Thanks to Craig Cardimon for posting this on LinkedIn.
I hope this trend of flexible PhDs continues. Just a couple days ago, both my husband and I were commenting that if money were no object, and we were retired or hit the lottery, we’d both want to go back to school, and I would love to get my PhD. Right now, it wouldn’t be for professional reasons, as a Masters degree seems to be fine for now. But to get a PhD in Technical Communications would be cool. I also wouldn’t mind getting an advanced degree in linguistics or history either.
I’m willing to bet that as more PhD programs take on an online presence (there’s only one PhD in tech comm online, namely at Texas Tech, as far as I know), and hopefully become more affordable, more folks will not only sign up for the programs, but also people over 40 (like me and many others I know) might be more willing to go for it. There are several great online degrees on a Master’s level or graduate certificate level in tech comm and instructional design. Check out my Educational Resources pages for some leads if you are interested, or let me know if I’m missing a program that I can add to the list (or update)!
Would you consider going back for a PhD in a discipline? If so, what would it be? Let us know in the comments below.
Years ago it was a point of pride to have been employed in one job or one company for decades, but what about now? Here are 10 ways it hurts you to stay in the same job for too long!
I enjoy reading Liz Ryan’s bits of job wisdom on LinkedIn, and I think she has an excellent article here that can help those in the tech comm field who feel squeamish about the fact that many of us end up doing contract work feel a little bit better about jumping around so much.
It’s odd, because I’ve seen this shift that she’s mentioned that’s been happening over the last twenty years. It used to be that I was asked why I jumped around so much because it didn’t seem like I had permenancy anywhere. Now, when I am asked the same question, it’s almost as if it’s a lifestyle question, as if to ask if I choose to be a contractor because I like to jump around. (The answer in both cases is the same–I’ve taken contract work because that’s what’s been available, since there are few permanent positions in this field out there where I live. I’d gladly take a permanent position if the right offer came along, just to have a little security!)
Who knew that being a contractor would actually beneficial to me? My husband has reminded me time and time again that with each new job, I gain some sort of new knowledge by way of either new skills, or I learn something about myself. For example, in the contract I just finished, I learned a lot more about UX/UI design than I had before in a real-life scenario (versus something theoretical in a class), and how to write with UX/UI in mind. I got better at it, I think, over the duration of the contract. But, I also learned things about myself, such as I didn’t really feel it was a good use of the range of skills I do have, and it wasn’t satisfying work to me–I needed a better challenge. Reflecting on another past contract, it made me realize where my strengths lie so I have a better understanding of myself, and what sort of positions I should pursue. In that other past contract, I did well, it used many of my best skills, and I enjoyed it. So now, I do my best to try to find those kinds of opportunities instead of trying to force myself into doing something that really isn’t my thing, even if I have the skill set for it. I’m getting too old to be working jobs that I don’t like, and fortunately, I’ve been financially careful enough to be able to afford to take a break to find the next opportunity.
I’m not against permanent positions at all, but I will say that I have a much better appreciation for contract work over these past few years as a result, and I can recognize how it’s benefitted me in the long run.
How about you? Has your experience being at multiple positions benefitted you? Share your comments below.
Ever enrolled in instructional design certifications and elearning classes but you still feel that there are a few things missing? Maybe this can help you.
Thanks to Ken Ronkowitz for posting this on Facebook. When I read this, I thought it did explain a lot of tools that are needed, and where there are gaps. One of my first blog posts here on TechCommGeekMom was about how I didn’t have access to the tools to put to practice much of what I had learned on a foundational basis. Between experience and education, I had most of the abstract tools needed to become an instructional designer, but evidently not enough of the physical tools described (although I had most of them). The other problem, which I’ve mentioned many times before is that even getting all or most of these skills in takes time, and even once you have them, there’s no such thing as an entry-level instructional designer position. Believe me, I looked for four or five years and gave up. It’s not that what is being outlined here is unreasonable, but gaining the knowledge outlined here still takes a lot of time and effort that yes, a certificate isn’t going to necessarily teach you.
You’d think that “Where’s TechCommGeekMom?” would be a variation of “Where’s Waldo?”. You might not be too far off…
Yikes. It’s been quite a while since I last wrote any entries. I apologize for that. I am keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (not Google+ so much), so people do know that I’m alive and well.
The last few months or so have been incredibly busy. Much of my summer has been making the long commute to the office and back almost every day. I’ve gotten a bit of a reprieve for August when I’ll be working from home most of the week, due to an arrangement I made with my director so that I can stay home part of the time while my son is home for the last part of summer break. I’m grateful that.
Despite commuting issues, working on the UX team I belong to can be stressful. I finally settled into the position, and only now I’m feeling okay about speaking up and asserting myself. Yes, I’m a closet introvert, despite my seemingly outgoing personality. We’ve had a lot of very tight deadlines lately, and have not been given ample time to create UX artifacts that completely do justice to a given project, but that’s the way it goes, unfortunately. I’m fortunate that the team I’m on is full of good people who are both total professionals and who support each other’s efforts.
For my part, as I’ve continued to adapt, there have been intense frustrations and tears shed, and a few tiny victories in between. Writing copy for UX design has been a challenge, but I have to say that I think I have a good knack for it. Sometimes my copy gets overruled, but sometimes I know I come up with something good. It’s not like it’s something like marketing or customer service-related content, or even help content, but debating the semantics of “edit” versus “modify” versus “update” when writing customer-facing instructional content is the kind of stuff that gets my brain to work at its best. The other day, I needed to change the text on a button, and the text had to be instructional and have a marketing slant at the same time. I asked the UX graphic designer the limit of how many characters I could use in that space. She said it had to be less than 31 characters–including spaces. The fewer characters there, the better. I got it down to 21 characters including spaces. Those are the kinds of challenges I like! So, work has been truly occupying a lot of my time and energy for the most part.
Even though I have been told that I’m doing a good job and I provide a fresh perspective on the content being created, I decided that this was not the job for me. I asked my manager not to renew my contract at the end of the month because it’s really not the kind of work I want to be doing. I gave it a try, but this kind of writing–not to sound conceited–was not what I went to grad school to do. I know I can contribute much more than what’s expected at this job. I think my abilities are more than labelling buttons and headers or writing two instructional lines at a time. My manager was understanding, fortunately, which I was glad about. This means that I need to figure what my next move is.
I have also been continuing my part-time gig doing content management for my old job. While it doesn’t provide me with many hours, it does help me keep my foot in the door of the content strategy and management world. I also enjoy that job, so even if it’s just a few hours a week, it’s a good thing.
I’ve also taken on a volunteer position. I was elected to be the vice-president of the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter (STC-PMC). Of course, I don’t know what I was thinking. I wanted to help, and I was encouraged. Now, I’m trying to hustle and learn what the position is about while trying to get the job done! The VP of the STC-PMC, in addition to supporting the chapter president, also acts as the program manager for the chapter. So, I’m trying to figure out how to coordinate several meetings for the upcoming program year. While my chapter president is very supportive, and we work well together, it’s a little overwhelming. What was I thinking? I’m trying to get as much done now during the summer so it won’t be as high pressure in the fall, provided everything is in place at that point. I’m also co-chair of the CONDUIT conference, so I’m trying to get some things started with that as well. I want to do well as VP at this point, because it’s really my first crack at any kind of leadership position I’ve had in almost two decades, and I need to feel good about something related in my career.
I’m in a weird position in my career right now. I’m not so young anymore, and I have experience. I know that I do good work, I can make intelligent decisions, and that when given the change, people value what I have to contribute.
BUT…when looking for appropriate work, I’m either inexperienced (not enough years doing something), not enough background (content marketers=a marketer who understands content, not a content strategist who has some understanding of marketing, for example), or I don’t know the right software. I’ve often seen rare positions come up that were totally appropriate, and then find that they were an hour and half (or more) commute away one-way, or they didn’t pay enough, or both. I’m starting to lose confidence in my abilities because I’m losing chances to gain experiences. Or, the only way to gain experiences is to take steps backwards. I’ve already stepped backwards several times in the past year, and I’m fearful of falling off the cliff’s edge now. At the same time, I’m trying to figure out what direction I should try next. Or better yet, I’m trying to figure out what direction I should go in that aligns better with my interests, not what the “market” says I should do.
The irony is when I attended TC Camp this past weekend, I felt validated in my abilities. I could learn from others who were more experienced than I am, yet I found that I could speak competently about the subjects discussed at hand. I didn’t sound like an idiot, and people found what I said helpful. One friend/attendee even asked me if she could pick my brain about how to approach a project she had. I never had that happen before, but I was happy to offer the approach I had used and suggested some tools she might want to try. For a day, I felt like a real technical communicator again!
I know my weaknesses. I’m not MBA material, I don’t know medical, pharma, or financial terminology, and I’m not a person with web development in my background beyond HTML and being able to manipulate Javascript, PHP or other coding languages a bit. Yet, somehow, where I live, to get a job as a tech writer, you must have a strong background in one or more of these things. They want SMEs who can write, not writers who can learn to be SMEs. Nobody wants to train. You are either an entry-level, right out of college kid who has some of this know-how and is willing to be paid peanuts, or you’re a person who’s been doing more complicated jobs for about a decade or so. There doesn’t seem to be much for something in-between, or opportunities for people who have raw skills and the foundational experience that would lend well to different positions. Nobody–or at least very few–want to train a potential employee anymore. And thus lies the rub of my frustrations these days.
I’m trying to figure out whether I need to get more training on my own. Even if I did pursue that, I really don’t know what direction to go in anymore. I was told to learn DITA, but guess what? There are no DITA jobs near me, so that would be a little pointless. UX jobs? Well, I don’t have enough design background to apply for something. I have several interests within the tech comm world, but none of it seems to align with positions available in my area. It seems like instead of “one step forward, two steps back”, I keep falling farther and farther behind, and my prospects get weaker and weaker as I get older and all the skills I gained in grad school and other former positions become a faint memory.
Hopefully the rest of my life this year will not be something similar to “Where in the World in Carmen Sandiego?” Hopefully, you’ll find me here!
The STC-PMC VP role alleviates some of that frustration, even though it has its own issues. At least within the STC-PMC, I have a great amount of support, and enough space to learn, fail, and pick myself up again without dire consequences. I feel more confident in that role. I can’t say the same for the rest of my career at the moment. While I don’t have a direction, I knew that staying longer where I have been lately was not good move for me. I want and need to be able to do more, and I am in a spot where financially I can take the break, and I have the support of my family and my tech comm community behind me while I figure out my next steps forward.
So, that’s where I’m at. TechCommGeekMom might still be looking for her place in the tech comm world, but I’m hoping that with a little luck, maybe what I’m looking for will be found. I’m hoping that in coming months, I’ll be able to bolster this blog again, and you’ll see some more content coming through.
Just like the Guardians of the Galaxy, STC members might be a rag-tag bunch, but we get the job done.
I was moved by a series of articles recently written by my friend, Larry Kunz. The most recent of the three, “Why is it so important that the STC survive?” was the first that I read from a series he had recently produced (there are links within the article above that links you to the others). It seems that Larry has struck a nerve with his article, as while he provided some points to support the continuation of the STC, there were counter-arguments in the comments that it’s not the same organization that had some pull in the field in years prior.
As someone who has only been a member of the STC for about four or five years, and is still a relative newcomer to the technical communications field, I find that there is great value in the STC. As Larry pointed out, it’s a group that has become my tribe as well. I have rarely been anything but supported within this group at large. As a new technical communicator at an advanced age, I was welcomed with open arms, which is something I don’t think most groups would necessarily do. Others want the young kids to be joining, or they want to hang out with their professional contemporaries. So, onboarding into this group was easy. That’s a compliment to the group as a whole. I was scared to join a well-established group, and it’s been nothing but good all the way around.
Now, some of the counter-arguments have been that while the STC provides some great networking and other benefits, it boils down to the infrastructure of the association breaking down over time. That might be. My understanding is that several years ago, before I joined, there were some serious financial and “political” issues going on with the STC, both at the international level and the local level. I know for my own chapter, one of our members worked fiercely to keep it up and running during those lean years, and it took time to rebuild it into the Platinum community that it is today. It was also argued that other conferences that didn’t exist decades ago are now starting to take over.
Here are some of my thoughts about the whole thing:
First, there needs to be an analysis of what these other conferences are offering that the STC is not. Why are people flocking to these other conferences? What do they offer than the STC does not? Are they truly taking away from the STC, or appealing to a different group? I’ve been to a few of these conferences, and they are a little different, but they are usually more specialized–like focusing on content strategy, whereas the STC tries to embrace a broader audience and more topics. Lavacon and Information Development World, for example, do concentrate on content strategy and content marketing, yet there is more to technical communication than just topics. There is UX/UI design, there is technical writing, there is social media, there is e-learning…there are a lot of things that are covered under the umbrella of technical communication. I’m sure that the Summit program committee does its best to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and they also offer accessible presentations for all experience levels. The STC Summit was also compared to TCWorld in Europe. While TCWorld might be bigger, it’s also drawing in a different audience. What is drawing people to that? Perhaps we need to figure out what they are offering that the STC is not, and start figuring out how to compensate.
Second, speaking of accessibility, I have found that some of the specialized conferences I’ve attended were over my head. They were so specialized and high level, marketing towards the managers and experienced practitioners, that as a relative newbie I had difficulty keeping up with the presentations. Does this mean I’m stupid? I hope not, although when I walk out of them, I feel like it. One of the benefits of the STC Summit, to me, is that it while it doesn’t “dumb down” presentations, it does offer information that’s more palatable for beginners and intermediates like myself while helping those who’ve been in the industry for a long time learn how to keep up with new technologies and ways of doing things.
Third, the technical communications industry is going through big changes right now. As was mentioned in Larry’s articles, some of these other conferences didn’t exist twenty years ago. Do you know what else didn’t exist twenty years ago? Much of what we do today in technical communication! Yes, we still have technical writing, but back then, it was still mostly paper-based documentation. (I know because many of my positions since then has been converting paper processes to web processes.) The Internet has exploded. We barely had web design, let alone responsive design. There were no mobile devices the way we know it now. Video, audio, and 3-D animated images didn’t have to be included in documentation back then. Technology and the way we access information has changed drastically in the last twenty years. Because of this, technical communication has changed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the STC is still trying to catch up with the changes as best as they can, and again, appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Heck, even within the last five years, there have been huge changes, and it’s a matter of keeping up with it. You’d be surprised to know how many technical communicators still aren’t on board with writing for mobile, even though it’s been on the forefront for the past few years.
Fourth, is it possible that prior generations who aren’t as active in STC now or have left are to blame for not bringing in more members over time? I know that bringing in members now is a big push, but what about during those lean times? Could it be that many members were lost during those years? Also, there isn’t any consistency in recruiting, at least at schools, from my observations. I’m aware of some academic tech comm programs that have great student chapters. My graduate school tried to get a chapter off the ground, but since it was a virtual program, it made it difficult. I can probably count on just a few fingers how many of us are in the STC from my school during the years that I was there. Some were active, some not so much. One of my classmates is a chapter president, and I’m running for office in my chapter. But that’s it. The fact that the STC is reaching out to other associations on the local, national, and international level is encouraging, because many people do belong to more than one association, and it’s a great recruitment tool. But we need to encourage members in the STC to be ambassadors, and continue to promote what the STC stands for.
I’m sure the next point is, “What does the STC stand for?” I don’t know the answer to that. But perhaps that’s the point–as the body of people who represent it, we need to vocalize what our needs are more to the STC main office so that they can better serve our needs and advocate for us. There are still walls to be knocked down in this field, and advances to be made, but they can’t do that from inside their bubble in Fairfax, Virginia. Part of the reason that I’m in the STC is because I live in a bubble, too. There are very few STC people or people who identify themselves as technical communicators in my area. I need STC events to help me meet other tech comm professionals, but also see what’s going on in the tech comm world. Unless the STC office is told what our needs are, it can only do its best at making educated guesses as to how to help us. After all, it is an advocacy group, and that’s what it’s out there to do–advocate for us, and help us get the resources we need to be better technical communicators.
I could go on for pages more, but I think you get the idea. The STC is like a church, in the sense that the church is made of up of the people–the community–and its beliefs, not the building. The STC is made up of many bright, resourceful people, and its survival depends on the support, participation, and belief in the technical communication industry as a community. I chose to get involved with the STC, and while my bandwidth is limited, I am always open to helping others and supporting others in their tech comm endeavors. I wish I could do more, and in time, I will. But rather than criticizing the STC, do something about it! If you feel that not enough emphasis on DITA practices is given in presentations, then tell the STC! If you feel like you’ve heard more than your fill about content marketing (like I have), say something! Don’t sit there and complain about it. Be the change.
What do you think? I suggest reading Larry’s articles first, then mine, then please (respectfully) include your comments below. Be part of the conversation. Perhaps based on the comments, we can draft something to address to Chris Lyons, the CEO of the STC, to help their efforts.
P.S. If it weren’t for the STC Summit, I wouldn’t have actually met Larry Kunz in person for the first time. Larry’s been a fantastic supporter of TechCommGeekMom for a long time via this blog and social media, and it was an opportunity to strengthen our connection by meeting in person at a shared beloved event. I look forward to both of our blogs continuing to provoke conversations within the tech comm community.
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