PROFILE FOR INTERVIEW
Yuan---A Chinese TC who strives for the future of TC in China
Interviewer: What’s your current job (job title, department, company)?
Yuan: My job title is technical writer, my department is R&D, and my company is Packetfront Software.
Interviewer: How long have you been at this position? What did you do before this position?
Yuan: I have been at this position since 2010. Before this position, I was a technical writer in Alcatel-Lucent.
Interviewer: What’s your educational background (college, graduate school, year of graduation, field of study, institution name, etc.)
Yuan: I graduated at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (电子科技大学) at 2004, and my major is telecommunication/English.
Interviewer: Do you consider yourself a technical communicator?
How do you define technical communication?
Yuan: Yes. This is my definition: http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fi-JSJspn8-QjxrDeyqrUw.
Interviewer: When, where, how did your first technical communication experience start?
What was your biggest challenge then? How did you overcome it?
Yuan: I started my first TC experience in 2006 at Huawei as a technical writer. My biggest challenge is that in my current company and position, how to break through in routine work and how to define and perform my own responsibilities without supervision and guidance. This is the main reason that I founded Shanghai Association of Technical Communicators (SATC, TC沪联) with other founders.
Interviewer: What kind of professional development or training have you received so far? When, where, how?
Yuan: 2011 STC online course: technical communication 101
2012 STC online course: technical communication 201
and tekom TC training course
Interviewer: What does a typical day of a technical writer/communicator look like?
Yuan: Research, meeting, Q&A session with SME (subject matter expert), writing & illustration (writing is just a small part of daily activities).
Interviewer: Do you work alone or do you have to collaborate with others? Whom do you mostly work with?
Yuan: I’m the lone writer in the company, however I communicate and collaborate with others every day, including, developers, testers, project managers, and marketing personnel.
Interviewer: What kind of documents or project deliverables do you produce?
Yuan: Release Notes, User Manual, Installation and Configuration Guide, System Administrator Guide, Integration Guide, Network Administrator Guide, API Reference, and so on.
Interviewer: What are your top five most frequently used writing tools?
Yuan: Frame Maker, Illustrator, Power point, Pic pick, and Git.
Interviewer: How much time do you spend in writing each day? What do you write in addition to the documents you mentioned earlier?
Yuan: About 3 hours. Training materials, marketing materials, etc.
Interviewer: How does the writing quality assurance process look like at your work place?
Yuan: Review and usability test.
Interviewer: What do you think are the core competencies for a TW in China?
Yuan: From my point of view, TC is not rocket science, however you need very comprehensive skills to do a good job. The core competencies are covered in this article: http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/o3zx6IGWQCdvv40kgqb1Bg.
Interviewer: What do you think are the main obstacles for the development of TC in China?
Yuan: Emphasis and support on TC from the management level is far from enough. The cause might be rooted in the Chinese culture, social habits, lack of laws and standards, immature economic development, and low cost in manpower.
Interviewer: What do you think are the opportunities for technical communicators in China?
Yuan: Being more proactive to take responsibilities of product information management in the whole product lifecycle.