Welcome to our latest feature column, giving you a chance to get up-close and personal with the folks that make In Other WORDS the place for all your Technical Communication needs.

This month we are featuring Leah Guren, Director of Training. Originally from San Mateo, California, Leah has been with WORDS almost from the start. A fascinating and multifaceted woman, she has been instrumental in shaping the technical communication field in Israel.

An Interview with Leah Guren

Q: Where are you from and where did you go to school?

A: My family moved to the Seattle area when I was four.  I attended Garfield High School which is famous as the alma mater of Jimmy Hendrix.  (And no, I'm not that old; he wasn't in my class!)  I earned my BA at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Q: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A: I've always loved animals, and for a good chunk of my childhood I thought that I would be a vet.  In high school, I toyed with the idea of law.  But my first exposure to computers changed all that.  No blood, no juries.

Q: Who is your favorite artist?

A: I like the rather florid figures of Rubens (makes me feel better about my thighs) and the country landscapes of Constable, but those are a tad out of my price range for wall art.  My choice is a local artist, Helen Bar Lev, who lived in Sefat for many years and specialized in doorways, gates, arches, and stairways.  There is something intriguing about a sun-dappled stairway in the Old City; you just want to keep going and see what's around the corner!

Q: Who is your favorite musician?

A: My taste is eclectic.  I like everything from very early vocal music (plainsong, Gregorian chants, and madrigals) to European pop.  Depending on my mood and activity, you can catch me listening to Baroque chamber music, a Puccini opera, Sarit Hadad, old Arik Einstein, or some classic Motown.  I don't have a single favorite musician; it depends on the genre.  I mean, would you really want to hear a bel canto mezzo like Montserrat Caballe try her hand at Mizrachi cross-over?  

Q: What was technical communication like when you began in 1980 and how is it different today?

A: Ah, yes.  Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  People tend to think of technical communication as something that emerged, fully formed, in the late 1980s.  In truth, people have been slogging away at trying to explain complex material for centuries.  Even in the early 1960s, this was an established profession, though largely unrecognized by the public.  When I started, the field was still in its Wild West stage; that is, there were no formal degrees, few standards, and little recognized research.  I'm from the generation that actually started to define best practices for the industry. 

I had an unusual advantage; I was physically the smallest person in the R&D department, so I was recruited by the systems guys whenever they needed someone to pull cable or climb inside a PDP-11.  It was certainly an interesting technical learning experience.  At that time, the VP of R&D wrote most of the documentation (huge chunks of code were his, so it was reasoned that he understood the product better than anyone else).  But he had no clue as to how to analyze the needs of the audience or present the right information in the right format.  I gradually took over the documentation and thus found myself, totally by accident, in this exciting and challenging field.

I see three significant differences in the profession today:

• First, employers are far savvier about the true role and value of a TC; they expect a lot more than just an old-fashioned "tech writer" who fixes the engineers' writing.  They expect us to be involved in everything from GUI design to instructional design.  They know that we apply complex analytical skills to the overall documentation process.  They know that we can contribute to the overall user experience.

• Today's TC does everything, soup-to-nuts.  We no longer write something and hand it over to a layout person.  The advances in DTP software mean that we are expected to be experts in design, layout, graphics, and various deliverables.  We have also taken on tasks that require some programming knowledge, such as Help Authoring and Single Sourcing.

• The global nature of the market has made us become far more sophisticated in our analysis.  We now have to deal with L10N and I18N (localization and internationalization).  We have to think about creating lexicons for Controlled English.  We have to deal with new standards from the EU and ISO.  The Wild West days are long gone.

Q: What is your favorite part of teaching TC in Israel?

A: I get a kick out of watching the light bulb go on over a student's head.  That "aha!" moment when everything starts to click, is priceless.  When students start really "getting" the theory (research-based best practices), and when they can appreciate and enjoy the intellectual challenge, that is extremely gratifying for me.  I also love hearing from former students.  They often contact me to tell me about new jobs and ongoing success in their careers.  One graduate, having successfully passed his six month trial period at his first job, wrote, "Your course did wonders for settling my confidence in my choice of career, and sense of my qualification for it. I have found nothing in my experience so far to contradict anything you said."  That's real naches for me!

Q: Please tell us about your recent election to the board of STC. What is the organization and your history with it?

A: STC (Society for Technical Communication; see: www.stc.org) is the largest international professional society in the field.  With over 14,000 members worldwide, STC spans every aspect of the profession, from writers, editors, content managers, Help authors, information architects, etc.  STC serves its members by promoting the profession, providing quality educational material, and publishing both an advanced research-based journal and a practical magazine. 

I've been a member of STC for many years, and was active locally (STC Israel) in a variety of roles.  I was first approached to run for a Society-level position some five years ago, but the timing wasn't right until a year ago.  I accepted a nomination and appeared on the slate for one of the Director positions.

I am honored to be the first person from Israel to serve on the Board of Directors.  The work has been both fascinating and challenging, and, quite frankly, far more time-consuming than I had ever imagined!  I remain quite impressed with the other members of the BoD; these are all experienced, dedicated professionals who truly care about the Society and the profession at large.  Our focus is on strategic planning, which is not trivial as the Society is going through significant changes to bring it up to the level of a modern professional society.

I had the opportunity to do somewhat the same today: to watch someone try to follow instructions in a guide I was writing. I learned more from the 20 minutes of watching than I would have learned checking over the guide and testing the instructions for 3 days myself.

Areas I thought were simple turned out to be a little confusing. The person hardly read the guide at all; instead, she glanced at it quickly while focusing most of her attention on the screen. When she did read, she read sloppily, in haste, sometimes reading the wrong section (she was often out of place in the sequence of steps). One time she lost track of where she was, and didn't even look at the image where the correct area was circled.