New Roles and Competencies in Technical Communication Induced by Semantics and Analytics

Abstract

Semantic approaches have become a logical extension of the widely-accepted content creation and provision technologies represented in technical communication mostly by component content management systems (CCMS) and content delivery portals (CDP). CCMS are typically used by technical authors trained in the areas of linguistics, structured and standardized topic-based writing and metadata-based content processing. Delivery scenarios and corresponding new technologies widen the demands of organizations towards the role of technical writers as information engineers with competencies in user-centered and use case-driven creation of content. Information engineers cover a wide range of topics being already the core of academic programs and professional education. More recently, increasing demands for business process integration and process management led to new technological and methodological approaches. Semantic technologies based on ontology modelling have been investigated and introduced for example for CMS processes to improve the handling of product and media variants and the corresponding content planning. Other developments address metadata governance in integrated environments of multiple information management systems. On CDP side, there is a need to improve search support by semantics for example through facetted search, content correlations or AI technologies. Furthermore, in both fields of CMS and CDP, analytics gains significant importance for tracking and improving the corresponding processes of content creation, content search and information access. Therefore, we claim that a clearer definition of a new role of information architects and their competencies will be helpful for differentiating educational and working areas from the field of information engineers in TC.