dotMil and dotGov TechComm: My Military Technical Communication Roots

I came across a few letters authored in Word 2.0 from my final cruise in 1995 and it got me thinking about my roots in TechComm. Have you had any experiences which led you towards TechComm which stand out?

Yep… Everyone Has a Story…

The initial knowledge management / content wrangling that I learned prior to using specific software tools was through my time in the service in the 1990s. I would have loved tools that MadCap, Articulate and Adobe now make for that. This was even before Microsoft Word and PowerPoint were adopted!

When looking at the time spent in communication simply in my collateral, non-aircrew duties, it seems that my “part-time job” of about 40 hours a week was a Technical Communicator. Somehow I managed to fit flying into this, probably due to the seven day work week that we military folks enjoyed while being deployed.

Workflow of a Typical Aircrew Technical Communicator

While I was in the military, we didn’t have a job description of Technical Communicator however once I was out of training and ‘in the fleet’ we were required to:

Produce 1/2 hour to 1 hour of weekly training of a tactical nature. (7 hours per week content review, analysis, and writing).

Produce weekly training relevant to our collateral duties. One of my collateral duties was Safety, another 2 1/2 hour to 3 hours per week for a weekly 1/2 hour standup lecture (we called them briefs) and practical testing.

Write Naval Aviation Training & Operations Standards (NATOPS) corrections to publications and submit the same through our chain of command. Variable time spent on this, all depending on what needed addressing. Figure another 1/2 to 2 hours per week. Here’s a great example of an organic NATOPS test…

Plan and conduct daily flight crew briefings - again, daily 1/2 hour in length taking all relevant tactical threat, aircrew safety of flight, weather, operations area data, and other related data. You know, going over things that can get you killed when flying or just walking to the aircraft. (3.5 hours to 7 hours per week).

I also had the squadron Communications collateral duty. Before email - working under the Communications Officer (3 hours / day). 21 hours per week in arranging and maintaining the printed squadron communications log - message traffic in and out of the squadron that had to be signed off by all department heads and the executive team (XO and CO for those vets out there).

This was a pain but fun to laugh at now that it’s been replaced mostly by email. Imagine taking all the emails you get every day, printing them out at one end of the aircraft carrier on demand (typically updated three times a day including at midnight).

Then tediously hand filing them into a massive two hole punched clipboard, updating the cc: list and attn: list to make sure the department heads could read the handwritten notes of the Skipper and XO.

I took no end of abuse (mostly good natured) from the mistakes that my subordinate did.

Not to mention Public Affairs tasking such as presentations for schools, distinguished visitors, guiding tours, etc. Most of this was while we were in port somewhere like Singapore, Vancouver, Hong Kong, etc. and was great PR work for Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club.

So Others May Live…

Most of my friends that stayed in went SAR, similar to that movie The Guardian. I appropriate the motto of the SAR Rescue Swimmer because it was drilled into all of us Aircrew that if we documented our jobs well, ‘others may live’…

It shouldn’t be surprising that a few of my fellow aircrewmen have become Technical Communicators with government contractors. Just about everyone who stayed in for a second tour had an instructor tour, which was more formal training for three years in length.

Those who stayed in their entire careers ended up doing more than one instructor tour, not to mention all the time they spent collating the documentation and acting as a Docs Manager for all the output from the junior aircrew.

I’ll be doing a series on Government consulting and contracting for TechComm later this week, and I’m seriously considering leveraging my contacts for performing this in the near future.

Have you had any experiences which led you towards TechComm which stand out?