By Elizabeth Brewer
Ron Blicq has had a very interesting career. Although he did not attend college, he had the opportunity to work as a technical editor in the Royal Air Force and for an engineering firm. He eventually used the knowledge he had acquired throughout his extensive career and taught at a technical college. Aside from his professional career, Ron enjoys writing plays on the side and has had 13 produced and performed around the world.
I began our interview by mentioning that in my background research on him, I had noticed how very diverse his career had been. He noted that he had been very lucky and really enjoyed his experiences, from his background in industry all the way to teaching at a local college in Winnipeg. After our introductions, I asked some questions to get some basic background about Ron’s career path.
Elizabeth Brewer: Why did you choose to go into technical communication and was it your first choice?
Ron: I didn’t. I didn’t choose to. I was exposed to it when I was a flyer in the Air Force, and you were given other jobs to do, and I was part of a specialist navigation institute. I ran the publications unit knowing nothing about technical communication.
Ron went on to explain that he had volunteered for the Canadian Air Force after finishing high school and had fought in World War II in Europe. He explained that his role as a flyer specifically involved many things. He was a navigator, radio operator, and bombardier. Then he was given other jobs to do, such as working with the publications unit.
Elizabeth: Okay, so what did that position entail?
Ron: It involved helping engineers and other navigators write instruction manuals and operating manuals for what were new technologies at that time. After they wrote the manuals, I would edit them. So, I really became a technical editor before I became a technical writer.
Elizabeth: How did all of that come about? Did it fall into your lap?
Ron: Yes, it fell into my lap. I was in the Air Force and you did what you were told.
Ron continued to share that, after the war, he transferred to the British Royal Air Force and flew with them for almost 15 years. When he left the Air Force, he joined a firm that involved maintaining the defense lines across northern Canada. Part of that job involved writing reports for the US Air Force. The reports documented the status of work being done to maintain and upgrade the defense bases comprising what were known as the Pinetree and Mid-Canada Lines across the width of Canada. It also included writing proposals for new work.
As the conversation continued, Ron noted that his first experience with technical communication involved technical editing, and later on he moved to writing. He explained that he learned to edit documents on the job while he was in the Royal Air Force, and then later from the IEEE Professional Communication Society and STC.
Elizabeth: Did you enjoy the editing or writing more?
Ron: About 50/50. But I particularly liked the editing part because I liked tweaking words. The writing part came much later, but I will explain that later on.
Experience
I asked Ron whether he had ever had the opportunity to attend school anywhere. He replied that once he had left the Air Force, he continued his career at an engineering firm called CAE Industries LTD and gained more experience, so he never attended college. He then talked specifically about why experience is so important.
Ron: Experience is very useful. Learning things on the job really is important. I applaud the courses that are available to you now, but you learn an immense number of things on the job.
Elizabeth: I guess that ties in with the next question. Since you have had experience both in industry (the Air Force and an engineering firm) and as an educator, do you think that having the background in industry is important if you are going to become a professor within the field?
Ron: Yes, I think the industrial experience helps immensely. Although my background was in aviation and electronics, when I went to work at the college in Canada, I was assigned to the civil engineering students. Since I was used to technical terminology and the way that technical people think, the assignment didn’t throw me. That’s why I think that it’s useful for you as a technical communicator to have some background experience in an industry.
For example, you may go into gyroscope technology. Learn that field; then, when you go somewhere else, all of that information helps, even though the two jobs might not be related. I also taught childhood education students how to write observations. You wouldn’t think so, but my experience writing technical documents was of great help in teaching them.
Ron shared that his background in technical communication with both the Air Force and at the engineering firm helped him when it came to teaching the college students that were studying early childhood education. He explained that being able to focus the information and being able to separate what you would like to write about from what people need to hear helped immensely. Essentially, he was saying that knowing how to tailor the message to meet the needs of the audience helped significantly. That is part of the reason why he was asked to teach the childhood education students. He provided a specific example about what he meant.
Ron: For example, when childhood education students write an observation on a child involving child abuse, including an opinion or personal thought will result in the report being thrown out of court. They can deal only with facts, so there is a really close connection between these kinds of reports and technical communication.
I then continued to ask Ron which group he enjoyed teaching more, the civil engineering students or the early childhood education students? He responded that he enjoyed teaching technical communication to engineering technology students because that was natural to him, but he also enjoyed teaching the childhood education students because they wanted to write from the heart but had to learn to write from the mind, from what they saw. He said it was about 50/50, with a slight edge to the childhood education students.
Professional Organizations
The interview soon moved into a conversation about the different professional organizations that Ron had been a part of, as well as his recommendations. I wanted to find out which had benefitted him the most, and which societies he would suggest for someone like me who is just starting out in the field.
Elizabeth: Which professional organizations have you been involved in and which ones provided you with the most professional development opportunities as well as personal satisfaction?
Ron: As soon as I got into the engineering field with CAE Industries Ltd, which I worked for after the Air Force, I joined the IEEE Professional Communication Society. In the early years, and for many years, it was the one that I got the most out of. The second one would be STC. The third one would be ISTC, the Institute for Scientific and Technical Communication in the United Kingdom. I think they do the best quality work as an organization, but they are not the one that I had the most experience with. I have been to their conferences, and they do beautiful work. The last one would be the ATTW, the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. Can I add something to that from your point of view?
Elizabeth: Absolutely!
Ron: I recommend that anybody who is involved in technical communication should join one of these societies. Join two in fact. Don’t just be a belonger, but be an active member of them. Volunteer for positions. That is how you get to know people and learn what other people in the field are doing. I also recommend belonging to an engineering or technical organization in the field in which you are working. One goes with the other. When you are in the technical organization and you go to their conferences, you can offer a paper or presentation on how to communicate well with your peers inside your organization, and you start getting known.
Ron noted that although he wasn’t trying to be known, submitting papers and presenting at conferences worked really well for him. He also mentioned that the opportunity that the organizations gave him to get to know people really helped with networking and then eventually getting information that helped him in his career.
Evolution of Technical Communication
We soon moved into discussing how technical communication has evolved since he started his career.
Elizabeth: How did your role as a technical communicator evolve over your career?
Ron: First of all, I didn’t know it was evolving when I was in the Air Force. When I came out, I needed to find a job in Winnipeg. In 1957, there were no technical communicators in the city. This company called CAE Industries needed an editor for all of the manuals they were writing. I fell into it, and this gave me a double advantage. I had grown accustomed to the British standards for technical writing and then was exposed to the American standards. Now I can write in both domains. I only realized I was being a technical communicator when I was at the firm I worked for here in Winnipeg. It was from there that I was invited to go and teach at the college in Canada.
Elizabeth: What are some major differences you see in the jobs that are available in technical communication today versus when you began your career?
Ron: I can see more and more that the technical communicator becomes a project manager. Originally the product would be made, and then they would bring somebody in to do the technical writing. It is much better for you as a technical communicator to be there from the beginning and see how the product and the accompanying documentation grow. Your input will often be more valuable because you can see things that the product developers don’t see.
I mentioned that one of the readings for my class discussed how the title “technical writer” can sometimes carry a negative connotation. I asked Ron if he had experienced this problem in his career. He said that he had and explained that it was because nobody knew what technical writers were.
I also asked specifically about technology and the changes it has brought to technical communication over the years. Without hesitation, Ron said that word processing has been the biggest change. He explained that it has been both good and bad. He said that it was good because of the ease that it brings to the writing process. However, he also explained that it has been bad because we miss more when proofreading on screen than we do when we read a hard copy.
International Experience
Much of Ron’s experience has been international, so he was able to share the differences he had seen between the technical communication field as we know it in the United States versus the technical communication field internationally.
Elizabeth: We’ve already talked a bit about your international work, but are there any notable differences compared to the domestic field of technical communication?
Ron: Overall, no, but be aware that you have to allow for the differences in the way they think and speak in each country. Also, be aware that punctuation is different in different countries. A simple example is that in the United States and in Canada, we use double quotation marks, but in Europe they use single quotation marks. Also in the United Kingdom, the period at the end of the quotation mark tends to go outside, when in the United States it goes on the inside. There is a myriad of little things that we don’t realize. It is not the business of technical communication itself that changes, but the subtleties underneath.
I asked Ron whether there were any more significant differences in technical communication aside from basic grammar. He said that essentially there are not, but in the United Kingdom, there is much more emphasis on translating technical documents to or from English to another language. Ron then mentioned that he had recently taught some workshops in Australia, Germany, and New Zealand. Although he is retired, teaching workshops and traveling allows him to stay active within the field.
Final Thoughts
As we neared the end of our interview, I asked Ron whether there were any core traits that he had noticed among technical communicators. He noted that one trait that stood out to him was that most technical communicators are self-driven and also able to work well in a team environment.
I also asked him whether there were any resources that he wished had existed when he started working in technical communication. He referred back to some of the technical societies we had discussed as he explained that back then, he had to generate almost everything by himself, and it would have been nice to be a part of a group where he realized he wasn’t alone.
I then asked him a few specific questions about his career in technical communication to bring our conversation to a close.
Elizabeth: You mentioned earlier a society that you wish you had known about. Is there anything else that you wish that you had known when you were first starting your career?
Ron: Not that I am conscious of. Maybe I should have, but technical communication was developing as a field and I was right there doing it without knowing that I was doing it.
Elizabeth: That’s okay, you have given me wonderful answers so far. It has been really fascinating to learn about your journey.
Ron: It has been an interesting one, hasn’t it?
Elizabeth: Absolutely! Would you say that your journey through technical communication, even though it wasn’t what you had planned on doing, was everything you had hoped for?
Ron: It changed. As soon as I joined the Air Force, that became my life. It was only because of family circumstances that I eventually had to resign from the Air Force and move back to Canada, and I didn’t know where I was going to find work. It was by sheer chance that someone said that I had been doing technical writing and that a firm happened to be looking for a technical writer. That is how I got into it in a full-term sense. But then I was called a technical editor, which is probably not a bad name to have as compared to technical writer. Technical editor makes it sound as though you are much more in control of the project. Technical writer sounds as though you are an addition to it.
Conclusion
I began to bring the interview to a close by asking Ron about something I uncovered in my preliminary research about him: I asked about the plays that he had written. Ron shared that it is an excellent way to use your skills as a writer and continue to challenge yourself. He shared that so far, 13 of his plays have been produced. He shared that there is a lot to technical communicating and that you can tie your writing skills into a variety of different regimes. I continued to ask him for any final advice that he might have.
Elizabeth: You have given me some advice already, but what other advice would you give someone who is just starting to explore the field of technical communication and what it has to offer?
Ron: I would say quite frankly to go and work in Europe, or Australia, or New Zealand; they are strong in technical communication. Go look for a job down there because you will be exposed to the same basic guidelines to technical writing, but different nuances are really good eye openers, and it has all been really useful to me.
When I asked him whether there was a particular place through all of his travels that really stood out as being strong in technical communication, he was quick to respond: Germany. Ron noted that he had been involved in Intecom, a cooperative organization for technical communication societies around the world, and he found through his experience that Germany was especially strong in technical communication.
His final words of advice were very optimistic.
Ron: Don’t be afraid to expand your role and make your role as a technical communicator really meaningful. The role of a technical communicator is being looked at as much more part of the team than it was in my early days. You were a scribe then. Now you are part of the team. I think that it is a great field to be in, and we need people like you to push it further and broaden the field. The skills today are much more practical, and you can apply them in multiple fields.
ELIZABETH BREWER teaches marketing at Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisburg, NC. She is a student in the MS Program in Technical Communication Management at the Mercer University School of Engineering.
