I've worked for startups and large, established companies both. I enjoy the challenges and merits of each.
Technical Editor, 12/2010 to present, Publications Group, Sonoma Technology, Inc., Petaluma, CA, USA
Sonoma Technology, Inc. does air quality research and reporting for a number of governmental, state, local, and tribal agencies, as well as private industry and universities. It has a long history of reliable, responsible, and ethical work. Business areas include forecasting, fire and fuels modeling software, and air quality software.
Responsibilities
I edit scientific reports, presentations, abstracts, journal articles, software user documentation, technical memoranda, proposals, and a variety of other materials. Editing levels range from light to developmental editing for in-house and external clients. I also perform master editing reviews for other editors.
Projects
Some projects I am particularly proud of include
- Introducing MadCap Software's Flare to Sonoma Technology as a solution to their need for online help for the Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) user's guide. I then edited the user's guide, created a Flare template, and put the user's guide into Flare WebHelp format.
- Putting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Report to Congress on Black Carbon into InDesign format. A fellow editor designed the look and feel and I created the InDesign template using good template design principles.
- Editing the CT-EMFAC software user's guide, creating Flare templates for Flare WebHelp and PDF output, and putting the user's guide into Flare format.
Tools
Microsoft Office 2010 (particularly Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Publisher), EndNote, MadCap Flare, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Snagit, Tortoise (for use with SVN), and other tools as needed.
Senior Information Developer (senior technical writer), 09/1996 to 05/1998, Information Development Technology Group, Next Level Communications, Rohnert Park, CA, USA
I worked at Next Level Communications as a consultant from 2/96 to 9/96, at which point I accepted a staff position. NLC was later purchased by Motorola.
Responsibilities
Solely responsible for documenting third-generation fiber-to-the-curb telephony system provisioning software (View-1 and View-2). Also responsible for product release notes and training materials. Worked primarily alone under high-pressure situations (sometimes a release a week) to produce software documentation, usually with no specifications.
As the sole writer on the View-1 and View-2 projects, I attended several team meetings a week, including bug triage meetings and product development meetings, and provided input regarding the GUI design. I took screen shots, logged in from my PC to the UNIX network to run the software, wrote entire manuals, managed reviews and documentation updates, and performed all other tasks related to the documentation. To get information on the product, I interviewed engineers and used the product extensively.
Projects
I wrote the entire 504-page View-1 user’s guide entirely from scratch with no specifications, just engineering interviews, product knowledge, and, later, excellent input from reviewers. In addition, I wrote a number of other types of manuals to supplement the user’s guides.
I received many compliments from our customers as “the best technical writer” that NLC had, including a letter of praise specifically about my work and my professionalism written by a high-level employee at US West that he sent to the presidents of NLC.
Tools
FrameMaker, Acrobat, Corel Capture and CorelDraw, WebWorks, Visio, ClearCase, Exceed (to access the product on the UNIX servers), Outlook, Excel, Microsoft Project, Windows, UNIX.
Product Manager 2, 08/91 to 11/1991, Productivity Group, Brøderbund Software, Novato, California, USA
Brøderbund was later acquired by The Learning Company, which in turn was acquired by Riverdeep, which, in acquiring Houghton Mifflin, changed its name to Houghton Mifflin.
Responsibilities
Responsible for managing and coordinating all aspects of a Macintosh System 7 product: marketing materials, packaging, documentation, and programming (design, coding, and testing). Had major input on the design of the product’s user interface and functionality.
Tools
Macintosh applications.
Project Manager, C and C++ Compiler Documentation Writing Group, 07/1988 to 08/1991, Borland International, Scotts Valley, California, USA
Starting out as Senior Technical Writer, I was initially the project lead on the Turbo Basic project, which was later sold and published as PowerBASIC. The new owners used my documentation. I was also assigned the Turbo C project shortly after I started at Borland, and remained in charge of that project my entire time there.
Responsibilities
While at Borland, I performed the following tasks:
- Planned, scheduled, and tracked multiple details and projects (document plans, resources, writing, editing, and review cycles, and so on).
- Wrote material for all manuals.
- Indexed and edited all manuals (in addition to indexing manuals for other teams).
- Managed a variable number of contractors (a minimum of one at all times) and, later, in-house writers.
- Wrote fact/data sheets and other marketing materials, wrote and edited reviewer’s guides, created online documents, and wrote entries for Borland’s proprietary, context-sensitive, hypertext help.
While I managed the Turbo C documentation project, the product turned into Borland C++. I took the manuals from 600 pages total to several multi-volume documentation sets for varying versions of the product. The documentation for the core product, Borland C++, was over 1,700 pages. Borland C++ won awards, and the media started to discuss, sometimes at length, the very high quality and usefulness of the documentation I had produced.
After two years, after several intermediate promotions, I was promoted to Project Manager, and was given a budget to hire eight writers to work under me. I hired a good team, and managed to keep some very diverse writers focused and happy.
Challenges
As project lead and sole in-house writer on the Turbo C project, I stepped into a very difficult situation. When I arrived, there was a great deal of animosity between the publications department and the C development team, much of it due to a lack of understanding on both sides of the needs and methods of the other side.
Since I had taken a number of programming courses and had worked in software and hardware development environments in previous companies as a part of the engineering team, I immediately saw the problem and decided to turn the situation around. I felt that the chief problem was simply a need for better understanding between the two departments, and I deliberately set out with a plan to fix the problem by filling that need in both departments. While doing so, I maintained a courteous, professional, non-adversarial attitude toward all.
Within six months, I had earned the trust and respect of the C team members, so much so that they were inviting me to key meetings, sharing information with me, and in general working more readily with me. Likewise, the publications team was developing a better understanding of the software development process, and as a result, things were much more harmonious and productive. And to my credit, I did it with such subtlety and diplomacy that few people in either group understood that I was instrumental in this change. (A few canny people caught on and commented on it to me.)
As new people were hired, I made sure to talk with them immediately to help set positive expectations, instead of negative ones. By the time I left, the new culture of mutual admiration and cooperation was so ingrained that few remembered how it had been before, and productivity was very high.
Later, while Project Manager, I needed to keep two of my writers who severely disliked each other working smoothly and without conflict, even when working with each other. As an indication of my skill and success, these two never fought the entire time I was managing them. After I left, they became a huge problem for each other and the department, quickly becoming legendary for the ferocity and animosity of their fights.
Tools
Sprint (Borland’s powerful non-WYSIWYG word processing and desktop publishing tool), Paradox (a relational database), Quattro Pro (a spreadsheet program), Borland’s proprietary (and unnamed) in-house online help system, Microsoft Project, screen capture utilities, DOS, Windows, Novell Network (I wrote my own login scripts).
Senior Technical Writer/Editor, 02/1987 to 06/1988, Intelligent Instrumentation Incorporated (now owned by Texas Instruments), Tucson, AZ, USA
Part of the engineering team.
Responsibilities
Responsible for all phases of documentation development for a PC-based scientific instrumentation company: writing from specs, editing, designing book layout, and preparing masters for final print. I was responsible for over 100 manuals ranging in size from 15 pages to 400.
Products were primarily hardware with some supporting software drivers; I also wrote and designed the layout of a number of pieces of marketing collateral and a large product brochure.
I introduced desktop publishing and saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in costs in the first few months.
As a professional indexer, I began indexing the company’s manuals. After I had been there for six months, the tech support engineers told me that support calls asking where information was in the manuals were greatly reduced thanks to my work. This freed them to spend more time on the more technical calls.
Tools
WordStar, Ventura, DOS.
Technical Writer/Senior Technical Writer, Textron, 09/1984 to 01/1987
The two positions below were held at physically separate locations of what was initially the same company.
- Senior Technical Writer, 10/1985 to 01/1987. Systems and Software Engineering Operations (SSE)/Textron, Tucson, AZ, USA (transfer and promotion from Bell Technical Operations division).
Edited and wrote proposals in response to RFPs; wrote flyers, brochures, a corporate history, large system and database specifications, software training packages, and top level software design documents; created graphics on the Macintosh. I also set up and ran the technical library, including creating a library internship position and hiring an intern. - Technical Writer, 09/1984 to 09/1985. Bell Technical Operations/Textron, Tucson, AZ, USA.
As part of the engineering team and the sole technical writer on that team, I was responsible for documenting software for government contracts. Among other projects, I created in six months an 18-volume set of manuals documenting over 200 individual programs. These programs made up one large communications simulation package (JTIDS). This project involved coordinating, scheduling, and overseeing the work of many different departments, as well as supervising three programmer/writers.