Introduction

The field of technical communication is increasingly broad, and its borders continue to overlap others. For example, technical communicators might be editors, writers, web developers, online help writers and designers, instructional designers, programmers, and knowledge managers. Academics and practitioners have argued our diversity and interdisciplinarity are strengths, that it is only by learning from one another that we can expand our knowledge and continue to situate ourselves in useful ways within academe and industry (Mirel & Spilka, 2002; Florzak, 2002; Hughes, 2002; Applen, 2002; Skelton, 2002; Wick, 2000; Davis, 2001).

But our diversity and interdisciplinary have also made it difficult to explain our value to others. Wilson and Ford (2003), for example, interviewed technical communicators 10 years after their Master's program and found that they struggled to articulate their value, felt misunderstood by their co-workers, and stuck in managements' blind spot.

This newsletter article will be the first in a series that begins to report the results of a qualitative study of the ways technical communicators position themselves within their organizations. I am interviewing technical communicators from small, medium, and large organizations, as well as lone writers, and writers working on cross-functional teams to elicit their strategies for positioning themselves within their organizations. I will distill lessons from their successes and failures into recommendations for explaining our value to others in productive ways.

This first article contains interviews with two lone writers, Lou Martindale and Lone Writer 2, who wishes to remain anonymous. They are the only technical communicators within their organizations.

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