|
SIGDOC Newsletter
September 2009 :: Volume 10, Number 3
Interesting Items
- Job Prospects in Tech Writing Today
- Technews
- TED sixth sense technology
- SIGDOC on Wikipedia
- Intelligent Content
- Don Norman's jnd site
- SIGDOC 2008 Proceedings
- SIGDOC Europe Chapter?
- Academic Initiative Celebrates 5 Years - New Offerings for Faculty and Students
- Content Wrangler
- WritersUA
- Dilbert Newsletter
Job Prospects in Tech Writing Today
With the US and global economies struggling and opportunities for the technical writing profession shifting from permanent employment to contingent workers and international outsourcing, the technical writing community has seen many changes over the past couple of decades. At a SIGDOC meeting in Waterloo, Canada in the 1990’s, there was a discussion about what outsourcing would mean to our community. It might be good for corporations and stockholders to outsource jobs to improve their profits, but few thought about the long term impact of how it would change job opportunities and consumer spending. We’ve now arrived at a point where we can see the impact, and it has not been comfortable.
Outsourcing and downsizing due to a sagging economy have increased the woes and decreased job opportunities for both experienced and novice technical writers. Sometimes this has forced a changed work environment from a corporate-office-based activity to a home-office activity, shoehorning corporate materials and equipment into space previously used for another purpose, such as a bedroom. Lucky is the person with an extra space to spare. Oddly, new job opportunities rarely offer teleworking (working offsite), perhaps because many corporations do not have the infrastructure to support it. But recent activity in the New England area suggests that at least in this very localized geography job opportunities may be increasing. While layoffs continue to occur in some businesses, contract work or hiring appears to have picked up slightly, based on local listserv activity. So while economic times are very tough, and may still get tougher for many of us, there are signs of a slight up-tick in writing jobs.
Kathy Haramundanis – HP
back to top
Technews
http://www.acm.org/technews
back to top
TED sixth sense technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUdDhWfpqxg
back to top
SIGDOC on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGDOC
Intelligent Content
Interested in learning about intelligent content, who is using it and how it's saving them time, money and improving the accuracy of their content? Are you interested in doing this yourself? Download Ann Rockley's latest whitepaper What is Intelligent Content? to learn about it. She defines Intelligent Content, and describes a number of scenarios where real organizations have put it in place to solve real problems.
back to top
Don Norman's jnd site
http://www.jnd.org/
Essays: http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html
Design as Communication - http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/design_as_comun.html
SIGDOC 2008 Proceedings
The 26th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (sigdoc2008.net) was held in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 22-24, 2008 at ISCTE (http://www.iscte.pt).
back to top
SIGDOC Europe Chapter?
Carlos Costa is pursuing the possibility of a new ACM SIGDOC chapter. Please contact him if you are interested in supporting his leadership:
Carlos J. Costa, PhD.
http://dcti.iscte.pt/cjc
back to top
Academic Initiative Celebrates 5 Years - New Offerings for Faculty and Students
To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the IBM Academic Initiative, IBM announced the availability of the following new benefits and offerings for faculty and students worldwide:
- A content-rich, new Student Portal with expanded learning resources section including:
- Introductory content, including roadmaps for top technology skills, such as Web 2.0, Mashups, and database technologies
- A “top stories” section, including links to community and career development resources.
- Access to the Student Opportunity System--a resume database searchable by IBM customers and partners worldwide.
- Links to My developerWorks, a professional network and knowledge base providing students with career building recognition, and easy-to-find, targeted technical resources enabling them to keep their skills current.
- Innov8 V2 –this “serious”, award-winning simulation game provides IT and business students with an excellent introduction to Business Process Modeling. Faculty from 1,000+ universities have downloaded the game; 100+ schools worldwide have included it in their curriculum. Innov8 V2 is complemented by teaching roadmaps, and WebSphere and SOA courses, specifically designed for teaching BPM and Innov8.
- ACM Mapping Guides for faculty who are uncertain where to start with IBM technologies. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is internationally recognized as a premier organization for computing professionals. IBM selected the ACM-recommended curricula as the source against which to map IBM technologies and courseware, making it easier for faculty to determine where open source and IBM technologies might fit into their course content. Also included
- A course catalog with more than 400 courses, addressing topics and technologies that will help students develop skills around Business Process Management, Enterprise Content Management, Model Driven Development and other smarter planet, industry-desired skill areas. .
- The results of IBM’s Smarter Planet University Jam. Last April, nearly 2,000 students from 200+ universities in 40 countries participated in the Jam, demonstrating that students around the world are eagerly seeking opportunities to work together with industry to create a smarter planet. IBM’s report highlights the results of the Jam, which pointed to the positive outlook that students have about how they can affect the future, as well as confirmed their thoughts on education, going green, and other ideas to create a better world.
There are also on-line offerings for
- Database Technology
- Enterprise Computing
- Situational Applications and Web 2.0
- SSME
- Team-Based Development
- Web Server Technology
These no-charge student offerings are available through the IBM Academic Initiative’s Student Software Catalog, accessible via IBM Student Portal at http://www.ibm.com/university/students.
back to top
Content Wrangler
The Content Wrangler Newsletter - http://www.thecontentwrangler.com
abelsp@netdirect.net
WritersUA
The WritersUA Web site offers original, free articles, surveys, and resource listings: http://www.writersua.com
Dilbert Newsletter
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/read_the_newsletter.html
back to top |
