This reading – Chatbots are not the future of technical communication – reminds me of my latest experience when I tried to reach a real human in DHL to help me find my lost package with goods bought from the Internet. I did a few calls and always kept losing my patience when a chatbot was smart enough to ask me for shipment numbers but stupid enough to never understand my answers in plain English. Plus: no option to contact a flesh and blood with brain. At least package arrived some time later…. but first (or maybe second) contact with a chatbot was really excruciating. Maybe in the future those bots will become capable of having a conversation with people, but today the reading is so true….. 🙂
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REST API Experience
Regarding some latest experiences, I had a wonderful chance to support SAP with creating globally-available public REST API documentation for a set of micro services for cloud-based commerce solutions – and to bring my consultancy in technical writing for all members of the teams working according to the scrum agile methodology. That was exciting and challenging to interact with both fully co-located teams as well as multinational, geographically-spread (Gliwice, Omsk, Munich), multicultural scrum teams and other remote collaborators in Montreal, Quebec and Boulder, Colorado.
For technical author, well, for any author, everyday day is like a brand new one, and that’s just one of many things that make it cool enough to always feel excited and inspired. I could only wish everybody feels that way, too. Surely, it is worth a try. This feeling comes with every new word, sentence, paragraph, and story…
Simple story
1. A misty day
There was a typical misty autumn day in Warsaw when I knocked on the door asking if they are in need of a technical writer. I did not have any knowledge about it, no experience at all. Words like stakeholders, information architecture, versioning, virtualization, webservices, API, JAVA, REST, seemed like taken from the language I would never know.
Yet they trusted my motivation, willingness to learn and contribute. The first months were constant learning: the company, product, and technicalities of writing. After a year, I thought I knew everything. After another year, I realized I did not.
2. Vltava River
In Prague I met people from various countries, cultures, of ten different languages or more. Working with new technologies, requirements, I expanded both profesionally and personally, but continued my never-ending quest for understanding.
3. Quiet haven
I found a quiet haven in a small town. Once more, new tools, new formats, new topics, new tech, new organizational structures. Time of hard work, but also meditation, reflection, and deep mindfulness. What does it take to be the right TW-person in the right place?
4. The sea of opportunities
By now you already know the answer: something common. Helping others to understand technology, product, and above all the idea. The goal is people and their motivation, excitement, willingness to grow and improve.
Your customers go on a journey with you; they purchase from you, but what they also need to make the most of this experience is information. In the waste sea of digital waters, they need clear and concise navigation.
The Journey Goes On
Thanks for visiting me!
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
~ Dune ~
Writing is not always easy, and a good writing is even more rare phenomenon. Treat the words like your friends and they will do the same for you.
As each journey has its own first step and each story begins with its first letter, the story of building my first simple website presence begins with creation of this very first paragraph.
The site will evolve over time, so make sure you visit me from time to time…
Technical Writing & Information Development 