We have met the future, and it is us

A lot of bloggers, including yours truly, have spilled a lot of ink (electrons?) pondering the question, What does the future hold for technical communication?

Sarah Maddox, one of the most insightful technical communicators you’ll ever
meet, recently turned the question on its head.

Image source: Sarah Maddox (ffeathers.wordpress.com)

At her keynote address at the tcworld India conference last month, Sarah asserted that the future is technical communication — and then made a strong case for why that’s so.

The summary of Sarah’s talk, and her accompanying slides, are two of the best things you’ll read all week.

Here’s a paraphrase of what she said.

Our #techcomm mission statement

Here’s our new mission statement.

Few sentences are more likely to send a professional community into full-on rewrite mode, sharpening their red pencils, adding a nip here and a tuck there. All the more so when the members of the community are technical writers.

Sarah Maddox just proposed a mission statement for technical writers, and it’s a good one:

Make complex goals achievable within our customer’s context

It’s good because it’s direct and it provides a vision of what we’re all about. It’s good because the word customer reminds us that we’re engaged in a business and the customer (paying or prospective) is paramount. It’s good because there’s no bafflegab like charging paradigms or maximizing synergies.

Still… Here comes my red pencil.