The September issue of Intercom is now online. Below is a copy of the note from the editor. Remember, Intercom Online now has commenting available, so please ask questions, start a discussion, and give your thoughts.
This month’s Intercom includes articles and columns focused on project management, writing and editing, marketing communications, career advancement, and an interview by President Nicky Bleiel with the costar of AMC’s new show Owner’s Manual, Marcus Hunt. If you haven’t seen or heard of this show yet, Owner’s Manualtakes a familiar dichotomy of human nature—that some people read instructions when assembling furniture, installing home electronics, or operating software, and others don’t—and accelerates it in scale and riskiness as two men operate powerful and potentially dangerous machinery (e.g., trains, planes, race cars, a sailing ship) with which they were previously unfamiliar. As the instruction-manual reader on the show, Marcus enthusiastically explains his appreciation for the work of technical communicators in this interview.
In the feature article, Liz Herman describes why the fields of project management and technical communication work so well together. She uses traits described in the Project Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge (PM–BOK) to compare the professions. Harry Calhoun and Dave Wright offer suggestions on writing in a world of jargon, slang, corporate catchphrases, and technical pseudo-terms and how can we avoid them when writing for a professional audience. Karina Lehrner-Mayer reminds documentation teams of the importance of style guides and provides tips for how to start and upkeep a guide. And finally, Intercom’s Assistant Editor Kevin Cuddihy has written a fun article about marketing emails he received from a barbeque restaurant chain that provide a lesson on how to keep email communications on point and audience appropriate.
In the two columns published this month—The Strategic IA and Advancing Your Career—we learn how to strengthen our professional development and career opportunities. Like the feature article by Liz Herman, Andrea Ames and Alyson Riley have paired up another tech comm “dynamic duo”—project manager and strategic information architect. They use Tom Rath’s StrengthFinder 2.0 as a tool to explain why effective partnerships between PMs and IAs are important to the success of teams and projects. In his column, Jack Molisani provides advice about how to advance your career through progressive information disclosure, which is an interaction design technique that allows technical communicators to provide the right amount of information where, when, and how the user wants it.
Society news also in this issue and of interest to STC members: the 2014 membership season opens on 16 September, and there is a special member appreciation rate for renewing members of $195 for a limited time. In addition, the 2012–2013 Salary Database is now available for download and purchase, and the Intercom 2014 editorial calendar has been published at http://intercom.stc.org/write-for-intercom/editorial-calendar/. Take a look at the themes of the issues planned for next year, and consider writing an article on a subject of interest to you!