Senior Spotlight: Connie Betts

by Aviva L. Brandt

With more than 20 years experience in high-tech, Connie Betts has seen her career evolve through the four stages from commodity to communicator and from profit maker to strategic contributor.

Betts started her career as a high school biology teacher, where she learned to put the instructional design theory she'd learned in college to use, experience that paid off when she entered high-tech after taking a few years off to have children. Betts started off in instructional design doing training, but her job moved into technical writing when Mentor Graphics purchased her company.

She later moved into profit maker mode while working as a documentation and training manager at ABC Technologies. Her work there was so valuable, "the president said our company would not have even made it over the initial hump if we had not had the profits from training," Betts says.

But it wasn't until she moved out of the publications department that was able to become a strategic contributor. Betts was working at MedicaLogic when her job moved from the technical writing group to the IT department, where she wrote for IT as well as managed all the Web sites the company had. That gave her a broader view of the company's wide range of communications—from support documents to marketing collateral—and forced her to think from the customer's point of view about how to organize the information so it better served the customer.

"I think that's where I see us being strategic—helping the organization manage all the information for the benefit of the customers, which then benefits the company," Betts says.

A broader view

Betts recommends that technical communicators who want to become strategic contributors consider moving out of the publications department into other parts of the company.

"That's where I really went to that next level of being able to see how all these things were coming into play and how the strategies for the business worked," Betts says. "I think it would be more challenging to step up to the strategic contributor if you haven't had a chance to do those things."

Technical communicators can broaden their experience by volunteering for duties outside their normal roles, such as writing a couple pieces of marketing collateral or helping IT write some Web pages, Betts suggests. There are also opportunities for writers in the support department, which often hires its own writers to put information on the Web for customers, Betts says.

Getting the right education

Betts says it's important for technical communicators to continue their education so they can become profit makers and strategic contributors. It will give them the background they need to think beyond writing manuals and technical documentation.

"If you are going to help with writing information on the Web, it's important to understand Web technologies so you can write appropriately. If you are going to do some marketing writing and you haven't done that before, you might want to take a marketing class to round yourself out," Betts advises.

She also recommends taking an advanced project management class if you have facilitated project teams of only people within your department.

"As profit maker, I was managing teams but they were within my own department or contractors. When I moved to strategic contributor, I was leading teams across departments. And there are different issues and things you need to do when you manage those interdepartmental teams. There can be dynamics between departments that you must be able to recognize and address," Betts says.

STC

Over the years that Betts has been a member of STC, the role the organization has played for her has changed.

In the beginning, Betts says STC was a place she went to learn how to use new tools and processes and to meet people who were doing leading edge work. When the online SIG was first formed, Betts says she was thirsty for it and eagerly attended meetings to learn how people did online tutorials and built HTML help systems.

"It's still a good place to do that, but as you get to be more senior, you have a lot of that learning behind you," Betts says. "Now it's a good place for me to network, to connect with colleagues I haven't seen for awhile and find out what they're doing and what kinds of projects they're working on."

It's still the first resource she recommends to new writers looking to get involved in technical writing, Betts says.

Her own business

Nowadays, Betts is a contractor running her own business, Wildcat Interactive, where she mostly does online tutorials, online help and other instructional design and technical writing.

She loves what she does. "I have a personality that fits contracting much better than being an employee," Betts says. "Right now, I have five different projects going with different clients. I really enjoy the variety."

She also likes the fact that her love of learning leading edge technology often helps her land new jobs. But not every job requires the latest technology. Sometimes she finds herself doing manuals and other mundane tasks just like every other technical writer.

"I'm actually just taking on whatever comes my way because in this economy, you can't be as choosy as you could before," Betts says. "Before, I could take the ones that really interested me and pass along the others to my colleagues. But now I'm taking whatever comes my way and I'm doing a little bit of everything."

Aviva L. Brandt is a contract writer specializing in marketing communications and public relations. She can be reached at aviva@eskimo.com.