Tech Comm Trends: Providing Value as a Generalist in a Sea of Specialists

Trends in technical communication can be hard to decipher, even when looking at data. But one underlying trend is that technology seems to be getting more specialized and complex. This trend toward specialization is driving up the value of technical knowledge, making it more prized than writing skills. At the same time, writers are often wearing multiple hats as they work on a variety of generalist writing tasks and a diversity of technical projects. The requirement to be both specialist and generalist makes tech comm a particularly challenging field to navigate. Join Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and his special guest, Tom Johnson, for this free one-hour webinar. Tom will talk about the growing complexity in the technology landscape that is ratcheting up the importance of technical knowledge in organizations, and overshadowing writing skills. Creating documentation is becoming more of a collaborative effort with engineers due to the increasing level of complexity and specialization in the technology landscape.Specialized knowledge about writing and language doesn't seem to have as much weight in the workplace as technical knowledge. Join Scott and Tom for a lively discussion about these recent trends in tech comm. ABOUT TOM JOHNSON Tom Johnson is a senior technical writer for Amazon in Sunnyvale, California, who is best known for his blog “I’d Rather Be Writing,” on technical communication topics. The blog has one of the largest followings of technical communicators online. Additionally, Tom has created an extensive web API documentation course that has helped hundreds of technical writers transition into API documentation. Lately, he has been working on a series of essays around information design (http://idratherbewriting.com/simplifying-complexity) for simplifying complexity. Tom has given more than 90 presentations over the past decade at various technical communication events.