Technical writing was a big part of my early career in communications, so helping someone pull together a technical report recently was a snip. The best part of this job was teaching my client how to do things himself. The
Manuscript assessment and coaching
Assessing someone’s manuscript and giving them a six page report requires sensitivity, grit, courage and lots of cups of tea. My client was happy with my feedback on structure, characterisation, setting, plot etc and now they’ve signed up for some
Communications for government IT project
Since August 2011 I’ve been creating the structure and content for a WIKI, training WIKI contributors and writing all kinds of communications for a government IT project. A WIKI is a web site that stores information about an organisation and
Motivational session: Fun at Work
I presented a session at a team-building day on the topic of ‘Fun at Work’. Fun is a very subjective thing. Rather than impose my ideas of fun on people or get them to do crazy things like building bridges
Training material for Finance One implementation
In 2010 the University of Tasmania employed me and Bruce Ransley of Impress: clear communication to determine their training requirements for implementation of their new financial software package, Finance One. We assessed the needs of each user group, helped the
Improving the way policy recommendations are written
DPAC employed me and Bruce Ransley (Impress: clear communication) in 2010 to develop a training course to teach their policy advisors how to use a new framework for writing/evaluating policy. This was a pilot project and the training was developed
Writing, data conversion, training for library project
The Tasmanian Public Library Services engaged me to help with their eHeritage internet project. I developed procedures to convert data submitted by various heritage groups. I also provided documentation, training and support to these groups to enable them to gather
Prison software
In 2002 I joined Quill Australia in documenting two software products for the Tasmanian Justice Department, tailoring training to meet their requirements, and delivering training to their prison and community corrections staff.
SAP project pre-, during- and post-Go-Live
Between 1999 and mid-2001 my youthful idealism was all but snuffed out when I worked for Hamersley Iron on their SAP R3 rollout, and on a later upgrade. I worked for various teams documenting procedures for data uploads and validation,
Quick-reference software guide (SAP)
I co-wrote this quick reference guide for Hamersley Iron (now Pilbara Iron). It was intended for use by maintainers working on mine-sites. It’s tear-proof and waterproof so it can stand up to some rough treatment. Instructions were written in a