STC Toronto - Communication Times

June 2004

In this Issue:

Editor's Welcome: Summer!
News and STC Events: Online SIG Meeting, Single Sourcing SIG Meeting

STC Awards: STC Toronto Chapter 2003/2004 Awards
Meeting Report: May & June - Web Content, Personality Types
The Wandering Eye: A Technical Writer's Toolkit: Usability and Accessibility

Career Corner: Salary Negotiations
From the President's Desk: Thanks for Another Great Year

A Single Sourcing Song!: (We saved 'em coin that) Jingle Jangle Jingles

STC Events:

See the website for all the latest details.

Online SIG: June Meeting - Using Visual Basic and Viewlet Builder

The next meeting of the STC-Toronto Online SIG is from 7 to 9 PM EST on Wed, June 23, 2004. We will talk about how to:

• Learn Visual Basic for Technical Writers
• Create compelling Flash animations for software demos, sales presentations and training using Viewlet Builder.

This meeting is an excellent opportunity to learn about two very useful tools for technical writers. As usual, our meeting is informal with members sharing their skills and knowledge.

Where:
The meeting is at the Northern District Library, 40 Orchardview Blvd., telephone 416.393.7610. Orchardview Blvd runs west off Yonge Street, one short block North of Eglinton. The meeting is in room 224A and just before you enter the library, take the elevator to the second floor. Guests are welcome, there is no charge.

More Info here...

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Single Sourcing SIG: June Meeting - CMS Implementation

Come out to this month's Single-Sourcing SIG at the library where we'll be joined by Rhys Griffiths, Information Architect for MDS Sciex. Rhys will give a presentation on his work to select and implement a content management system to handle their large collection of technical publications. All are welcome to join the SIG. Please RSVP to Rob.Hanna@ascan.ca so that we can plan appropriately.

Next month will be our last meeting of the session with a social gathering in North York. Please watch for details.

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Welcome:

June 2004: Summer!
By Editor Philip Kahn - newsletter@stctoronto.org

This is the last newsletter of the 2003/2004 STC season. It has been a year of transition as we have moved from a printed newsletter to the HTML version you are now reading. We hope you like the changes and we will continue to develop it in the coming year.

At the June meeting, I was very pleased to receive the 'Pacesetter Award' for "producing an outstanding newsletter". Of course, what really makes any newsletter outstanding is the writing, and so much of the credit belongs to this superb team of volunteers who have written the newsletter for me:

• Susan Webb wrote most of this year's meeting reports. As you know, her reports do much more than just chronicle the presentation; they offer analysis and insight that make them a 'must read', even if you attended the meeting.
• Keith Soltys e-mailed me last year and asked if I would be interested in having a regular 'Technical Writer Toolkit' column. His articles surpassed all my expectations, and best of all, took full advantage of our new web format by including a plethora of links to further information.
• Andrew Brooke held down two portfolios for the STC Toronto Executive but still managed to produce his always useful 'Career Corner' articles. He concludes the series with this month's article on salary negotiation, but will return with something new next year. Stay tuned!
• Robert Milkovich is our chapter president, but still managed to write a thoughtful column each month which often looked at some of the bigger issues of our profession.

In addition to our regular writers, a number of other people contributed to various issues:

• Hillary Edwards wrote a scholarly article on gender trends in technical communication.
• Katrina Gale reported on the October Meeting.
• Isaac Wanzamaa wrote a stylish piece on contract vs regular employment.
• Adrian Blake gave some useful tips on making those dreaded cold calls.
• Kim Van Rooy, Mona Albano and other STC Executive members have contributed articles and ideas. This month we feature another first; Single Sourcing SIG leader Rob Hanna has written a song...

A big thank you to all of our writers for making this newsletter possible. I hope that they can continue to write for us next year... and if you have something to say that other members could find useful or interesting, then I hope you will write for us too. Have a wonderful summer!

Philip Kahn works for Rogers Media and also is the sole proprietor of Digital Jive, a company which provides web design and technical writing services, as well as Macintosh support. He lives off the Danforth with his wife, daughter, dog and a Mac G5... not always in that order.

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STC Awards!

Pacesetter Award
This award recognizes an individual or committee of the Toronto chapter that has shown innovation and creativity related to ideas for or the execution of Toronto STC activities. The winner was:

Philip Kahn
For editing and producing an outstanding newsletter, and for successfully executing a seamless transition from a paper to online format.

The President's Bouquet
This award recognizes members who have made an outstanding contribution to the chapter which has not been recognized by another award. The winners were:

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Meeting Report:

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The Wandering Eye:

A Technical Writer's Toolkit: Usability and Accessibility
By Keith Soltys - keith@soltys.ca

Technical writers sometimes play the role of a user, and they often end up providing advice on usability or accessibility. Even if they don't become full-time usability experts, most writers garner quite a bit of knowledge about usability as part of their work. This month, I'll focus on resources that can help you with usability and accessibility, both in your writing and in software or web development.

The Usability for Technical Communicators page on the Information and Design site provides an overview of the relationship between technical communication and usability and discusses both the skills that writers can use and the skills they might want to develop

The Usable Web is a meta site that contains many links about human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific to the World Wide Web. Craig Marion's Software Design Smorgasbord, contains information and an extensive series of annotated links to sites about human-computer interaction, usability engineering, visualization, multimedia, and similar topics. Each topic area has an introductory article followed by a list of resources.

User Interface Engineering was founded by Jared Spool in the 1980s and the web site contains many of his articles and white papers. Jacob Neilsen is another well-known usability expert. His website, useit.com, contains links to his regular AlertBox column, which is always worth reading. Note that much of the content on these two sites is not free. William Horton is well known to Toronto technical writers and his web site has handouts from most of his presentations. Simple Things Still Work is worth looking at, as are most of the other presentations.

Designing web sites or software that is accessible to users with disabilities is becoming more important, and is mandated by legislation in some jurisdictions. Being very nearsighted, I try to pay some attention to visual accessibility in my documents and web sites. My pet peeve is sites that insist on forcing a font size that's usually about 50 percent too small to be easily readable and also block the standard browser and operating system mechanisms for enlarging the text. Designers who do that should be forced to sit down and read every page on WebAIM.org. WebAIM stands for Web Accessibility in Mind, and after you've had a look at the site you'll have a much better idea of web accessibility issues, tools, and techniques.

Finally, if you're lucky enough to have input into the design of the software you're documenting, you should read Eric Raymond's articles of software usability. Raymond is well known in the open source software movement. In March, he wrote an article based on his experiences trying to configure a printer under Linux, and wrote a follow-up in April, including some of the many comments he received. And after you've read the articles, pass them along to your developers.

Keith Soltys has been working as a technical writer for 16 years, and is currently at the Toronto Stock Exchange. He maintains the Internet Resources for Technical Communicators web site and has recently started a weblog. He lives in Pickering with his wife, two children, a cat, and an ever growing collection of Grateful Dead CDs.

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Career Corner:

Salary Negotiation
By Andrew Brooke - abrooke@insystems.com

I have given a name to my pain, and it is: Salary Negotiation. It is the most painful form of pain that there is. Root canal? No problem. A dislocated shoulder - hey, bring it on. Listening to politicians during the current election campaign? Slightly more painful, but I'll survive. But salary negotiation? Pure torture; a fate worse than death, death being quicker, and only occurring once.

Salary negotiation is one of the final phases of the job hunting journey. You've determined what it is you want to do and where, updated your résumé, networked with others, researched companies, perhaps approaching some of them directly, applied to various jobs, and survived the interview. You've reached the POP: the Point of Pain, the point of negotiating your income.

To help make this a less painful process, I offer the following tactics, adapted from "What Color is Your Parachute?" Note that unless you are a car salesman, negotiation is a very tough skill to master, and takes much hard work and practice.

So, if you really want to learn how to negotiate, stop reading this article, go to your TV and watch the "The World Poker Tour". You will not find a more engrossing or educational show. Salary negotiation is the ultimate poker game. And like "The Gambler" says, you got to know when to hold, when to fold, when to walk away and when to run like hell.

Tactic #1: Avoid Talking Salary Before an Offer

Ideally, you should not discuss salary until you have received a firm job offer. Now, I know that this is a very hard thing to do. Most employers, quite rightly, will want at least a rough idea of how much you'll cost them before they hire you. In fact, given that they may have several qualified candidates to choose from, often the choice will come down to salary.

However, from your point of view, the best thing you can do is not talk about salary until there is an offer. If the interviewer raises the issue of salary before then, a good reply would be something like: "Until you've decided you definitely want me, and I've decided that I would be able to help you with your work here, I think it's too soon to talk about salary"

What if that doesn't work and they still want to know your expected salary? You go to your second response, which is "I'll be happy to discuss salary, but first can you help me understand more what this job involves?"

After that, if the interviewer still insists on knowing your salary (can't you just feel the pain?), you can state a range, for example, "I'm looking for something in the $45,000 to $55,000 range." More about ranges later.

Tactic #2: Avoid Being the First to Mention Numbers

The general rule is: whoever mentions a figure first loses. So another strategy, if you are asked to state your salary (either before or after a job offer) is turn the question around and say "What kind of salary did you have in mind?" You can also say: "Since you created this position, I assume you'd have a figure in mind, and I'd be interested to know what it is." It can take nerves of steel to do this, which is why it's important to practice this with friends or family if you can.

Tactic #3: Research Your Range

Before you can state a range, you need to have a good idea of what other people at your level are making. Fortunately, the STC produces a very detailed salary survey for both Canada and the U.S.

If you look at page 6 of the last survey (from 2003), you'll see the average salary figures based on a variety of factors: employment level, education, sex, age, and years of experience. The most important factors are employment level and years of experience. You can use either of these as a basis to determine your salary range. The employment level is probably the most relevant and useful, and has the most number of ranges.

Let's say you are applying for a mid-level, non-supervisory position. This has an average salary of $51,490. The average salary of the next level up is $58,200. Therefore the range is $51,490 to $58,200.

But you would never state such precise numbers in a range - generally you would round to the nearest thousand, or in some cases, the nearest 5,000 or 10,000. So you could restate this range as $52,000 to $58,000 or, for even more flexibility, $50,000 to $60,000.

Other sources for salary ranges include business publications, want ads, the STC job bank and fellow writers.

Tactic #4: Hone, Hone in the Range!

What you want to do is "hook in" your range to the one that the employer has in mind. If the employer is expecting to pay $45,000 to $50,000, the range you'd want to give is around $42,000 to $53,000. The lowest end of your range is lower than their lowest number, but the highest number in you range is higher than their highest number.

Now, if you can get the employee to state a number (or range), it will often be at the low end of the range you had in mind, or even below it. This is where the tough negotiating skills come into play. You need to state your range and explain it is justified because:

• you are so productive
• you've always improved the quality of the projects you've worked on
• you've streamlined processes and procedures
• you're such a wonderful human being, a great humanitarian, and you smell nice

That is, you need to say you deserve more money because you've lowered costs. As tech writers, we may not be able to increase revenues much (at least not directly) but we can have a direct effect on cutting expenses. That's why it's critical to list your cost-savings accomplishments, and, if possible, show them through your work samples.

Tactic #5: Close the "Sale"

If the stars align and by some miracle you and the company can agree on a salary - great! But don't forget all the other things that make up your employment package:

• vacation time (usually negotiable)
• medical and dental insurance (less negotiable - companies often have fixed plans)
• training allowance (some companies will offer to pay for training course)
• flextime work schedule
• telecommuting options
• stock options (believe it or not, these still actually mean something in some places)

You want to get as much of this in writing as possible, in a letter of agreement or employment contract. As Sam Goldwyn said: "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." The road to hell is paved with unwritten promises.

Tactic #6: Evaluate the Offer

Once you've received an offer with all the details listed above, it's time to do some hard thinking. Don't be afraid to say you'd like a couple of days to think about it in order to discuss it with your family or colleagues.

You need to ask yourself:

• Do you like the work this job involves?
• Do you like the company and corporate atmosphere or culture?
• What do you think of your potential boss? Are they someone you can work with?
• Is the job challenging enough to meet your needs, but not so overwhelming that you would burn out?
• Is the total compensation they are offering enough?

And most importantly: Are you sure you want this job? If not, don't be afraid to turn it down. As long as you persevere in your hunt, it won't be the last job offer you'll ever get.

Tactic #7: Follow the Job Hunter's Philosophy

Evaluate the offer, make your decision, accept it and never look back. Nothing is more tragic than the words "I should have…" Don't put yourself in a position where you later say: "I should have taken that job" or "I should have turned down that job" or "I should have asked for more money." Regret and second-guessing will crash your mind as badly as an old hard drive.

Your career path will reflect the sum total of the choices you make. This is a view that must permeate the management of your career. Job hunting is one of the hardest, most stressful, most draining and most depressing things we have to endure. But it doesn't always have to be. More important than what happens to us in our job hunt, and indeed, in our lives, is how we respond to it. As Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in "Man's Search for Meaning":

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

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Have a great summer. When this column returns, it will take on a new form. What will it be? You'll have to wait until the fall to see…

Andrew Brooke (abrooke@insystems.com) is a full-time technical writer at InSystems and maintains a technical writing and career management website.

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From the President's Desk:

Thanks for Another Great Year
STC Toronto President Robert Milkovich - robert.milkovich@sympatico.ca

It’s June and the end of another great season at STC Toronto. And the June meetings is one of my favourite meetings – not because summer break is upon us, but because it is the time that I get to thank all those who gave of their time and talents to make this chapter one of the most dynamic in all of STC.

We will give chapter awards to individuals who have made a difference at our June meeting and then publish the results on our web site. We often don’t stop and think about the impact that these volunteers have on the community, but it’s big. For example, there are many technical communicators in the GTA who do not belong to the STC. Yet they benefit from the services of our chapter either by attending meetings and education events, using the web site, or getting jobs through our job bank.

Then there are the employers who post jobs on our web site to find people who do what we do. Our chapter volunteers have helped link thousands of employers and technical communicators together. Hundreds of students and young people have received advice and career direction from our volunteers at career days, answering emails, and by coming to meetings.

So you see, we really do have a dedicated, motivated group of amazing people who have helped literally thousands of people. It’s gratifying to see that, despite hard times in the economy and our industries, people are still willing to give and help. Be sure to check our web site to find out who the award winners are, and think of them the next time you use a service provided by our chapter.

Thanks everyone for a wonderful 2003-2004 season, and see you at our next meeting in September!

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A Single Sourcing Song:

(We saved 'em coin that) Jingle Jangle Jingles
Written (and Performed on Request) by Ron Hanna - Rob.Hanna@ascan.ca

The other day I was walking to the subway with a pocket full of change; self-conscious of the loud rattle; thinking about an upcoming presentation on the benefits of single-sourcing. It was then I was struck with a wee bit of inspiration:

(We saved 'em coin that) Jingle Jangle Jingles
Original Lyrics here

We saved 'em coin that jingle, jangle, jingles
As we go struttin' merrily along
Cause they say the source we use is single
So you know we can't go very far from wrong
Oh wo the pain. We were insane
Til we finally jus' got fed up and we moved from Word to Frame.

We saved 'em coin that jingle, jangle, jingles
As we go struttin' merrily along
Cause they say the source we use is single
So you know we can't go very far from wrong.

No need to fret. Cause we're all set
To publish to print and PDF and even to the Net.

We saved 'em coin that jingle, jangle, jingles
As we go struttin' merrily along
Cause they say the source we use is single
So you know we can't go very far from wrong.

Oh we're no fools. Played by the rules
Cause it's all in how you do it - it ain't about the tools.

We saved 'em coin that jingle, jangle, jingles
As we go struttin' merrily along
Cause they say the source we use is single
So you know we can't go very far from wrong.

And that's how we found the time to write this song
So we'll jus' keep on jingling along.

Rob Hanna 2004
with humble apologies to Frank Loesser, Joseph J. Lilley and Gene Autry

In case you are wondering, I did not sing this ditty at my presentation. But I encourage you to feel free to break out this song anytime you want to sell someone on the benefits of single-sourcing.

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About the STC:

The Society for Technical Communication is an individual membership organization dedicated to advancing the arts and sciences of technical communication. It is the largest organization of its type in the world. Its 25,000 members include technical writers and editors, content developers, documentation specialists, technical illustrators, instructional designers, academics, information architects, usability and human factors professionals, visual designers, Web designers and developers, and translators - anyone whose work makes technical information available to those who need it.

The STC Toronto Chapter was founded in 1959 (then the Society of Technical Writers) and is the largest chapter in Canada.

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About this Newsletter:

This newsletter is produced monthly by the STC Toronto Chapter and is sent to all registered members. We will not share nor sell our address list and will only send e-mails with information we believe to be useful and relevant to our members.

Our mailing list comes directly from the STC, so if you want to receive the newsletter at another address you will need to login to their members profile section and update your information.

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