Readin', Writin' and... Trainin'?

Last Tuesday, I attended a presentation sponsored by the Santa Barbara chapter of the STC (Society for Technical Communication) It was a discussion on Trends, Tools and Technologies of Software User Assistance (UA). This immediately piqued my interested. I've always had an interest in the field of training, having had experience with it in the military and in grad school. Since my background is in computer science, it seems natural that I could try to combine the two. But where? How? It's a known fact that I don't like kids, so grade school is out. Dealing with adolescents and teenagers? Don't even want to think about it. I'll have one of my own soon enough, thank you. College? Maybe, but there's no real job stability in that. University? No thank you. First of all, I'm not qualified, and second of all, professorships are oriented more towards research than teaching.

Two years ago I took a day-long career development course held onsite. It was primarily to help us identify our strengths and weaknesses, and apply them towards our current jobs. No surprise, I turned out to have an affinity for organization and attention to detail. At the end of the course, I approached the instructor and told her that, quite frankly, the job SHE had was my idea of an ideal job. Well, save for all the traveling. Maybe in my younger years, but not now, with a family. That's when she pointed out that a lot of organizations that sell products like we do have in-house staff to run training for its salespeople. I had never heard of that, and was glad she had mentioned it to me.

Later I discovered that our company actually has its own small, separate training department which currently trains and documents help files for our customers. I started researching it more, especially at the encouragement of my manager, who's really supportive of professional development endeavors. Fast forward to nearly 2 years later, where a discussion with my manager about upcoming goals (new year, new start!) brought about some concrete plans to pursue this further.

The presentation was rather informative. It revealed a whole word of possibilities in the area of technical communication. While a large part of the focus was on the technical writing aspect of it, there was clearly more to "software user assistance" than just writing help manuals. There were all kinds of parts to it, from the typical tech writing to online documentation to actual training. I got a brief introduction to some of the tools and standards out there, and I picked up a flier for the upcoming WritersUA conference in Seattle, WA. I also perused the STC's website and noticed that in May, they've got their annual conference in Dallas, TX. For both conferences, the seminars and workshops look really interesting. The STC conference especially has a lot of sessions devoted to the area of education and training. I'd really love to go. The conference alone would cost nearly $1800 (including the pre-conference overview certification, which would be ideal for a newbie like me), plus travel expenses on top of it. Since I'm not exactly working in the tech comm area, there isn't much justification for the company to foot the bill for it, but it was nice to take a peek at what's out there, learning-wise. Maybe next year. I'd certainly learn a lot!

In the meantime, my book on technical training finally arrived after a week on hold at the library, and I shall delve into it :-)