Object-Oriented Technical Writing:Theorizing and Operationalizing Content

Management Systems

George Pullman & Baotong GuGeorgia State University

gpullman@gsu.edu bgu@gsu.edu

ATTW ConferenceNew York, March 21, 2007

Overview

Challenges and Promises• Defining Content Management (CM vs. CMS)

• (Dis)Placing the Rhetorical Context

• Reinventing the Role of Writers and Editors

• Separation of Form from Content

• From Tools to Implementation

• Pedagogy, Anyone?

• Some Inconclusive Thoughts

Case Analysis

Defining Content Management

“a system-based approach to indexing content, ensuring that it can be accessed through all platforms and providing direct publishing mechanisms” (“Cracking content management, p. 5)

“a set of tasks and processes for storing, managing, publishing and repurposing all forms of digital assets throughout their lifecycle, from creation to archive, on any digital platform” (Jefferey-Poulter, p. 157)

“a platform for managing the creation, review, filing, updating, distribution, and storage of structured and unstructured content” (White, p. 20)

“a process of collecting, managing, and publishing information to whatever medium you need” (Boiko, 2005, p. xv)

Defining Content Management

Challenges: System or Approach?• System managing people?

• People managing system?

• People managing content?

Promises• Simplified content

• Streamlined process

• Revolutionized approach

(Dis)Placing the Rhetorical Context

Challenges• Shift away from the audience

• Writing concerns not only the text but also the means and mechanism of production (Grabill and Hicks)

• Shift of emphasis in rhetorical cannons from invention to arrangement, memory, and delivery

Promises• An epistemic perspective on technical communication

• A reconceptualization of users and audience

Reinventing the Role of Writers and Editors

Challenges• Devaluing of technical writers and editors

• Reducing the role of technical writers to assembly workers

Promises• A re-conception of the notion of authorship and the writer/reader

relationship (Erin Smith)

• A re-conceptualization of writer’s role: from the creator of content to the manager of information

• New roles for technical communicators: member, manager, owner, reviewer, in addition to graphic designer, code developer, content manager, and usability/accessibility expert (Kuralt and Williams)

Separation of Form from Content

Challenges The rhetorical choice of one data structure over another (Karl

Stolley) Decontextualized chunks of content and challenges to the

conventional rhetorical expertise of technical communicators (Rebekka Andersen)

The potential conflict between developing “content as discrete blocks of information” and developing “text as coherent, unified passages” (Gattis)

Promises Reconceptualizing and revamping our technical communication

practice

Redefining Technical Skills

Challenges

• A new set of technical skills

• A shift from tools to implementation (Clark and Anderson, 2005)

• A higher demand for managerial capabilities

• A greater need for collaborative relationships

• A shift from creation of content to its delivery

Promises

• An expanded set of technical skills

Pedagogy, Anyone?

Challenges• What should we teach?

• What to do with rhetorical skills

Promises• Reconceptualized pedagogical approaches (the need to teach

students how to analyze the technological situation and then select the most appropriate technological strategies: to discover technology’s limitations, to interrogate tool availability within and without an organization, and to articulate alternative software selections) (McShane)

Some Inconclusive Thoughts

The introduction of CM and CMS’s promises a change of revolutionary nature in our conceptualization of the field of technical communication and what we teach.

We’re not venturing into a totally foreign land by going into content management, so there’s no need to panic.

There’s a glaring lack of involvement in CMS design by technical communication practitioners, teachers, and researchers.

Research in some areas within our discipline, such as single sourcing, knowledge management, and course management, is already paving the way for our inevitable involvement and participation in cm research.

Case Analysis