With My Interests

I really am blessed to work where I work. I was walking in this AM and a co-worker held the door for me. She said, "I know you belong here." I said, "It took a long time to get here figuratively and literally" and she chuckled. I walked from my house to Premier Automotive this AM to pick up the GMC Canyon since it had a new battery, an oil change, and snow tires put on yesterday - that was the 'literal' part. I worked in software documentation for 20 years, 11 months, 2 weeks, 2 days (7655 days). I'd like to describe the world I am in at work.

It's a world of working with RoboHelp, thinking about Knowledge Management, and planning for the recovery after a disaster (disaster recovery documentation). There was an email this AM about how professionals with my interests are watching a list of these five videos:

---

---

Starting at the top and working down,

1. I'm not thinking about DITA, chatbots, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). 
2. I'm not sold on the premise that content should "delight" due to the philosophy that the writing I do when I am 'technical writing' is not a romance novel; it's not a poem; it's certainly not a Shakespeare stage production. It is telling someone reading the documentation what to do after a disaster in order to restore critical systems.
3. I'm not sold on how I can establish a consistent tone throughout all of the disaster recovery documentation with a consistent tone with as many people as there are writing the Word files or creating the CSV files or capturing JPG files or creating PDFs or creating PPT files or creating TXT files or creating VSD files or creating XLS files - I suppose I could create a consistent 'tone' for the names of the ZIP files, but that may just be a fool's errand.
4. I'm not thinking about adding a lot of images and videos. 
5. I'm not thinking about how to validate the disaster recovery documentation because the individual teams in my department are responsible for actually maintaining it and ensuring its technical accuracy, not me.

To elaborate more on the fifth idea above, let me tell you about a recent sub-project. I am on a committee that meets and talks about Business Continuity documentation. It is led by one of our Senior Directors. During one of the meetings, I learned that the Business Continuity documentation Earlier this month. She had 16 Word documents on a SharePoint site. Some are the same I have already integrated into my RoboHelp project; some are not. I thought it would make sense to create a single Word file with all 16 of those files and replace the 16 individual files with a single file.

---

---

Anyways, after sending the Senior Director the file, she noticed that there was obsolete information and so I responded, after doing some research.

---

---

Here's the point: because I don't "own" the content, I don't feel like I can just go and remove the obsolete information from the Word file. I didn't write it; I don't own it. This is 1000% percent different from the work I did as a software documentation technical writer because I was the owner of the software documentation I wrote and edited. I have been doing this new approach to technical writing for 1 year, 8 months, 2 weeks, 1 day (625 days) so I have much more experience 'owning' content than 'not owning' content. It's fun and exciting!

Two more brief work-related topics:

1. A friend of mine that I worked with at Pearson was laid off from Pearson and then hired at ACT. I found out yesterday that he was let go from ACT - my friend got a package from him yesterday at his house. Being on a job hunt absolutely SUCKS and I wish him the best and that his job hunt is a small blip. I was told he has an interview with a different area within ACT later this week.
2. Without disclosing any proprietary information, I can say that there are changes that may impact my work that involve working with another group. I am excited to say that one of the critical systems in the disaster recovery documentation has presented an interesting opportunity to begin working with that group. To that effect, I have a meeting tomorrow at 10:30 AM with a co-worker in my department and four in the other technology group. 
• I have a monthly status meeting with my manager's manager and other Senior Directors about the disaster recovery project scheduled for Thursday afternoon at 4. I happened to see my manager's manager yesterday and briefly mentioned to him that I have the meeting tomorrow. He was very positive about my initiative in working with the other group, which I was happy to hear. He then told me to tell him how the meeting goes. Since I have the meeting tomorrow, I will use that meeting to report about the meeting at 9:30 AM.

Editor's Note: This information has been released to the public: https://oneit.uiowa.edu/news/hcis-and-oneit-leaders-share-plans-integrate-it-across-campus