Having come to technical publishing from an academic environment it’s perhaps not surprising that I regard the role of a technical author as being itself an educational role. For one thing, learning is central to your work because you’re constantly learning new systems. And for another, whether you are developing user guides or training presentations, these are all in effect learning resources which aim to assist in the transfer of knowledge.

I’d had little experience of software and other publishing technologies before I started work as a technical author, and this made me all the more eager to learn and take on board new skills. Sometimes opportunities for learning new publishing skills would present themselves at work, such as at one company where in the absence of resources for the development of multimedia training, I taught myself to produce animated multimedia presentations using Flash, and also taught myself to draw using a vector drawing application in order to supply necessary graphics.

Outside of work, I’ve constantly developed my skills by buying books and teaching myself. This has particularly been the case with my web development skills, which I first learned independently of work, but which have consequently provided me with further work opportunities. As a result of all this, I have come to a point where I can develop documentation in any format, and this is itself important because people learn in different ways and so should have a range of learning resources available to them.