Comments on: The Name of Your Department Does Matter

By: M Phinney

M Phinney — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:58:15 +0000

thanks for the information!

By: G Chester

G Chester — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:51:21 +0000

You seem to be really enlightened about this

By: Erma

Erma — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:05:03 +0000

You seem to know a great deal about this

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:03:23 +0000

wow, good point of view.

By: Freelance For Free » 12/04/2008 Writing Jobs and Links

Freelance For Free » 12/04/2008 Writing Jobs and Links — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:05:37 +0000

[...] The Name of Your Department Does Matter: The name of my department is Technical Content Development. I picked it. I won a lunch! [...]

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:06:13 +0000

We are “Corporate Education.” However, people still get us confused with “Corporate Marketing.”

By: Kristi

Kristi — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:46:25 +0000

Oh, I do see that happen with a bit with some of our trainers. I think I see what you mean.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:10:11 +0000

It depends on what you want to do. I do create training materials for the products I document. That’s part of the documentation, in my opinion. But it’s one thing to create training materials, and another to conduct all the training sessions — brown bags, webexs, classes, etc. These sessions can be useful, esp. to gather user feedback, and I do train. But I would rather not become a “trainer.” If people perceive you as a trainer, your role morphs into customer support as well.

By: Kristi

Kristi — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:03:44 +0000

I agree that a department/position title is important because it provides a cue. I’m a bit mystified, though, on why it is a bad thing to be asked to produce training materials. Our Education department creates the training manuals independently from our Tech Comm departmentAs far as I can tell, this mainly produces duplicated efforts and inconsistencies. I’ve often wondered why our departments don’t work more closely, or why we are in separate departments at all. I do realize not all writers want to physically teach classes, but there is often more than one job type within a department. Maybe you can clue me in on difference that I am overlooking.

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:11:04 +0000

I don’t know if a vague name would encourage more people to seek your input. It seems unlikely that technical people would feel they wanted to include the “Strategic Communications and Media” department in anything. What the heck does that team do? Marketing fluff, probably.

So, what do technical and business people respect? Data and research, often. Straightforward, easily understandable names like “User Research and Product Mastery” might get a better response.