I’m thrilled to introduce myself as Executive Editor of Intercom. It’s a chance to return to my early-career roots in magazine publishing, which has turned out to be nostalgic and familiar in all the best ways during the upheaval of “these unusual times.”
When it came time to choose the topic for my first issue of Intercom, I immediately thought of project management. While it’s certainly a profession in its own right, project management skills are also a cornerstone of successful tech comm projects. I can honestly trace most of my career success to the project management skills that I learned early in my career in magazines, and went on to develop through a combination of in-house experience and business ownership.
In this issue, we’re talking about the impact of project management skills on our careers. How can we use these tools to be successful, take the next professional steps, and make ourselves valuable to employers?
We have five excellent feature articles in this issue. Vivian Aschwanden talks about how learning the language of project management can enhance your tech comm toolkit; Jackie Damrau shows how she builds strong remote teams using her skills as a certified project manager; Jessie Mallory looks at how her project management experience made her an in-demand employee; Debra Kahn examines the intersections between content strategy and project management; and Bernard Aschwanden shows how project management best practices come together when building a strong tech comm team.
And of course, we can’t forget our columnists.
- In “Content Technologies,” Cruce Saunders echoes the theme of the issue to discuss how managing content is truly a team sport.
- Michelle Corbin’s “Editing Matters” column gives us insights into how to control the chaos in our editing projects.
- And last but not least, after five years of writing “Ask a Manager,” Kit Brown-Hoekstra and Cindy Currie say farewell with a final column that addresses localization and risk management—the latter being on everyone’s mind after the volatility of the past year. Many thanks to both for their longtime contributions to Intercom.
If you have suggestions for future issues of Intercom, don’t hesitate to contact me at intercom-editor@stc.org. I’m always looking for new ideas and new voices as we explore the opportunities and challenges in the world of technical communication.
Alisa Bonsignore
(she/her)
