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I
assisted IKOS, a San Jose-based company, with documentation for two
new product releases. IKOS has several software emulation products,
plus hardware accelerators, that are used in tandem to test new chip
designs. It was engineer-to-engineer documentation and I worked with
product managers, trainers, and programmers to assist in the
development of user guides, installation guides, release notes, and on
line tutorials. The documentation was done in FrameMaker for both
print and on line publication.
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This
was a contract position that I accepted while still working toward a
certificate in technical writing from the former Webster Technical
Institute in San Francisco. This was a 200-hour state certified
technical training program that prepared technical writers for entry
into the software development field. Webster taught data gathering
skills, including interview techniques and focused on two
industry-standard tools: FrameMaker and RoboHelp. (Webster
Associates, a firm that places technical writers, is still in
business but no longer offers this technical training program.)
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Back
in the 1980s, I was an enthusiastic hobbyist programmer, writing
programs in BASIC. Over the last several years I have continued my
education at San Francisco State University, taking classes in
JavaScript and Java programming. Having picked up object oriented
programming, I have also had some experience with C++ programming
and Visual Basic, both of which were in use at IKOS.
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I
performed a two-year contract to develop procedure manuals for Legacy
Marketing Group, a Petaluma-based financial services company. They
develop annuity and other insurance products for large carriers like
Transamerica.
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I
worked with Business Analysts and Trainers to develop procedure
manuals for several divisions of the organization, including
Licensing & Contracting and New Business. The process involved
interviewing key stakeholders, documenting existing practices, and
working through review and revision processes to develop detailed
procedures for managing the firms operational affairs.
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Working
on a team of four technical writers, I developed manuals in MS-Word,
then used Doc-to-Help software to convert the Word files and develop
on line help systems. Toward the end of the project, a great deal of
my time was spent editing HTML code to ensure that the on line
display worked as intended.
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I
was on staff for three years at BayGroup International, a Larkspur
Landing-based firm that develops custom training programs in
negotiation and conflict management for Fortune 100 companies (e.g.,
Hewlett-Packard, AT&T). (The company was known as The Bay Group
and was based in San Rafael when I worked with them.) At this time
they were partnered with professors from Stanford University whose
research into human behaviors and interactions formed the
philosophical core of their programs. They were trading in
"elegant negotiables" to reach "win-win"
solutions.
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As
part of my employee development, I was trained in the negotiation and
conflict management programs.
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My
role on staff involved developing classroom materials (leader guides,
participant guides, role play exercises, and pre-class behavioral
profiles) and included coordinating input from trainers and other
subject matter experts, writers, and graphic artists. I did some
first-draft writing and extensive technical editing. I also did a
great deal of desktop publishing, initially in PageMaker and then
later in Word.
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My
time at The Bay Group coincided with their development of two new
products, a contention management program and an ethics training
program, which gave me an opportunity to participate in the complete
product development cycle. I supported the early product concept
work, coordinated reviews and revisions, and saw the products
through beta testing.
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After
leaving my staff position, I continued to work with The Bay Group on
a consultant basis, primarily providing technical editing services.
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I
have been involved in project management, in one form or another, for
over 25 years. For example, I have served as:
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Proposal
Manager: Over the past 12 years I have often been
responsible for managing proposal processes, primarily in the
architecture & engineering (A&E) arena. This has included
organizing proposal teams, identifying key project personnel,
organizing multidisciplinary teams, assigning and monitoring
responsibilities for assigned tasks, gathering data, coordinating
input from subject matter experts, ensuring compliance with document
requirements, providing technical editing, working with graphics
specialists and managing production efforts, managing review and
revision processes, and shipping or delivering the completed
project.
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Marketing
Task Manager: Similar to the proposal manager function, I
have many years of experience developing marketing collateral (service
or fly sheets, brochures, press releases, technical papers and white
papers, journal articles), including writing original copy, managing
the review/revision and production processes.
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I
learned a great deal about information gathering instruments
while working for BayGroup International. Behavioral surveys were a
core strategy in their business, and a key aspect of their products.
We would spend a great deal of time developing questionnaires or
survey tools to determine what type of questions were best understood
by respondents, what set of questions needed to be answered to capture
a statistically accurate profile of a respondent relative to a
specific interaction, what form designs worked best for most
respondents, etc. We also developed detailed guides for parsing
"participant" questionnaires and understanding their
meanings.
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Previous
to my BayGroup International experience, I had been involved with
development of a University of Alaska survey of state political
figures.
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For
an interesting case study of how I have used this background in
survey development in fields other than behavioral, see "Soccer
and Boiling Frogs" on the Projects
page.
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I received my initial training in
data gathering and interviewing as a journalism student, then
developed my skills further as a professional reporter on a variety of
commercial publications (daily and weekly newspapers and magazines).
As a journalist I did hundreds of interviews with local, state and
national political figures, locally elected representatives, union
leaders, entertainment figures, business leaders, and regular people
from all walks of life. I also accessed a lot of public records.
I always considered interviewing to
be among my primary skills and most natural strengths. Technical
writing, in my experience, has called upon many of the information
gathering skills I learned and developed as a journalist. The primary
challenge for a technical writer is getting the information that is
needed, which is often far more difficult than a person new to the
field usually expects.
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The training I received in
communications skills and techniques while working at BayGroup
International has served me well. They teach a conflict management
concept of appealing to the highest shared aspiration, which
is quite powerful as an organizing principle in dealing with busy
people with a lot on their minds. I find that if you are providing
perceived value, the most time- constrained leaders in any
organization will somehow find the time to provide the information
you need.
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I have a long history of work on
long research-oriented publishing projects, and my experience with
literature review goes way back beyond microfish to dusty back rooms
where history is stored in the yellowed pages of forgotten books. I
have spent a lot of time in university libraries.
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Of course, we are in a spectacular new
age with the Internet and I have become adept at the use of search
engines and the wide range of on line resources. I frequently use
sites devoted specifically to the technical terminology associated
with engineering and architectural projects. Some of these sites
have been included on my Links page.
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I
have held numerous management positions on commercial publications,
beginning with my stint as Editorial Editor on my college
newspaper (Fort Hays Kansas State University Leader). All of the
positions on the college newspaper were paid, and working on the
publication was an important part of how I paid my way through
undergraduate school. I was the only student, up to that time, to have ever been
granted the job of Editorial Editor two years running, primarily
because my editorials had drawn the attention of other commercial
publications around the state, and my articles were ocassionally
reprinted in other publications. I also worked in the Information
Office at the university, writing press releases regarding campus
news, activities, events.
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I was Assistant
Editor for The Saturday Extra, a weekend supplement to the daily
Winchester News-Gazette, and we were awarded "Best Family
Publication" in our circulation bracket by the Indiana Press
Association our first year out (1976).
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I served as
occasional Assistant Managing Editor for Town & Country Review
of Boulder, Colorado, selecting stories, writing and editing, and
managing the production crew all the way to press run.
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I
was Assistant Managing Editor for the Auraria Voice in Denver,
Colorado, a weekly publication that served the Denver campus of the
University of Colorado. I covered campus news, selected stories,
managed the advertising staff, managed production and circulation.
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I have served
as a consultant on a number of commercial publications, such as the Rocky Mountain Hi-Note, a
Denver-based music publication, and a San Francisco film and video
publication.
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My publication design experience
includes input to design of commercial (Winchester News-Gazette, The
Saturday Extra, Audience Magazine, Rocky Mountain Hi-Note, Town &
Country Review, the Auraria Voice, among others) and corporate
publications. I have designed proposal packages, marketing materials,
technical reports, white papers, and studies.
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I have developed detailed marketing
plans for a number of organizations, marketing the professional
services of Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey (RHAA), a Mill Valley,
California-based landscape design and planning firm, and the more
public services offered by Viacom Cablevision, formerly of San
Francisco, California.
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I have designed, executed, and
monitored the results of multi-pronged programs to identify
potential markets, penetrate them with outreach to media, the
public, and potential associates, and establish name recognition for
my firm and its services. The marketing plan I developed for RHAA
provided a structure for aggressive marketing, included scheduled
marketing events in the form of mailings and press releases,
organized professional outreach, and publication in industry
publications. The plan provided measurable objectives, costed
initiatives, and tracked their effectiveness in ROI terms.
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My Viacom
experience included managing inbound and outbound telemarketing
groups servicing the giant "new-build" campaigns of the
1980s, when cable was being provided to every neighborhood in the
City. I established goals for response to numerous marketing
campaigns, devised methodologies for tracking our successes, and
reported numbers exceeding expectations in every reporting
period.
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My marketing efforts for Royston
Hanamoto Alley & Abey (RHAA), detailed above, provide the best
example of my efforts in media and industry outreach. As marketing
director, I established measurable objectives and goals for media and
industry outreach, and then executed plans to meet targeted
objectives. I managed a program of press releases and telephone
contacts, and prepared articles for publication in industry magazines
and journals. I also wrote articles for professional conferences and
worked to gain panel positions for senior leaders in the firm.
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