View
From The Inside
I
did not know where I would land when I decided to give
up my job as a marketing executive and started a career
as a technical writer. I am an electronics engineer and
postgraduate in marketing management. I had only two years
of working experience when I jumped into technical writing.
In the past seven years, I have learnt many good and bad
lessons. Solving problems was, and will continue to be,
a matter of survival. During the first year, my business
generation was Rs 6,000. Today, my little enterprise,
Technowrites (www.technowrites.com), has gained some strength
and gained respect in the niche market segment. Technowrites
is a private limited company having strength of 10. In
the period April 2000-March 2001, we generated more than
Rs 1 crore worth of business.
Some of our plus points are: ability to take high risk;
presence in a network of professionals; presence in the
local and overseas market; repeat orders and addition
to services portfolio; and the ability to benchmark processes
and refine them.
I started with user guides. As we built a team, we started
offering several value-added services like translation,
web content development and computer-based training development.
Like IT, Indians have an opportunity to dominate technical
writing. Here are some good reasons,
- Indians
are amongst the best English-speaking people in
the world. Most of our education system is in English.
- We
already have a very strong and established IT Industry.
Technical Writers can play a key role in this industry.
The demand for good technical will continue to soar.
My personal opinion is that there should be one
Technical Writer for 30 Programmers. While we have
a few lakhs of programmers today, Technical Writers
could be only a few hundreds. So there are at least
a few thousand vacancies to be filled in.
- Translation
Industry in India has rich talent pool (though not
very organised). We can meet the needs of translating
documents across many languages. Technical writing
can develop a synergy with translation services.
- Awareness
about Technical Writing is increasing. There are
a few institutes or companies offering Training
in Technical Writing. This should develop further
in next few years.
- Professional
associations like India Chapter of Society for Technical
Communication are creating the right atmosphere
where technical communicators can come together
and share their experiences.
- There
is a lot of writing to be done, if you are seriously
interested in it! You need to develop the core skill
of writing and develop ability to work with tools
like MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS FrontPage, Frame
Maker, RoboHELP or Dreameweaver. Those of you considering
taking up technical writing as a career can look
forward to the STC India Conference planned in Bangalore
in December 2003.
Makarand
is also TWIN list owner
He can be contacted on mp@vsnl.com
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