Technical writers as information integrators

In an earlier post, I compared my work as a technical writer with Island hopping: going from one island to another. The truth is that to perform our job well we need information from different sources within an organization. And on the other hand people from different parts of the organization have a need for our skills when it comes to writing and presenting information. In a way we therefor function as information integrator within the organization: gathering information from different platforms and sources and creating output for different depatments (internal customers) and in different formats.


As an example: When I created the documentation for my current customer, I gathered information about the product from different deparments and developed the on-line help. As a result, the Sales department became aware of my presence, noticed the quality of the information and asked me to create the Sales information. Currently I am working on a structure for the product specifications. In this role I am becoming more and more an in- and output box. Put in the raw information in any format and get the information you need for a specified audience and in a customized format.

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