Webb 1
Suzanne Webb
WRA420
Bill Hart-Davidson
Final Exam
April 26, 2006
--WRA 420--
WRA420 at Michigan State University is merely an overview of the technical communication field, and this paper is merely an overview of WRA420. In a short 16 weeks attending this class, we covered everything from tiny specs of granularity to massive content management systems. In this paper, I will explain several key concepts of the class by highlighting that concept, discussing what “old” basic ideas preceded our new innovative ones, and – hopefully – steering us into the future of technical communication.
Key Sections
Solving Problems with Text(s)
Best Practices of Information Design
Content Management Systems
Writing for Users
Usable and Useful
Author! Author! It’s all About the Author
Into the Future: Our DRPW Program
Solving Problems with Text(s)
Granularity
In this information age, we as authors, or as content specialists, or as technical communicators, must consider much more than just finding the right words to say (discovery), arranging them on a page (arrangement), in particular order (style), and phrasing them a certain way (delivery). We as authors, content specialists, or technical communicators must consider granularity as well. We need to learn to separate out content into chunks and make it “as specific as necessary and as general as possible” (Hart-Davidson 2006).
What this means is, using a typical business card format as an example, we would normally think of the content on that card as “name, title, company logo, phone number, address.” It’s not that simple anymore. Now we need to think of “first name, last name, company logo, title, home phone, cell phone, office phone, fax number, email address,” and we need to drop those individual answers to “first name, last name, company logo, title, home phone, cell phone, office phone, fax number, email address” into an XML file (hang on, I’ll explain in the next section) so that one base file exists -- called “BsCardDummy” (or whatever filename Firm X chooses); employees desiring a business card from Company X go call up that base file, and drop in their information. Nevermore will Company X have unstinted versions of their business cards. Now graphic standards can be adhered to--forever and ever. Amen.
XML
In my mind, HTML coding is not difficult, all you need is a cheat sheet telling you what tag makes a font go bold, what tag makes a paragraph break, what tag makes a headline, well you get the picture. XML, though, is the language of granularity. So, somewhere inside of HTML code and its not-that-hard-to-learn tags, lives XML code and its DIVs. DIVs live a little over my head, and I’d like to keep them there, thank you. However, knowing a little about HTML, XML, DIVs, and even CSS, makes me more valuable in the workforce. As a potential project manager, I need to know whom to ask, and I need to know what to ask, and I need to sound informed when I ask. Beyond that, I leave the HTMLs, the CSS’s, the XMLs and the DIVs to the code specialists.
I do know that XML is the language of the dynamic. The web is no longer web pages waiting to be visited, now the web is content we “dial in to;” we request it onto our screens. Request might be putting it lightly. We demand that content, and RSS feeds bring that content right to us – because it’s all tagged with XML. That’s why it’s so portable—so granular.
Content as Objects
Thinking of content as granular permits manipulation of that content. We don’t want to – we cannot – think of content as pages upon pages upon pages of text any longer. We must think of content as “chunks.” Sub-sections, captions, bylines, headlines, references, are all separate entities, and all require separate tags (XML tags). If we think of each of these chunks as an object, and classify it as such, half of our work as authors is already done!
Metadata
Metadata is actually data about data. Therefore, those chunks of sub-sections, captions, bylines, headlines, references, need data written to identify them. Data about our data. It’s not as complex as it sounds.
Best Practices of Information Design
Objects and Views
Jonathon Price reminds us – in a simulated conversation with Aristotle no less -- that we need to consider all our audiences – we often “play” to more than one with each text we write. Price argues that our view of objects needs to be as broad as the possible number of our audiences. When we “play” to our audiences these days, compared to Aristotle’s day, many things have changed; we “play” our rhetoric on the web, in brochures, on billboards, through images, with sound, via video, on paper, and, yes, we even give an occasional presentation.
Our documents don’t stop there either. We also “organize the documents into larger collections, such as help systems, libraries of documentation, long lists of PDF files” (Price 148). We also strive to reuse our content.
Workflows
Workflow is “the way tasks flow through a cycle on their way to getting a job done” (Rockley 228). Rockley states that good workflow results in materials delivered in the order they are used. Rockley asks we think of the subcontractors involved in building a house, electricians come in after the framework is up, but before the sheetrock goes up. Plumbers come in before flooring specialists. You get the picture. Work flows that way. I won’t say no bottlenecks, but less bottlenecks anyway.
Swim Lane Diagrams
As a warm up exercise for a project, the professor had us observe a workflow somewhere and try to put it into a swim lane diagram. He suggested Starbucks. Any kind of an assembly line can offer a mental picture to a swim lane and offer a bit of insight into managing workflow—even Rockley’s building a house metaphor fits well.
Content Management Systems
Content Silos
Picture again the business card: The little tags, the metadata, attached onto the business card information is like a miniature content management system. The metadata set the standards for how everyone’s business card will look. Well, a content management system (CMS) is just this – only lots larger. If we think of a large corporation, um, pick Red Lobster Restaurant (I’m hungry for seafood): They use the same information in multiple genres. They will need the entrees listed on a menu for the customers, but they will also use that same information in training materials for their crew. And, possibly again in inventory control software. A content management system – it’s kinda like the web’s spiders and robots – goes out into the CMS space looking for the necessary piece of metadata and inserts it into that menu, that training manual, that order form. Same info, typed one time and one time only. Time saving, cost-effective, and no need for all those writers they once staffed!
Without CMS, Rockley argues, authors frequently “lack awareness of what other are doing elsewhere in the organization. They have a great deal “on their plate” … there isn’t time to find out what other groups are doing” (7) so information gets generated anew instead of being reused creating unnoticed changes to specs and wording. These silos increase costs, reduce quality, and generate potentially ineffective materials” (8).
Author! Author! It’s all about the Author
Authors Don’t Matter
In a CMS system, an author, as a single entity, really doesn’t matter so much. It’s sad to say, but – how did Stewart Whittemore put it – “if Jo walks outside at lunch and gets hit by a truck and dies, some other Joe can just come along and click the buttons, and throw together this month’s catalog” (paraphrased).
Authors Matter More Than Ever
And, while we authors may not seem to matter within a large corporation and inside of a content silo, we really matter more than ever. Not many people have the training we are receiving as students in the DRPW program at MSU. Matter of fact, I believe this is the ONLY academic program catering to a rhetorically-based technical writing schema. We need authors. And, with as much change as this country—this world—is going through, merging from an industrial-based nation to a knowledge-based nation, writers (authors of any kind—authors of every kind) will continue to be invaluable.
Into the Future: Our DRPW Program
We can’t stop studying, or learning, or writing. WRA 420 just touches the tip of the technological-iceberg, and this technological-iceberg isn’t melting--it’s just beginning to form!
The people in this program are gifted, future-thinking, and fun. In an atmosphere that promotes growth – both personal and team growth – students and faculty are studying fair use laws, the oppression of marginalized peoples, Folksonomies, material Rhetorics, rhetorical theory, critical pedagogy, changes in punctuation practices, literacy, and professional writing. By combining any of these tracts, alumni from this program will be the future of Technical Writing. We will be the ones quoted in the take-home final for WRA420.
References
Hart-Davidson, William. Advanced Technical Writing: WRA420. Class Lecture.
Michigan State University. Spring 2006.
Price, Jonathan. “A Rhetoric of Objects”. SIGDOC ’01. Santa Fe. 2001. 147-151.
Rockley, Ann. Managing Enterprise Content. A Unified Content Strategy.
New Riders: Indianapolis. 2003. 564.