First Post

What I Did:

I named my blog “Nozick Media,” with the tagline, “For my Writing and Digital Media course.” Additionally, I changed the color layout of my WordPress.

Why I Did It:

I chose this title and tagline because that is the sole purpose of my having this blog. I will be using it to submit assignment in a manner that makes them easily accessible to both my professor and my class. I chose to have a blue color scheme because I find it to be aesthetically appealing and soft on the eyes.

As a student, my learning process involves many things that help me develop my technical communication skills to help me better both through the rest of my time as a student, and my future employment as a professional. For one, I need to be able to competently communicate ideas in my assignments in order to get my points across to the audience. This will help me as a professional when I need to give presentations or write-up a document detailing specifics of some deal or other. In addition, I have to collaborate in group assignments for my classes. This prepares me for future group work that I will have to do in school, as well as for working with fellow employees in a professional field.

Technical communicators need to know about international environments because a lot of product advertising takes place internationally, in addition to texts being translated. Culture plays a huge role in the impact that advertising has on a consumer; there are different cultural cues that are necessary for information to be considered credible overseas. Therefore, it is very beneficial for technical communicators to have foreknowledge of different cultures, not to mention being able to speak other languages. This is important for translators as well, who play a huge role in international communication. There is often different rhetoric that appeals to audiences in different places. This also brings about how necessary collaboration is for technical communicators; for a product that is being marketed worldwide, technical communicators need to work together to share their knowledge of different cultures and effective marketing techniques. I am curious as to how technical communicators come to gain experience with different cultures, and how that effects the jobs that will be made available to them.

            I do not believe that gender should play a role in technical communication. It is a matter of fact that some people are better at certain things than others. Gender is not a cause to hire someone who is less qualified to perform a task; jobs should be given out based purely on ability. In a field such as technical communication, gender is often unknown; the only way to differentiate between a manual written by a man or a woman is based on the name credited on the cover. A majority of technical communication undoubtedly involves collaboration of both genders. In a field as unbiased as communication, there is no reason to introduce an element of differentiation based on gender.

            Before a technical communicator provides information to their audience, they must make sure that the information is provided in a context and design that allow the user to fully understand, value, and use the product. Even after delivering the information to the audience, communicators must evaluate how well the product informs, and add improvements should they be needed. Rhetorical and evaluation skills are required of a professional communicator so that they can efficiently analyze this data, thereby refining their product. One part of the readings by Ceraso and Mirel that I found interesting was the severity rankings used to analyze the quality of artifacts that technical communicators work on. It is an efficient way to compare work to the standards that technical communicators are held too, thereby making the process of refining a product more efficient. This scale will be helpful in Project 2 because it will allow us to quickly analyze different aspects of the website and find how we can improve their rhetoric so that they deliver their messages more clearly. 

            Collaboration is a very important part of working as a technical communicator, because it is part of a communicator’s job to work with groups toward a goal; it is the communicator who coordinates the group’s efforts, avoid conflict, set dialogue to compromises, and sustain positive interactions when working toward this goal. Collaboration, defined by SPTC as “an intentional, sustained interaction toward a common goal,” involves a range of factors including; interactions, people, goals, settings, tools, complexity, and perspectives. There are many possible problems with collaboration such as group members not completing their share of the work (social loafers), and disagreement about the best way to achieve a goal. This reading has added to my knowledge about professional writing by more clearly defining my role as a technical communicator in a group. This will allow me to collaborate more effectively, thereby helping my group to reach our goals in the most efficient way possible. This includes my role in producing a quality memo for Project 1, Part B with my group. This reading brought two questions to my mind. The first question is how a group dynamic will be affected if someone should have an ulterior motive, or be working toward a goal other than that of the rest of the group. I am also curious as to how collaboration would be affected in the case that two or more group member’s professional opinions contrast each other.

            In “How Can Technical Communicators Work in an Ethical and Legal Manner?” Scott reviews some of the ethical and legal concerns of a technical communicator. He speaks about the ethics involved in work relationships as well as some of the ethical and legal obligations associated with being a communicator such as intellectual property and a duty to instruct and warn. He also instructs in the proper conduct of ethical deliberation and questioning. An interesting concept I found in this article was the idea of intellectual property. As a technical communicator, it is part of the job to compile information for users; I am curious as to how one properly cites intellectual property without violating it. This applies to everyday life because if someone says something that hasn’t been heard of before, people typically share it with others because of its uniqueness. This draws the question, where is the line between a regular idea and intellectual property? I am also curious about the legal consequences of violating intellectual property.

In Hart-Davidson’s essay, “What are the Work Patterns of Technical Communication?” he explains the changing roles of a technical communicator and explains that there are three major patterns in the work of a communicator: making information appeal to a wider audience, embellishing the user experience, and organizing content to make it easily accessible and ensure continued development of new content. One of the biggest parts of this is knowing your audience; a technical communicator needs to know all of the audiences they want to appeal to in order to put together information in a way that entreats all of them. It is the job of the communicator to coordinate all aspects of information. Information is the main product of a communicator, and therefore it is the job of the communicator to determine how this information is viewed and used, as well as maintain the value of the information that they are providing. I feel as though I understand technical communication a little better after reading this article because I understand the goal of a technical communicator now, and how they go about working towards it. An interesting concept that I learned from this article is that the main thing technical communicators have to offer is information, rather than simply the ability to write or organize. I think this is very important because not only do communicators get to set the value that their information is worth, but they are the ones who market it as well, and therefore can choose the audience they wish to appeal to, and in what manner. This reinforces the statement, “Knowledge is power.” This relates to my life because as a writer, it is my job to communicate information on paper accurately. After reading this article, I am curious what the most effective ways are of portraying information to raise its value.

            In “A Brief History of Technical Communication,” Frederick M. O’Hara, Jr. provides his audience with a broad overview of how technical communication has developed over time. O’hara also provides insight into why technical communication changed by explaining factors such as the development of the printing press, as well as the technicalities of war. He expands on technical communication by providing varied examples like the scientific process, writing manuals, and word-processing on computers. Finally, O’hara describes specialization in the field of technical communication, as well as providing numerical data about employment in the field. In a similar, but less expansive article, the Society for Technical Communication does exactly what the title of the article says, and explains, “What’s the difference between technical communicator and technical writer?” According to their article, a technical writer focuses on providing comprehensible language for directions, such as manuals. In comparison, a technical communicator focuses on the entire user experience, such as social media, rather than just writing. An interesting concept that I learned from O’hara’s article is the relationship between technical communicators and the government when it comes to war. I think that this is an important concept because it highlights the dependence of entities such as the government on technical communicators, as well as displaying the cost of advancement. This affects my life because as an American citizen, I will always have interactions with the government. Particularly as an aspiring technical communicator, I may be involved with the government at some point in my professional career. I am curious as to where communication will go in the future. The internet would never have even been conceived a century ago, so this raises the question, “What unforeseen possibilities lie in the future for technical communication?” I am also curious about what new jobs will develop for technical communicators with technology eliminating specialized jobs.