The April issue of Intercom, our special 60th anniversary issue, is now online. Below is a copy of the note from editor Liz Pohland for this issue. Remember, Intercom Online now has commenting available, so please ask questions, start a discussion, and give your thoughts.
Happy 60th Anniversary, STC! For this special anniversary issue of Intercom, we’re running several articles about the past and future of the profession. I was inspired by a new edited collection I read recently—Solving Problems in Technical Communication by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber (2013), which I highly recommend (see my review in an upcoming edition of Technical Communication). In the book, chapters by Kenny Fountain, Bernadette Longo, and Brad Mehlenbacher (among many other experts featured) explain how we can look to the past to help us prepare for the present and future.
Fountain and Longo suggest that by gaining an historical perspective, we can forecast future actions that are likely to succeed and the ones most likely to fail. They provide us with the building blocks to understand how “the past is alive in the workplace culture of the present, shaping the actions and decisions of tomorrow.” Building on this, Mehlenbacher explains that by solely focusing on the “technical” in technical communication, we often de-emphasize the profound changes facing communication professionals. In his article, he has created a persona-based scenario of technical communication work in order to examine the differences between twenty-first-century work practices and twentieth-century practices. He concludes that future technical communicators will need to develop themselves as rhetorically sensitive socio-technical mediators.
For those interested in more of the history of the profession, Steve Lemanski’s article provides a literature review of research on professional roles technical communicators have performed that provide value in the digital age. He examines an original heuristic offered by Johnson-Eilola (based on Robert Reich’s work nearly two decades ago) for identifying symbolic-analytic work—the higher-level skills demanded in the global, information-driven economy.
Also in this issue, Nyssa Landres explains how to transfer technical writing skills into the field of science; Intercom’s Assistant Editor Kevin Cuddihy reports on interviews he conducted with longtime Society members who have been with the association 30 years or more; and columnist Scott Abel provides us with another outstanding interview with a change agent—this time it’s author, technology evangelist, and investor Guy Kawasaki, who tackles the topics of disruption, Apple, Google, and why technical communicators must overcome resistance to change
I am excited about the coming years in STC and the growth of the profession evident in these articles. I hope to see many of you at the Summit this year in Atlanta, GA, where we can celebrate in style.