Surfs up. Way up. Now what?

Picture yourself standing on a beach. You look out towards the ocean and suddenly see a fifty foot wave headed in your direction. Do you 1) freeze in place, 2) run like hell in the opposite direction towards higher ground, or 3) grab your surfboard and run right at the wave?

The world of technical writing is a sunny beach about to get hit with a rich media tsunami. It’s easy to imagine what happens to those who freeze in place. Those who high-tail it to “safer ground” might get through (or not). Those who embrace what’s headed towards them and turn it in their favor will be in for a totally excellent ride.

Several years ago a similar wave hit the software development beach when outsourcing became a viable option. The company I was working with at the time told its software developers their jobs were going to India, and they had two choices; leave the company (look for higher ground), or make the move from software developer to software architect and manage the new crop of software developers in India (grab that board and get to it). A lot of them, oddly enough, ran towards option #1, and ended up having the exact same conversation with their new bosses about a year later. A few ran towards option #2, and now they’re out there catching righteous tubes.

The technical writer has always been at the core of a company’s communications effort because they deliver the highest value content-information about the company’s product and services. While the shift to alternate (and perhaps more effective) media types including video, Flash, voice, etc. is accelerating, text will always be the underpinning of complex, detailed information.

The extension of basic communications mediums to include rich media provides the technical writer the opportunity to focus on managing overall information creation, rather than just writing text. Instead of worrying about being displaced by video or graphics, the technical writer needs to reach out and assimilate new media types into their on-going creation and production management efforts.

Something else to think about; the technical writing function is starting to get outsourced, so that wave is getting bigger and moving faster.