by Will Kelly

The technical writer’s 5 best friends

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Technical writers need to expand their personal and professional friends because they need to. Building a strong personal and professional network
1. The product manager
The product manager can be the technical writer’s best friend or worst enemy. Knowing a competent product manager can aid technical writers to better understand the product they are documenting.
On the dark side, when faced with incompetent product management, a technical writer with their grounding in writing product requirements and functional specifications can help be a voice of reason during the triage of ambiguous or plain technically unfeasible requirements.
2. The senior DBA/database architect
The whole world and many of today’s leading-edge web applications run on databases making a senior DBA and database architect a valuable friend indeed.
3, The storage area network engineer
Let’s face it all the business world’s data (and secrets) live on one SAN or another.
4, The financial controller
It never hurts to know the person who handles the money and processes the checks. This is true for employees not just freelancers and independent contractors.
5. The solution architect
Solution architects and network architects can be valuable friends of the technical writer because of their responsibilities over the design of solutions.
Who are your five best friends as a technical writer?

 

Photo by Drew Farwell on Unsplash

by Will Kelly

Installing Drupal: Lessons Learned

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Here are some lessons I learned a few years back when I was installing Drupal for the first time.  It was a rather mixed experience.  I tore it all down the other weekend and started over, not as much out of disappointment, but to knock the kinks out of my first deployment.

Here are some lessons I learned:

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by Will Kelly

A technical writer’s guide to NDAs

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I was cleaning out my home office recently and came across a collection of Non-Disclosure (NDA) Agreements that I’ve signed over the years as a technical writer. A quick leaf through of the folder made it clear that many of the NDAs were much the same if not identical.
As a tech industry contractor or employee, you need to consider the following about NDAs:

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by Will Kelly

From print books to the Kindle: My evolution

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Print books have always been a source of comfort for me. When I was a child, I was an avid reader right down to the large selection of hardbound classics handed down to me from my grandmother. Reading was also a favorite pastime when I was growing. In college, I was an English major finally sealing my fate with reading and the printed word.

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by Will Kelly

Indecision and the evolution of my personal websites

kaitlyn-baker-422999-unsplashYears ago, I thought it was a good idea to publish both a professional website and a personal blog. It was around the time I was able to purchase willkelly.com and willkelly.org. I was a contract technical writer and figured that the sites would help people find me in search results. Then reality set in…

For me at least, the first casualty of billable work is personal publishing. As time went on, I grew less dedicated to my personal blog because of a busy schedule and some life events. Eventually, I took my personal blog offline after the hosting provider didn’t notify me about some backend issues.

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by Will Kelly

A lesson I learned as a contract technical writer

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As a favor to an old friend,  I spoke to one of their friend’s kids who got laid off and was forced to go into contract IT work so they could keep paying the bills.

Here is one question and answer that stuck out from our phone call:

Them: What do you find true about contracting?

Me: The very people who will criticize you for the tiniest mistake will be the same people who take credit for your successes and good ideas after your contract gig ends.

Unfortunately, depending on the organization, it happens to full-time employees too.