Part 2 of 4
Training for Content Design, Strategy, and Technical Specifications
Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum report concluded: ‘Like the revolutions that preceded it, 4IR has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for the global population. To date, those who have gained the most from it have been consumers able to afford and access the digital world; technology has made possible new products and services that increase the efficiency and pleasure of our personal lives.’
All the new things we can do!
‘Ordering a cab, booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a film, or playing a game – any of these can now be done remotely.’
Further, ‘Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.’
Yet the technology platforms behind this change, while a major form of positive disruption, need to remain non-disruptive in terms of end-users and consumers understanding how to use these new assets, services and gadgets.
The content pros who bridge the gap
An expanding workforce of content developers and technical communicators will be needed at the back end and front end of product development to ensure a seamless transformation of language from coding to the user console, to empower the population. And they will need ever more training in technical communication principles, ethics, content strategy and operations, structured authoring, and keywording and metadata strategies so they be can part of the smooth transition from concept to the plain language within user manuals.
How they’ll get there
This reality is already leading to an explosion in demand for broader-based and AI-related training modules for technical communicators, where corporates are outsourcing training to augment their in-house resources. As hybrid working models are becoming the norm, a hybrid approach to training is also emerging, blending on-site and off-site courses to merge the benefits of employee knowledge banking with contractor expertise.
The prediction is that the 4IR ‘will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships.’
If the Fifth Industrial Revolution represents smooth human-machine collaboration, it can only reach its goals by engaging learners with the new knowledge – so technical communicators can adapt their skills to this collaboration.
— The Firehead Training Academy, August 2023
We’d love to hear about your experiences in Technical Communication in the age of AI, and also what skills you’re looking to train up in. Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
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Whether you’re new to the industry and need to upskill fast, a seasoned communicator adding new competencies, or a manager focusing on team development, the Firehead Training Academy aims to provide you with the information, training tools, and skills to use them.
