Happy Halloween everyone! And welcome to our October edition of TechCom Manager, 2005. Fall is my favorite time of year in Ohio. The leaves are amazing colors, the temperature is comfortable, and the onset of upcoming holidays exudes a warm, festive feeling.  For me, Autumn is always a time for great reflection over the current year’s activities, and a time to plan ahead. At TechCom Manager, we’re doing just that with our planning initiatives for 2006.

I want to personally thank each of you who responded to last month’s call for writers. Because of your willingness to participate, I am confident that 2006 will be as great a year for our newsletter as 2005. As our plans unfold, I will be contacting all our existing and new writers to iron out the details.  For those of you who are still contemplating writing for us, keep in mind it gets your name out there, you help people with your valuable viewpoints, and there’s even a cash incentive! So if you want to be a featured author, please contact me directly at stevecapri@earthlink.net.  It’s never too late!

New Ideas for 2006

Each issue, I get a few new ideas and requests, such as a forum for “Letters to the Editor,” and complete, downloadable PDF versions of each issue.  In preparation for 2006, I am eagerly looking into implementing as many of your requests as possible and will announce some changes in our December issue.  Your input is appreciated and invaluable. So please feel free to keep those requests coming through the end of this year.  This is your newsletter and my goal as your editor is to make this forum as valuable and enjoyable as possible.

Our Theme This Month

For October, our theme centers around what it takes to get the appropriate visibility for a documentation team. When I started in this business over 27 years ago, technical writers, or “publications specialists” as we were called back then, were merely lumped haphazardly within the organizations or departments they supported. Typically, writers did not report to writing managers. Instead, they worked directly for technical managers over initiatives such as engineering and software development. Although this arrangement was sometimes adequate, these types of managers rarely understood the value-add that writers brought to the table. And it always seemed to be a constant struggle to get those bits-and-bytes gurus to consider us part of the team. As I look back, it wasn’t until my own writing department got its own box on the organization chart that I felt we received the proper visibility our profession deserved.

Since then, things have changed a great deal. Although writing groups now have more visibility than ever before, because of their vast talent and flexibility, they sometimes become accountable for too many things. As a result, we find ourselves having to step back and redefine exactly what services our team should be providing to the organization(s) we support. And that’s what this month’s article is all about -- streamlining and tailoring our own visibility into the appropriate channels.

Welcome Back Whitney Potsus, our Feature Writer for October

Our feature article this month, Raising the Visibility of the Documentation Group, comes to us from Whitney Potsus. This is Whitney’s third article this year for TechCom Manager and once again, we’re very pleased to have her back!  Whitney works for a software company in Southern Connecticut, managing both technical and marketing content. When she’s not working on her attempt at the Great American Novel or a new technical writing book she’s co-authoring with an Australian counterpart, she spends her off hours on technical writing contract assignments and freelance writing for a variety of publications. She launched, and managed for several years, the Solitary Scrivener newsletter for the STC’s Lone Writer special-interest group and has contributed to several STC and IEEE publications.