey stick. Initially there is a sharp increase in the dependent variable for a given change in the independent variable, and then, all of a sudden the curve pretty much flattens out. The point where the steep slope bends and flattens is called the knee.

So what does this have to do with technical communication? Well, my department is heading into a "flat" year, meaning that we are not getting any increase in head count. This can be challenging since we had a couple of replacement positions that now go away, and development is adding headcount, supposedly meaning there will be more products or features to document.

And how does this relate to hockey sticks?

First off, if anyone tells you to "do more with less," hit them with a hockey stick. What you do with less is, well..., less! The point is that if you are going to do less, then you must make sure that you are focusing on those things that add the most value.

And that brings up the most important point: In times of constrained resources you must make sure that when you are committing resources--such as head count, tools, training, and time--you are on the steep part of the hockey stick curve. When you hit the knee, put additional investments on another project.

The independent variables
The independent variables that most writers have some degree of control over are Scope and Quality. The good news is that these are two areas technical communicators are loathe to compromise. The bad news is that when resources are constrained, these areas are inevitably compromised. The only question is will the compromise be a managed one or a random one?

Compromises of scope entail not fully documenting the product. The axis of compromise can be vertical (documentation is shallow in detail but wide in scope) or horizontal (documentation is narrow in scope but deep in detail.) Generally the compromises are made in both axes.

Compromises in quality can occur within two dimensions as well: Accuracy of information and correctness/consistency of language.

Take them out at the knees
In a perfect world, we can estimate our work with great precision and tell folks exactly what we can do and what we can't do. Even in an imperfect world, we can predict along the lines of "I don't know what our exact capacity is, but it will be less this year than last, so we have to cut back somewhere."

And that's where the hockey sticks come in. You must decide how complete you can afford to be and how good it needs to be.

Scope
Start first by evaluating your library. Is every document equally needed? Would the impact of dropping the Quick Start card be the same as dropping the online Help or the Administrator's Handbook? This can get tricky is so far as you have to define impact. I think product acceptance and customer satisfaction with the product are the two biggies, but not always consistent with each other. For example, the lack of Help might hurt acceptance into the market place but not be as critical for day-to-day customer satisfaction.

Next, evaluate if the user is better served with a broad coverage or a deep coverage. Readers of this blog and my column in UXmatters know that in Help my vote goes to broad and shallow. (I don't know where they'll ask for Help, but I know they won't stay in it for long.) Specialized documents might opt for in-depth coverage of a few critical topics. For example, a system admin guide might ignore topics that are common (assuming that a system administrator is familiar with them already) but provide in-depth treatment for activities that are unique to the product at hand.

Quality
How good is good enough? My favorite project management axiom is "Better is the enemy of done." The concept of levels of edit has been around for decades. The knee in the hockey stick essentially is that point at which the user quits noticing. For example, I would hate to send out a document with words misspelled, but I don't know how much extra I would spend to get rid of incorrect uses of transitive versus intransitive verbs such as "An error message displays" or to get rid of comma splices.

The bottom line
No, really, it's the bottom line in my blog:

Are you writing the right stuff for the right folks at a level of quality they will notice? When the answer quits being 'Yes," move additional resources to the next item on your to do list.

New Year's Resolutions---
Getting close to that time of year, so I'm starting my list:

1. I will not whine about anything more than once. (Hey! once is therapeutic, keeps the ulcers away.)
2. I will be part of the solution, or I will shut up (other than the exception allowed in resolution 1).
3. I have a big presence, so I will try hard to be small and make room for others.
4. When the team needs someone big, I will quit trying so hard to be small.

I'm sure I'll think of others.

Social Networking: 3 Lessons---
First off, since my primary audience is technical communicators, I know that the convention is that the numbers 1 through 10 are supposed to be spelled out, but usability studies have shown that digits are easier to scan and read than if the number is spelled out.

OK, social networking. I had a recent experience that personalized the risk companies run when they allow a heightened level of interaction on their web sites. I've had a pretty cozy relationship with a particular vendor over the past several years, contributing articles and testimonials, and even doing a presentation at a national conference that highlighted how I had used one of their products. I was searching their web site about a month ago because I needed to find a paper of mine that they had published, and while doing the search found a snippity comment someone had made about me. The vendor had used a quote from me about a product of theirs that I had helped Beta-test. The quote was on their product release page. Someone, in commenting on the product and the release notification, made fun of me because the quote included my PhD after my name. The comment seemed out of place since it did not deal with the product (the purpose of the forum) nor did it deal with my opinion of the product (which would have been fair game). The comment was ad hominem, that is, it attacked me, the person.

I emailed the webmaster and asked that the comment be removed. No answer. I sent an email to the VP of Marketing and got an answer that it would be removed in a few days. One month later it was still there. I sent a second email yesterday, this time copying the president. The VP answered saying it would be off by the end of day. She was good to her word; it's gone today.

The 3 Lessons
Lesson 1--for the person who made the comment. Professional forums are not MySpace. When we participate in these forums, we need to keep the maturity level above middle school. Stay on topic and add value to the professional community you are participating in.

Lesson 2--for me and anyone else engaging in forums, blogs, or other public domains. I was probably being thin-skinned and took more offense than I should have. Part of going public means you are going to be open to all kinds of criticism. I'm very used to my ideas and my writing being criticized. I guess I was not as prepared for someone to make fun of me because I include my professional credentials in my signature block.

Lesson 3--for companies that encourage customer forums. The VP said that the company was reluctant to edit comments lest they degrade the validity of the forum. I understand that; I even respect it. But when comments about customers who participate get unnecessarily personal, some degree of moderation is called for. If a company is going to operate a company-sponsored forum, it must monitor the posts and step in when folks start making fun of other participants. I have moderated many face-to-face meetings and this is the responsibility of the moderator. I think online discussions demand the same oversight.

There always have been and will be bullies in the school yard, you know, the mean kids who like to taunt others--even when the kids get older and the school yard exists in cyberspace. And we will always need a vigilant grown-up to step in periodically and make them stop.

What Brave New World...
I saw Beowulf this weekend in 3D on the iMax screen. Sweeeeet! It got me thinking this morning about how I would use 3D as an information architect if that effect became available at the PC level.

It turned out to be a more challenging question than I thought it would be. My first inclination was to use it to emphasize text, imagining turning on "track changes in 3D" to see where an editor had changed text. Or to have search terms in a document float above the subtext. But we can already accent that information with color and other typographic effects. Then of course I thought of pop ups and layered windows, but again, we emulate 3D today for these effects. Having a 3D display just makes it look sexier.

Graphs could be cool, as well as typological maps, where elevation of data carried new content, not just a pleasing effect. Yes, graphs would be cool, especially if you could rotate the 3D graph and look at it from different angles. But these are graphic effects, and I'm a word guy. It still left me pondering what would I do with 3D as a writer, other than just make it a sexier alternative to using italics, color, underscoring, or boldface. "Oooh look, the term in this definition looks like it's floating."

How could information design benefit from a 3D display?
Well, let's back up a little and ask how information design benefits from 2D. Most information is rendered in one dimension with letters being combined in a sequence defined by placement along a single axis. You might think of this discourse you are currently reading as being displayed in two dimensions, since your eyes move along both an x and a y axis, but that is just an artifact of word wrap. This entire blog entry could be rendered on a single line read from left to right without losing any information.

Then 2D comes into the picture with tables. The meaning of a block of text takes its context from the intersection of its row and its column. How could a third dimension be added to tables that would add a useful additional dimension for information? Let's build an example:

First, let's start with several one-dimensional documents that discuss the history of several countries. Since they are one dimensional, we structure them as tales told about each country in the chronological order in which the events occur. Want to know what happened in China in 4000 BC? Pick up the History of China document and look in the front. Want to know what happened in Japan last year? Pick up the History of Japan document and look in the back.

OK, now let's make it a 2D document. structured like a table. Each row will represent a country, and each column a century. Want to know what happened in China in the 18th century? Go to the China row and scan over to the 18th century column and there it is. Curious about what was going on in England at the same time? Scan up the column you're in until you get to the England row. Curious in general about if anything important might have happened in that century elsewhere? Just scan up and down that column. Whoa, here's an interesting occurrence in America at that time. What might have caused that? Lets just browse back in that row and look at the 17th century. OK, you get the point; 2D could make comparative history more relevant.

Let's take that same model and add a third axis, one that separates science, art, politics, and religion. We can zoom in and out depending on what aspect of a society we are interested in. Now that would be a cool use of 3D in an information design context.

OK, tag you're it. What would you do as an information designer if you could display your information products in 3D (and allow the user to manipulate the display along all three dimensions)?

BTW, give yourself low creativity points for any rendering of physical space in 3D. That is like so today!

Vendors as Stakeholders--
In my candidacy for 2VP for the Society of Technical Communication (STC), I have been using this blog to develop my platform. My central theme has been that STC should forge collaborative relationships among its principle stakeholders of practitioners, academics, vendors, and employers. In my blog on November 3, I discussed the role of academics, and today I would like to discuss the role of vendors.

The Tool Keepers and Trainers
Whereas the role of academics is to be the keepers of the body of knowledge and to be the educators, the role of vendors is to be the keepers of the tools and to be the trainers. This reveals an important aspect of my perspective on our profession: Tools are an important part of what we do and how we are defined as a profession. We are not merely the writers of content; our job is also to design and build the engines that deliver that content. We are a technology-based profession both in our content domains and in our production and delivery channels of that content.

By vendors, I mean those companies and individuals who sell to technical communicators and whose involvement in STC is largely motivated by a desire to be close to their market. Typical vendors are providers of tools such as Help Authoring Tools (HATs), Desk-top Publishing (DTP) systems, Content Management Systems (CMS), as well as services. These services can range from content translation to consultation and training. Conference sponsors that target technical communicators, such as WritersUA and DocTrain fall into the training and conference arena. Consultants are a more slippery category and I classify them as vendors or practitioners based on who's paying for their services. If the TechComm manager has brought them in to help formulate a CMS strategy, I see them as a vendor. If those same consultants do the same thing but for the director of engineering, I see them as practitioners (operating in a contract capacity).

As I have said in an earlier blog (October 31), I think STC has a great opportunity to bring vendors and academics together to serve the integrated need of helping practitioners build well designed solutions that work (all kinds of puns intended). Currently STC is doing some strong things in this area. Lloyd Tucker, the director of Education, has implemented vendor-sponsored webinars that seem to be very popular (given that the one I tried to sign up for filled up faster than a Hannah Montana concert). The active training presence we see by the vendors at our conferences is another example.

Conclusion
So my position is that tools are an important aspect of our profession. I already know more grammar rules than my readers do. My occasional lapse into using "display" as an intransitive verb or writing "Click on Submit" rather than "Click Submit" is not going to diminish my end user's ability to be successful with the products I support. But if I can't figure out how to use social networking technologies, XML-based authoring systems, and a really good content management system, my users will be handicapped with how well they can get to information that influences their success.

And that is where vendors step in. I want our STC to be a collaborative environment that helps practitioners and vendors connect in ways that make both sides more successful than if STC had not been there,

New Column on UXmatters--
I have a new column out today on UXmatters called Procedures: The Sacred Cow Blocking the Road. It's an updated version of a presentation I did ten years ago at the STC conference in Anaheim. Still topical, however. It deals with the basic mismatches between user behavior and the structure of stepped procedures. For example, procedures start at the beginning, users go to help in the middle.

Atlanta folks, I'm speaking at Tuesday's STC Atlanta chapter meeting. I'll be discussing an architecture called task-support clusters and will demonstrate a tool called Task Modeler during the presentation.

Y'all come.

Works as designed--
I did a webinar yesterday for STC on pattern language for managing usability knowledge. Every now and then I listen to myself during these presentations and hear something in a new way. Yesterday was one of those moments for me. What I said and what I understood with a renewed clarity was that any usability problem can be described as a mismatch among the following three forces:

• What the user wanted to accomplish
• What the user did
• How the system responded

I can now see a strong parallel with John Carroll's definition of the human-computer system as comprising the the user context, the user interface, and the machine's architecture. It is the first item in these two lists, essentially the user goal, that drives the difference between "works as designed" and "this is something we've got to fix."

As an example, I did two searches this week where I misspelled the term I was searching for. One engine returned the message "No results found for usbility." Worked as designed! The other search engine returned the message "Did you mean usability?" Guess which search engine is my product of choice from here out.

Bugs are easy to find and fix. The user failed because the code failed. It's when the user fails but the code did exactly what we programmed it to do that we face usability issues. And it is precisely the fact that the code works is why it is sometimes hard to get people to fix these problems.

The solution is based in Carroll's system definition. The user context is part of the system, and all definitions of success and all test plans for the system must include this element. Error and ignorance are part of the human context and good system designs are programmed to deal with both.

New Picture--
At 58, I did something for the first time yesterday; I had my portrait shot by a professional photographer. I was required to do so because I'm running for 2nd VP of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). In picking the final one I would use for my candidacy and on my web site, I spent a lot of time yesterday afternoon looking closely at myself.

What I like most about it are things you cannot see. Although it makes me look very mature and business like, I can visualize me sitting in the cluttered basement of the photographer, listening to the hip sound track he was playing, and holding what looked like a giant pizza platter in my lap to add a bronze glow to the shadowed side of my face. In a sense, it's a piece of performance art for me: an image to try to live up to while also a reminder not to take myself overly seriously. After all, I was sitting in a cluttered basement with a pizza tray in my lap.

Oh yes, after scrutinizing 26 pictures of myself yesterday, I did something else for the first time this morning. I was looking at myself in the mirror and then without thinking, I put my hands on my cheeks and tightened the skin until my wrinkles disappeared. And for a moment I thought...—nah, I'll stay the way I am, pizza pan and all.

Certification--
I told Joe Welinsky the other day that I planned to avoid touching any "3rd rails" for a while in my candidate blogs, and here I am blogging about certification. But as Carol Barnum is fond of telling her students, "Writing is thinking." I believe blogging is a good way to sort out one's own thoughts while making yourself open to the influence of others. So here goes.

First of all, what is it?
Certification can mean a number of things. Some programs certify participants by having them go through a prescribed set of courses. PMI (Project Management Institute) is a good example of that model at the professional organization level. Others certify through regulatory examination, such as for CPAs. That model generates a lot of 3rd party training opportunities. The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) certifies through inspection. Applicants submit a portfolio of artifacts and client endorsements that address specific areas of professional competency. I am familiar with that process first-hand, being a CPT (Certified Performance Technologist).

Certification differs by whom is being certified (programs or practitioners) and by who is doing the certification: commercial training organizations (such as WritersUA or HFI), academic institutions, or professional associations (Such as PMI and ISPI).

And certification can vary by professional status. Training organizations offer "certificates" to show completion of a workshop, and conferences offer "certification tracks" in specialized topics. Some academic institutions offer "certificates" as an academic credential that is bigger than a course but smaller than a diploma. Not all certifications are equal. In some cases, they warrant the recipients putting the certification as part of their professional title, as with CPA; in some cases they are cube decorations held up with push pins.

Cui bono?
As Cicero was famous for asking, "Who benefits?" A number of different stakeholders can benefit from certification programs. The most obvious in my mind is employers. Certification can be a yardstick by which to assess job applicants and by which to direct professional development among their current employees. Practitioners benefit by having an avenue for professional development that is compact and tailored toward working professionals. Professional societies benefit by having a value-add activity and revenue source. Lastly, academic institutions and training organizations can benefit by offering programs specifically aimed at certification.

So why haven't we done it?
We've been talking about certification for a long time and haven't done it as a profession. Does the fact that we haven't felt a serious enough need mean the idea lacks merit?

For one thing, the academic programs have been filling a significant portion of the need. Additionally, training vendors and conferences have also filled part of the need. And of course, the elephant in the room: the lack of an agreed-upon body of knowledge on which to base the certification criteria. (But I truly believe that elephant will be corralled in the next year or so.)

I personally think that the schools and training companies have successfully addressed entry-level certification. By that I mean that if someone were trying to get into technical communication, I would highly recommend any of the Masters or undergraduate programs I am familiar with. But what about the highly skilled and experienced professionals I work with, for example, who do not have a Masters degree? I'm not sure there is enough value in many of the programs for folks like that. Either their level is aimed at entry into the field, or their scope is too wide/too long for what many veteran practitioners need.

So what niche is not being met? I believe there could be an opportunity to certify "master technical communicators." By that I mean that STC could play a legitimate role that does not compete with its academic and vendor stakeholders by certifying when practitioners have reached a certain level of professional performance and knowledge.

Possible roles for STC in certification
STC is already in the business of peer recognition through its ranks of associate fellow and fellow. The criteria for these positions are aimed primarily at service to the profession, however, and not at performance within the professional requirements. I would recommend keeping the associate and fellow ranks exactly as they are, but we could have a certification rank, one whose criteria are based on professional achievement and standards of skills, knowledge, and performance.

We already have a method in place for handling one of the trickier aspects of that kind of certification: peer evaluation of job artifacts. We do that today through our publications competitions. We could incorporate competition achievement as part of a master technical communication certificate. Of course, that means we would have to make sure our competitions have a standard of rigor that is met, eventually requiring that certified master technical communicators be part of every chapter's competition oversight committee.

Another role for STC would be to offer training tracks and resources that could help toward advanced certification. But we need to be careful not to compete with academic programs and 3rd party training stakeholders who are doing a good job of meeting the needs of a large segment. Existing programs could be incorporated into the certification tracks where possible. Once again, however, if STC focused on master certification, I think there could be a legitimate niche there.

Comments?
These are my current, somewhat un-vetted thoughts on a topic I will probably have to deal with over the next four years if elected. Please comment freely so that I understand the multiple perspectives on this topic.

The Role of Academics in a Professional Society--
Part of my avowed platform in running for 2nd VP of STC is to help forge stronger, more collaborative relationships among the primary stakeholders of practitioners, academics, vendors, and employers within the field of technical communication. I'm starting with academics because, quite frankly, their contribution is what makes us a professional society rather than a trade association.

Academics contribute to our profession by doing the following:

• Teaching the skills and knowledge required to be a practitioner in this field
• "Keeping" the body of knowledge
• Doing research that informs best practice

Teaching
The obvious contribution that academics make is that they prepare incoming professionals in the core body of knowledge required to be a technical communicator. Additionally, they serve veteran practitioners wanting to upgrade their skills and knowledge to current practice or obtain extended skills in areas such as management.

Body of Knowledge
You want to get a roomful of academics thrashing, just say BoK. It's as much fun as watching technical writers argue about whether or not to capitalize sentence fragments in a bulleted list. I realize there is a great disparity between the gravitas of those two topics, but the principle is the same: I'm glad someone is worrying about this. The issue of the BoK for technical communication is in essence what drives an academic curriculum. Take a look at the courses that are offered in a degree program and that is a statement from that school about what it thinks the body of knowledge is. Granted, practitioners have a big stake in this discussion, but the truth is that our sisters and brothers in academia are the ones doing the heavy lifting.

Research
Ah, we get to my pet corner of the world. As George Hayhoe and I say in our book, A Research Primer for Technical Communication, "Research in technical communication is not an activity conducted in a vacuum; it is generally initiated by a problem or need to understand a phenomenon related to technical communication." As a former usability consultant, UX designer, and design team lead, I am a strong advocate for "data-driven design." Research is the cornerstone of a data-driven approach. One of the issues I see within our profession, however, is that practitioners who are living with all kinds of problems that would benefit from data collection and analysis lack the research skills to construct valid studies and draw reliable conclusions. On the other hand, academics who do have those skills, often do not have access to authentic users and artifacts with which to conduct valid research and are often time-bound within semester-sized constraints. If only they belonged to the same club, one that could put the two together in meaningful collaborations. Hey wait...!

What do you think?
I would love to see comments on this blog, especially around the following two questions:

1. What are other contributions of academics that I missed?
2. What do academics want from STC?

If given a bully pulpit...

One of my favorite topics I would like to pursue if I get elected to be an officer of STC is helping technical communication students learn how to use the tools and technologies of our industry. I have been involved in many discussions (some of them heated) over the last year or so that deal with the question, "Should academic techcom programs teach tools?" I think it is a bad question; it misdirects us and inevitably the discussion degrades into finger pointing and everyone ducking for cover.

Let's try a new question. How can the community of technical communicators help students develop tool skills while learning principles of good design? I think this new question has win/win written all over it. It falls into the "economy of abundance" arena, that is, avoid arguing over who gets what proportion of the pie (an economy of scarcity); rather, concentrate on making the pie bigger.

Students want to learn how to use the latest tools (students, heck! so do I). Vendors want to promote their products. Schools want to tout employability as an outcome of their programs. STC wants to increase membership and the value of that membership.

So imagine a scenario where a student is enrolled in an online documentation course. She is told by the professor that one of the requirements of the course is to produce a sample Help file with a specification of what that file should contain (e.g., kinds of topics, TOC, index, specific kinds of links, etc.) Just at the moment the student starts to panic, the professor points out that STC has a tools and technology section on its web site for members (and is equally available to student members). That web site has downloads of demo versions of commercial Help Authoring Tools, competency inventories (hmmm, these look a lot like the spec the professor inlcuded in the syllabus), and tutorials that focus specifically on those competencies. Wait, there's even an e-mail address for student support!

• Professor is happy: She can focus on design and critical thinking and not on clicks and drags.
• Student is happy: She has access to a tool and tutorial geared to the critical "getting started" skills a student would be interested in.
• Vendor is happy: The product is getting into the hands of future buyers and influencers.
• STC is happy: They are picking up student members with a good chance of converting them to full members after graduation. Plus, there could be some secondary revenue opportunities hidden in all of this.
  

Make that win/win/win/win.

This will be a pet project of mine if I get elected.

Campaign 2008: The Blog--
My hat is in the ring; I am running for the 2nd VP position for the Society for Technical Communication. Those familiar with professional associations know that the 2nd VP automatically becomes the 1st VP and then the president of the society. In essence, then, I am running to become president of STC in 2010. So maybe my tag line should be "The odyssey continues" (with apologies to Authur C. Clarke).

Actually, I was thinking more along the line of "Expanding our sphere of influence," to reflect how we have broadened and continue to broaden our value proposition. I know it is in vogue to talk about how technical communicators are on their way out, but I have long advocated that just the opposite is happening. We seem to be disappearing because we are redefining ourselves beyond being the mere writers of words. We scaffold the user technology experience by providing information that eases and enhances that experience. Sometimes we do that by writing helpful content, but more and more we do it in less literary ways. We are as much about content planning, architecture, delivery strategies, and management as we are about content development. And we no longer limit ourselves to describing user interfaces; we now help design those user interfaces.

And when we write, we focus our content in new directions. Our documents are no longer about products; they are about the human performance those products support. We don't just instruct patients how to take their medication, we teach them how to live with their conditions. And technology-wise, we have leapt off of the page and into Webs, Wikis, blogs, Flash demos, and knowledge bases.

Having said all that, I'm starting to like "The odyssey continues." Make the trip with me. I will be using my blog space to explore and develop my platform over the next few months. Please respond with your perspectives and to voice your visions and issues.

css: cyber sourdough--
I've been learning more about cascading style sheets the last couple of weeks than I really wanted to know. I'm only good enough to edit one, and then only with much effort. If all the .css files in the world disappeared tomorrow, I'd never be able to create one from scratch. But I get by by deconstructing, cutting, and pasting from existing ones.

So in a way, for me a cascading style sheet is like a recipe for sourdough bread. You know, where you have to start with a "seed batch" from one that was made previously. In a way, a lot of what I do with technology is like that: cutting and repurposing snippets of this and that from previous templates, web pages, spread sheets, Wikis etc. All of which represent lessons hard-learned and long-ago forgotten. I'm saved by the organic nature of technology to regrow itself from grafts and transplants.

In Dante's inner ring of hell I will be required to build a table in WikiMedia from scratch.

Know your user--
Man, I hate to rag on my own organizations, but I have had some odd user experiences with communications from organizations that are for and by technical communicators.

Two that involve STC:

• At the local STC level, I wanted to submit an application to the publications competition.
• At the society level I wanted to sign up for a webinar.

In both of these experiences, to make my final decision, I wanted one small piece of information: The price! Couldn't be found.

In another situation, I am on a volunteer committee for a technical communication advisory board, and we are to have a dinner meeting. As directions, I've been given a satellite picture with an arrow pointing at what appears to be warehouse and a description of the restaurant's ethnicity. I've requested a name and address but I'm told I can't miss it. Well, they have obviously never driven anywhere with me! If anyone can miss it, trust me, I'm your guy.

I'm sure in all these instances, the answer is "If you had only gone further in the process (i.e. try to register, or actually drive to where the satellite picture is showing you) the answer would have been obvious." My point is that I was uncomfortable going further without that information, i.e. sending in a registration not knowing how much it would be or driving through rush hour Atlanta traffic without knowing the name and address of the restaurant I was looking for.

The missing user analysis pattern here is simple, and it is one that is critical to user adoption:

1. What action am I asking the user to take?
2. What information will the user want before committing to that action?

If you're selling something, the answer to step 2 is the price.

If you're asking me to meet you for dinner, the answer is the name and address of the restaurant.

The mistake is a global one I see happening in lots of design: When they get there it will be clear.

The problem is that many will never get there because they will not try unless they get that information first.