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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Front Runner Presents:
Are You on the Endangered Species List?
by Joyce Aldrich

I’m quite sure the dinosaurs didn’t know what hit them. They most likely had no idea and no warning that something was hurtling through space, about to disturb their dinner.

While riding the subway home, this week, I took particular notice of the Microsoft ads, which I haven’t really been paying too much attention to, until recently.

The ads, featuring business personnel sporting dinosaur heads, with captions like “Microsoft has evolved...Have you?” and “How was I to know there was a version 17B.” are thought provoking. Although Microsoft’s ad campaign isn’t exactly a comet speeding through space, it is asking us to look at how effective we are at work and if what we’re doing will have staying power in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

What’s on our horizon? Big changes, it would seem, are imminent.

As a business species, who will be the ones to evolve and who will become extinct? Everything comes down to survival of the fittest, so who is most likely to survive in what Microsoft has termed “the new world of work?” Before the age of personal computers, (let’s call it the pre-Simon times,
referring, of course, and in honour of the first personal computer, named Simon, designed in 1949) there were well-established business practices and systems to support those business practices. It was a simpler time.

Edmond C. Berkeley, who conceived the idea of Simon, wrote in his book “Giant Brains, or Machines That Think,” "We shall now consider how we can design a very simple machine that will think... Let us call it Simon, because of its predecessor, Simple Simon... Simon is so simple and so small in fact that it could be built to fill up less space than a grocery-store box; about four cubic feet....It may seem that a simple model of a mechanical brain like Simon is of no great practical use. On the contrary, Simon has the same use in instruction as a set of simple chemical experiments has:
to stimulate thinking and understanding, and to produce training and skill. A training course on mechanical brains could very well include the construction of a simple model mechanical brain, as an exercise.

This vision has inspired others to develop systems that have evolved into the intricate networks we use, today. And, what Edmond Berkeley had suggested as experimentation and an exercise, has become the world of IT.

Like the first creature crawling out of the seas, Simon was the first footprint of many systems that have beaten a path to almost every business community on the globe.

In the grand scheme of things, working with “giant brains and machines that think” has presented some perplexing problems. After all, these are machines, and high maintenance ones, at that. Therefore, practices, rituals and in some cases, obsessions have been implemented in order to contain and control the endless streams of data flowing through and out of them. Oops, did I say “them?”

Yup! Our machines are getting smarter and artificial intelligence is a comin’...no doubt. So, what about us!?

Microsoft’s initiative to meet the inevitable and palpable changes in how we do business is allowing many to breathe a sigh of relief. But what will these changes mean?

Quite simply, it’s going to mean giving the end-user a product that is easily accessible, with stronger core infrastructure that facilitates a real ease of workflow... unhampered by IT idiosyncrasies.

It’s going to mean greater cooperation between the IT departments and the common folk who actually use the systems on a daily basis.

It’s going to mean the importance a go-between or “Hybrid” who can communicate with both the IT and business types, understanding the “what do we do and how to do we do it” of IT and the “why do we do it and how will it impact our bottom line” of Business.

This “Hybrid,” which will evolve out of the primordial soup of the current world of computer technology, will be instrumental in assessing needs, addressing frustrations and providing solutions for application software. This “Hybrid” will ask, “What do you want to do with your program that you’re not doing now?” “What is frustrating you?”

To that end, the “Hybrid” will determine what % of existing training is actually applicable, providing interactive, customized training that will have the features and techniques that are pertinent to both IT and the end-user.

It’s going to be a meeting of minds, both mechanical and human. Sound a little sci-fi? No, it’s just about evolving.

Microsoft is leading the way, hacking through overgrown jungles of information, outdated systems, end-user frustration while working with these systems and IT protectionism, resulting in shared communication.

As for the “Hybrid,” that would be us. At Front Runner we act as an interface between IT and end-users, building confidence in our clients by teaching them how to get the most out of their software, focusing on specific needs. We understand that everything is a time issue and that you just want to get your work done. Every business is looking for a simpler solution and to be more productive.

Now, take a deep breath and take some time to think about what would make your job easier. Make a “wish” list and then a “to do” list... and, before it’s too late...get off the “endangered species” list!

As for Simon, here’s what Edmond Berkeley had to say, in 1950, about its future:

"Simon has two futures. In first place Simon can grow. With another chassis and some wiring and engineering, the machine will be able to compute decimally, perhaps in six months more, we may be able to have it working on real problems. In the second place, Simon may start a fad of building baby mechanical brains, similar to the hobby of building crystal radio sets that swept the country in the 1920's."

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For information on how to get the most out of your software:

Front Runner Publishing Solutions Inc.
21 St. Clair Avenue East,
Suite 600,
Toronto, Ontario
M4T 1L8

Tel.(416) 515-0155

Email info@front-runner.com
Website www.front-runner.com

“Learn what you wish you’d known yesterday!”