Feel free to comment on my blogpost/thesis paper! I’d love to have you crunch the numbers I found and see what results.

There’s more than a passing probability that I made a math mistake. I haven’t done ratios in five or eight years…

I’ll be looking forward to my time reviewing the Annual Report for Adobe to see where this focus fits. It is exciting, however I am cautious in my praise because it does represent a change in the knowledge management market that I’m not sure will help users at the end of the day.

Sounds like a great topic for a blog post though!

Three areas I’ve been researching for quite some time. Add to that Wireless and I’m just going to start working in the construction field.

Anyone need an energy efficient home??

Adobe to invest $200m in five years

NEW DELHI: Having established itself as one of the most important R&D centres for Adobe Systems worldwide, Adobe India is now drawing up plans to expand its capacity in India. The company’s business plans include expansion of capacity, increasing sales force, doing more R&D out of India and focusing on e-learning, online gaming and technical communication.

Already, 25-30% of Adobe’ worldwide R&D is being done from India. The company now plans to increase that share substantially. “We have already said we plan to invest $200 million in India in the next five years,” says Naresh Gupta, MD Adobe India.

The company is in the process of expanding capacity in its Noida facility from 900 to 1,500 in the next four months and to 2,000 in the next two years. Similarly, capacity at the Bangalore campus will go up from 400 to 800. “We also plan to increase our salesforce by 50% in the next three years,” says Gupta.

In fact, the India operations is very critical for Adobe’s overall growth. So far the company has filed more than 50 patents from here. Nearly all global Adobe products have a contribution from India. While some have been completely done out of the India R&D centre.

The company now plans to focus on three key areas of growth. These include: E-learning, technical documentation and online gaming. “E-learning is poised to grow at 45% worldwide,” says Gupta.

I think it’s great that the focus is on technical documentation and e-learning.

My question exactly. Which is it, and how would we determine it? If we can’t see how many stateside jobs were lost when Macromedia was absorbed, it’s nearly impossible to determine.

By the way, in case you missed it, a while back I interviewed an Indian writer in Bangalore, India.

You wrote something that caught my attention: “… there are lots of ways that these leaders contribute to the profession.”

This point made me reflect a lot. I often tend to see things myopically: if I’m actively participating in my local STC chapter and see other technical writers staying at home, I think, hey, you guys should participate more in the chapter.

If I’m blogging and see other tech writers shrug their shoulders at the medium, I say, hey, you should be blogging.

If I’m participating on a listserv and see others not subscribe, I think hey, everyone should be subscribed to this listserv.

Or writing articles — if I write for the Intercom, I think hey, a lot of other writers should be submitting articles to this magazine.

Or with podcasts, I think everyone should be listening to podcasts.

And so on.

I haven’t given any attention to a lot of other, equally important ways to contribute. I almost never view or comment in the STC Forums, I haven’t even looked at the new Learning Resource Center, and the last issue of Tieline I glanced at was about 6 months ago. I don’t participate on any standards committees, nor in other organizations (like the IEEE), and I often only glance at the cover of the Tech Comm Journal, much less think about ways to contribute to it.

You’re right — we all participate in the profession in different ways. Not more than 5% of people blog. The medium simply does not appeal to many people.

You’ve made me think differently about non-bloggers now — everyone chooses to contribute in their own way, according to the mediums that appeal to their learning styles, interests, and strengths. Thanks for helping me see this.

Blogging does require a lot of time and thought. The main reason I blog is because I like to write and think — the blog gives me space and opportunity to do it, and interactions from readers like you always enrich me.

I also like the “level-playing field” that blogging provides. As you say, you don’t have to be a big name or thought leader to reach people.

You raised an interesting point. Exactly where does that outsourced concept drop off into international business is a good thing to speak of, and sounds like it would bring clarity into a fuzzy world.

My concept of outsourcing is where a (typically) stateside employee’s tasks are handed over to an employee or group hosted outside the (typically) United States.

Yet in a clinical viewpoint this would be a simple cost cutting measure to a global company. So why would it not be transparent and spoken towards?

In reviewing the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia through the SEC filed documents it was interesting to note that Adobe does not list the quantity of stateside employees like Macromedia did. Therefore, discovery or comparison of actual outsourcing that occurred after the merger versus previously held overseas positions is rendered opaque.

It’s also interesting that the Adobe RoboHelp technical support team formerly located in San Diego was, by my terminology, outsourced in the summer of 2007. The only indicators of this however, are local print media (San Diego Union-Tribune) articles and blogs such as mine.

Sounds like another thread is needed here unless you have one on your site. I’ll add it to my feed reader.

My conclusion is that although none of us wants to discriminate against other nationals or seem to prefer stateside business versus a better (or perceived better) global product, the facts remain that there are trade deficits in knowledge and skills. These are measurable, and this concerns all of us in technology trades where our data is easily transported.

After all, what makes any of us think that our innovation is competitive if, at the end of the day, our knowledge is commoditized from let’s say a $90/hour rate to a $10/hour rate. The market does correct itself because unerringly clients are burned and realize that they do get what they pay for, however it’s still a bitter pill and guess what?

We tend to vote with our pocketbooks. Tech Support jobs previously held stateside farmed out to India? Ok, it’s definitely going to be factored into my decision making process as an American consumer.

There’s a backlash going on about outsourcing and it’s not about ethnicity. It’s about clear and concise communication across several fronts – a marketplace being heard, products staying competitive, and that good old corporate value of Corporate Authenticity.

It’s also a cultural backlash. Nobody likes to fear for their job right before Christmas and New Year’s yet the Adobe office in San Diego just laid off an undetermined number of people. I bet it wasn’t just one person either. Culturally, that seems insensitive.