I can work anywhere

I needed to go to London to visit my ailing mother. It is wonderful being close to her, and now that I am a freelancer I can work anywhere, as long as I take my laptop with me. No more asking for favours from work, or using up precious vacation days. So here I am, working as usual, and mum can see me while I am working and smile.

Generally, I have been working hard since I last wrote an entry. There is a tremendous amount of work and my major problem is getting feedback from subject experts. But it is great fun and I am enjoying myself.

Now I just have to lug my laptop back home at the end of the visit.

I feel great

I need to access a remote site for project #3. I installed the Shrew Soft vpn but was always timed out when trying to connect. The IT person was unable to locate the problem, but remembered reading something about a problem with the software and Windows 7 Ultimate. I decided to go hunting on the internet, and after a number of false starts found a recommendation to disable the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter. I did this and now can access the vpn. Cool!

Now that I had access I could check for the documentation items opened for the next release. Some were easy and I have already fixed them; others I need access to the system to check or I need expert input.

I also had a call with one of the developers where he walked me through his new development. I asked questions and elicited more info, and it really felt great to be part of the system again.

Drumming up work

When you work for a company you do not need to worry about the work coming in. Usually you are overworked (at least in hi-tech). Occasionally I would hit a dry spell and then look around for things I could improve, such as initiating a project to update an online help (written before my time) that made it very hard to understand the application. Someone pointed me in the direction of an old tutorial, written for the antecedent of the product, which I could use as a base. I worked through the tutorial, learned the new product and updated the material to what is now in place. This became part of the online help, and also enabled me to improve the rest of the help.

Now I am independent. Theoretically, if the work comes in as anticipated I should have no free time (I have three long-term projects); but that isn’t the case in practice. Project #1 is inconsistent – sometimes a lot of work and other times nothing. Project #2 seems to have dried up. Project #3 is in the holiday season.

So what do I do? Look for new projects or try to see what’s happening in the current projects? At the moment I have taken the easy path, i.e., e-mailing my contacts at the three projects to get the material moving to me. I must become more proactive…

Sometimes work can be a slog

I think that when people come on board as product designers/business analysts, they think that the work is exciting. They do not realize that some of the work is absolutely fascinating, such as requirements gathering and analysis, but that there is also a lot of slog work involved – writing the requirement spec, keeping it up-to-date, etc. That of course is life, and I always made a point of not putting off the boring stuff.

As a technical writer more of the work is of the boring type. For example, I have just spent the last week rebranding the complete documentation set for project #3, which was sold to another company and thus has a new look and feel. Working on the new template was fun – making sure it fit our documentation needs, but then came the actual process of moving each document across. Boring is the only word that fits. Thank goodness that part is finally over and the more interesting material should start flowing in once the holiday season is over.

Having said all that, I am of course grateful for any work I receive and get paid for, boring or not!

I sign my third contract

I signed my third contract, just before the Xmas vacation started. I have to admit it was a wonderful contract in that it was straight forward and I understood every word. Amazing (compared to the contract I received from the first company I signed with).

I have already started working, as there is so much to do in too little time. There is a massive rebranding exercise and then I can start modifying documents or creating new material, based on the current state of the product. I hope that the subject experts will put aside time to bring me up-to-date as soon as the holiday season is over.

That is always the major problem when working with R&D. Documentation is only dealt with at the last minute, when the developer in question has finished his work. This leads to overload on the part of the technical writer. We use Agile, so the developments could theoretically be provided to me at the end of each sprint, but that rarely happens. For this release, I am coming on board rather late in the process, so I really need to have the material provided on time. Here’s hoping.

Being sociable

No, I do not mean going out in the evening or weekend and meeting friends, I am talking about one of the changes I am getting used to by working from home. We all know how productive we are (not) in the office, with so many people around us and the endless meetings. I used to come in very early so I would have a couple of hours of uninterrupted work. But talking to people, basic interactions, gossiping in the kitchen, going out for lunch are all missing now that I am at home. I can work harder, I can work whenever I want to and go out and do other stuff during what was once defined work hours, but I do not interact with my workmates. That’s not quite true of course as I do occasionally talk to someone on the phone.

About once every two weeks I go to contract number 1 (my previous place of employment) and make sure that all the documents on the server are the latest versions. Today was one of those days, and I thoroughly enjoyed the gossiping and going out to lunch with good friends.

Is it possible to lose one’s social skills? I think you can, and so I must remember to be sociable from time to time. It is so easy to get lost in work, or a good book, or TV.

Work, work and more work

So if I have to work so hard on my third project, I need to get as much work done as possible on the first project, which has a final release date of beginning Feb. All the basic work has been completed, and I am now waiting to receive feedback (if any) from QA that might change a detail here or there.

In the meantime I have finalized (proofed, PDFd and linked to the documentation set) all those documents I think are OK, in order to cut down on work at the last moment. If QA find any last minute mistakes I will need to re PDF, but it should take much less time as all the prep work has been completed.

The third project is on average 10 hours’ work a day (!), but that takes into account that I receive on time the information required on new features and changes to the system.  I am supposed to go and visit the office, but by the time we closed the deal it was too close to Xmas. Maybe that was lucky in that Europe is totally snowed in. See below for a wonderful photo a friend at the office sent last Friday showing her way to work. They will try and arrange remote access so that I can play with the system and access documents. In the meantime I am busy doing a rebranding exercise.