ccr 760: on kennedy

OK, so now I want to read the whole thing. The historical aspects of Kennedy’s work (I’m assuming the rest of the dis follows the same methodology) makes for interesting reading.

As with all of our readings these past weeks, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep what I understand to be technical communication practices on the fringe while I’m working through a text. I note this readerly move to explain why I found the descriptions of textual curation familiar and creative.

Like the textual curators Kennedy describes (Chambers and the Wikipedians), the technical communicator also wrestles with two rhetorical elements: “[1] the exigence of information overload and [2] the unique agency demonstrated by the [tech writer] who labors to evaluate and re-compose huge amounts of information into a coherent and easily-accessible format for a broad audience" (113). This is, arguably, a more appropriate and concise description (than those offered by Slattery and Jones) of the modern technical communicator’s activities.

Specific to the activities of textual curation, Kennedy comfortably introduces the concept of craft ,and for me creates a clear progression from the readings we did in Spilka a few weeks ago. Like the craft of textual curation, the craft of technical communication (of the symbolic-analytic work) regularly involves "filtering prior texts and re-composing that information into a new text that fits the goals of the project at hand" (120, and “knowing where to collect information; developing ways to manage it; filtering … for relevance and quality; composing concise, clear articles; and attending to or outsourcing the myriad small tasks of publishing” (123).

Like the Cyclopædia and Wikipedia, modern tech comm information products are aggregated “synthetic compositions”. The individual who builds (authors?) these products is, quite literally, a “textual harvester” performing a continuous technology-mediated act of re-composition. And I’m thinking Textual Harvester would look pretty cool on a business card.

As a complete aside, everyone who has engaged in “perverse performances of agency in the form of vandalism” (160) please raise your hand.

ccr 760: on jones

The way Jones uses the term “information coordinator” seems more appropriate than Slattery’s “textual coordinator” (see below). Maybe it’s because Jones addresses the importance of “writing” in his broader description of how shifts in technology “create new types of writing and writer” (455). “I found that the writing process had changed and that the writers focused less on producing text and more on developing, coordinating, and structuring the newly adopted corporate intranet” (456). I realize this is essentially the same claim Slattery made, but within Jones ethnographic study, the claim seems more valid because Jones comes back to the writing: “Rather than transferring past information, the writers I studied created items as needed, often in response to a change. When something changed, a writer would be tasked with writing an announcement of the change that would appear on the corporate intranet welcoming screen with a link to a document—usually created by the division making the change but sometimes by the writers—detailing the change” (459).

Ahhhhhh… technical writing as I know it.

The following comment from the corporate communications supervisor synthesizes our earlier readings regarding information design: “She noted that this process “’requires a lot more up-front analysis. You have to know your audiences … and the differences between them’” (458). Similarly, Jones states “because the corporate intranet was still new, the writers needed to create an overall intranet structure that worked for all users" (462). The importance of information design and similar activities illustrate the more telling ways writers’ activities are shaped by certain technologies.

Incidentially, I found in the essay the primary reason why there are so many essays extolling the value of and need for technical writers who do more than write… “The writers at times needed to create content for other divisions of the company. But that was seen as a transitory situation: The goal was for each division to create its own reference content” (460). Going back to Slattery for a moment, the “problem” with technology is that it empowers anyone with access to be a writer. This means there is more crappily written content, which professional technical communicators are left to collect, aggregate, edit, mend, and mash-up. Which is the point Slattery and Jones are both attempting to make.

Oh so cyclical is my thinking.

ccr 760: on slattery

Yes, it’s about the technology. Even way back in the dark ages of 2005, that wasn’t a risky statement to make about technical communication. Slattery states that “information technologies appear to be the primary medium through which [the technical communicator’s] competencies are enacted” (355), but I’m thinking the statement applies to all knowledge workers. When we consider the list of technology-mediated activities – most importantly “the ability to coordinate, to structure workable ecologies of texts and then layer them into the target document" (355), I'm reminded that anyone with a hammer, some wood, and a box of nails can attempt to build a house.

I guess I’m responding to Slattery’s description of “writing” as an act concerned more with “deciding what to put where as it was deciding what to say and how to say it” (357). Rather than making a case for higher-level literacies, we’re reducing textual coordination to an act of content aggregation. That’s something we hire high school kids to do for us in the summer. And, interestingly enough, those high school kids typically have a larger “"technological repertoire" than the knowledge workers they’re assisting.

Slattery’s most important point, I think, is that a technical writer’s skills are experienced through and enacted with technologies. What gets lost are the skills necessary to do good writing in the first place. Slattery states that skill in writing is the “uber IT” (358), but diminishes that uberness by quickly tacking on the process of textual coordination as a necessary or equally important skill “necessary for building the genre ecologies that enable [higher order] thinking” (359).

For me, the activities identified as IT-mediated textual coordination are part of the job – and yes, a very important part of the job. But technical communication is and must continue to be about the writing; the place at which we must start when we teach aspiring TCers.

ccr 760: on tapscott & williams

Is there a way we can make the university executive leadership read this chapter? I'm actually less interested in the author's arguments about the merits of wikis than I am in the way they position a particular social software-based solution within a broader call for bottom-up innovation.

The Best Buy case study is a fine example of how to meet people (students, employees, end-users) in the spaces in which they work and play. The key element to these meetings is communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion -- communicating to collaborate, to "drill holes through the hierarchy to produce great results" (251). The generational differences are too obvious to ignore or to apologize for. The NetGen is defining the dichotomy that Spinuzzi exposes in his introduction (see below): The changing nature of the networked work place and the intrusion of social network technologies on non-work time -- the demand for non-NetGen workers to be more adept in socially networked environments as tech (not technical) communicators and users of technologies. Within this dichotomy, you have someone like Best Buy's Stephens making money from the fact that non-NetGeners are typically unprepared to deal with even the most basic of technologies today -- the personal computer.

In reading about successful implementations of a wiki and the development of wiki cultures, I kept coming back to all of the failed wiki efforts I've been privy to over the years. The chapter suggests that a principle cause for failure is the point at which the initiative begins. In every failed wiki project I've been part of, the project began as a top-down mandate. There was nothing organic or natural about it. Tapscott and Williams claim that "wikis are supposed to conform naturally to the way people think" (256). I'm supposing that wikis fail when they don't provide that space for natural conformity.

I was only half-kidding above. I do think that an organization as large as Syracuse University could learn a lot from the underlying successes and benefits associated with social-software. Where better than a university to find people who believe they can contribute to innovation and progress? Reminder to self: Mention the SU IT Answers wiki project.

ccr 760: on spinuzzi

In an introduction to a special issue of TCQ, Spinuzzi lays out a framework in which to consider the challenges facing technical communicators in an age of distributed work.

Much of the introduction brought me back to our earlier reading of Spinuzzi; as author of a text which made him an obvious choice to edit this special issue. In that text, as in his introduction here, Spinuzzi balances these broader discussions about the changing nature of work on a squishy definition of networks -- the networked worker, the socio-economics of networked activities, internetworked communications. This phenomenon of networks changes everything in the workplace -- from work activities to the organizational structures in which that work is performed.

While I think I understand the point being made, I'm still having trouble reconciling why this changes anything for technical communicators. It seems that there are broader implications for workers who are not prepared or "skilled-up" to be effective symbolic analytic workers.

I do see a complication in Spinuzzi's framework for the special issue -- worker activity is not the same as worker connectivity. When I read about the modern worker being segregated by education and segmented by technology (271), I wonder, has that ever not been the case in industrial societies? It just seems like we're stretching things when we introduce all of these socio-economic arguments in discussions about the changing nature of technical communication. I understand it's necessary to understand what's happening on a broader scale, but the challenges, problems, issues facing the technical communicator of 2010 are (I believe) the same as those faced in 1970.

When I strip away what feels like the necessary baggage of a scholarly essay (or introduction in this case), I find what I think is the essential issue facing teachers of writing, writing curriculum designers, technical communication programs, writing programs, Composition, and practicing technical communicators. In the age of distributed work, Spinuzzi says, "Rhetoric becomes an essential area of expertise ... when we are all potentially in contact with each other, across organizational and disciplinary lines, we must persuade more people coming from different domains—not just our superiors and coworkers..." (272).