A Techie Tech Writer Blog

I spent most of last week in Mountain View, California, getting oriented to my new job at Mozilla. Going forward, I'll be working from home in Austin on developer documentation and community for the Mozilla Developer Center. Mozilla, in case you weren't aware, is the people who make the Firefox web browser for desktops and mobile devices, the Thunderbird e-mail client, and a bunch of other cool open-source, web-related technologies. I've barely scratched the surface of what I need to learn in order to be most effective, but I've learned enough to have some idea of where, how, and who to ask my questions.

Mozilla is all about as much openness and transparency as possible. That is reflected in the layout of the Mountain View offices, which are all open-plan desks, with no private offices, even for executives. There aren't even cubicles per se, since the dividers intersect at 120-degree angles, so it's a loose honeycomb of desks. There are lots of small and large conference rooms, which anyone can grab for impromptu as well as scheduled meetings, or phone calls, or just to get away from others' hubbub. All but one of these meeting rooms have glass walls to the rest of the space — transparency again. (The one closed meeting room is because there are always some confidential matters, even in a company dedicated to openness.)

I'm on the Evangelism team, which is part of Engagement, which is part of Mozilla's term for Marketing. I've been in a Technical Documentation team before that reported up to Marketing, but never one whose mission was so explicitly to engage with users (in this case, software and web developers) to create a mutually-beneficial relationship. In this case, there is no group called "Technical Documentation"; rather, within the Evangelism team, there's me and Eric "Sheppy" Shepherd (Developer Documentation Lead), tasked with improving the experiences of developers using web standards and Mozilla technologies.

In the short term, I'll be working on documentation related to Firefox 4, which goes beta later this month. In the longer term, I'll also be working on the transformation of the Mozilla Developer Center into the Mozilla Developer Network — that is, from a collection of documentation into a hub of community and information for the various types of developers that Mozilla serves.

And just in case you're wondering, documentation for ordinary users is provided by the Support at Mozilla (SuMo) team and community. As I said in my article in Open Source Business Resource in January, users don't know and don't care about the difference between documentation and support, as long as they get answers to their questions. Michael Verdi has recently joined that team to manage and enhance the content in the Support Knowledgebase. His post about his first week at Mozilla is much cooler than this one.

Every year, the Austin chapter of STC conducts a salary survey of tech writers in the Austin area. Since the international STC stopped conducting salary surveys a couple of years ago, the Austin chapter's survey is the best available source of salary and contract rate information for the Austin area.

However, the survey results are most valid when a large number of technical communicators participate in the survey. Response rates for the survey are down this year. It may be that a number of people have let their STC memberships lapse, due to their economic situation, and therefore haven't gotten the word about the survey. But you don't need to be an STC member in order to participate. The only requirements for participation are:

• You earn at least some of your compensation by being a technical communicator.


• Your primary residence was in the greater Austin area for at least part of 2008.

Salaried employees, contract employees, and independent contractors are all encouraged to respond. You can find a link to the survey on the STC Austin chapter website. The survey is open until April 20th, 2009, 11:59pm CDT.

Update May 17, 2009: The survey is now complete, and results are available on the STC Austin website.

I think I'm reaching overload on professional networking sites.

I've never felt the need to join social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, but I've been on LinkedIn since early 2005, before they even had a premium service.

As LinkedIn has gotten more popular, the culture seems to be straying away from the "network of trusted connections" that it started with, to more of a "network of people you have some remote connection to", ala MySpace. I've built up a fairly long connections list, but I've tried to be discriminating about it. Most of the people on my list are people I've actually worked with -- I've just been around for long enough that I've worked with a lot of people. Others are people I've had significant interactions with, either online or in person. Just being on the same mailing list is not enough to get you onto my connections list.

In the past few months, I've succumbed to invitations to sign up on other professional networking sites.

• Naymz offers "reputation" management, in which you confidentially rate the people you're connected to. This is feature that I've felt was lacking on LinkedIn, which doesn't let me differentiate "I've met him a few times and he seems like a nice guy" connections from "We've been to heck and back together, and I would do it again" connections. Unfortunately, Naymz is lacking the critical mass of users that LinkedIn has established.


• Plaxo takes a different tack, by providing a single point of contact for family, social, and professional networks.


• Ning lets you create your own social networks, and I've just signed up for The Content Wrangler Community for technical communicators and content managers on Ning. Hosting a professional network on a site set up for social networks makes for a bumpy fit. Should I add the "Today's Reason to Drink" gadget to my page? I think not.

While I've been enthusiastic over the years in inviting people to join LinkedIn, I find that I'm less inclined to do so for these other sites. Plaxo seems especially suited for less-discriminate networking, yet I've only connected to existing Plaxo users so far. I think I've burned out on connecting with as many people as possible on as many networks as possible. I'm now more inclined to sit back and wait for others to invite me. If you know me, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Naymz. If you've heard of me, feel free to connect on Plaxo or Ning.

Jason at the 37signals blog answers the question: How do I get started building my experience? That is, how do you build a portfolio when you don't have experience?

His response for web designers is essentially: Make something up. For programmers, it's "Go open source".

What about technical writers? You can go either way. Making something up is easy. Write a manual or an online help system for a product that doesn't have one, or has a lousy one. On the other hand, documenting open source software is much harder, but much more impressive. It shows that you can get your hands dirty, interact with developers, learn new technology, and much more.

The topic of why tech writers should consider working on open source projects is one I could go on and on about. I bring it up every time I see tech writers complaining that they don't have much in their portfolio because they're just out of school, or all their work is proprietary. I've presented on this topic at the 2006 STC Summit, as part of a progression, and at the 2006 STC Region 5 conference, as a talk with David Cramer. Working on open source projects is not for everybody. But it's a great way to build skills and experience while giving back to the world.

Tom Johnson of TechWriterVoices.com and IdRatherBeWriting.com joins the guys from DMN Communications for a podcast on Are you hurting your career by not blogging and podcasting?. Naturally, the answer from these three techwriter/blogger/podcasters is "Yes"! :-) Actually, they're not quite that extreme, taking more the position that blogging and podcasting can help your career, rather than that not doing so hurts it.

My take is that you could be hurting your career if you're not engaged with your profession beyond the confines of your job. In a sense, if you just show up, do your job, and go home, all you have is a job, not a career or a profession. You don't have to engage in the online arena -- volunteering for your local STC chapter is a valuable offline form of engagement, for example -- but if you leave no trace of your professional self on the Web, you could be hurting your career. Tom alludes to this when he mentions that he Googles job candidates that he interviews. Having nothing turn up in such a search is definitely a bad sign.

By the way, just showing up to STC meetings, or lurking on mailing lists, is not enough to boost your career or your network. You need to actually contribute by presenting, organizing, or posting. That is what gives other people a sense of who you are, what you're like to work with, and what you have to offer. And that is what can actually help your career, as it enables your professional contacts to feel that they "know you" and not just "know of you". It also is what creates a Google trace, as you'll be mentioned in your chapter newsletter (if it's not online, volunteer to make that happen), or show up in the mailing list's archives. The Google trace is a secondary indicator of what really important: your contribution to the profession.