Technical Communication For Engineers - By An Engineer

Strategies and exercises to help technical people better interact - writing and verbal

What you'll learn

Skills and Techniques to communicate better with non-technical people

Learn ways to evaluate your audience so you can deliver the same content in an effective way

Ways to evaluate cultural, technical, and perspective differences

Skills for both verbal and written communication

Requirements

A willingness to apply the techniques, fail or succeed, try again

Description

You, or your staff, are technical people, perhaps engineers. Me too! For the last 20 years, I've been a software engineer and architect with scores of employees and co-workers. What's the one thing I wish all my co-workers and employees would learn next after getting to the base level to do the technical job? Another programming language? Publish a new research paper? Get another degree? No! After 2 decades of working with technical people, the thing I always care most about is how are their soft skills, specifically how are their communication skills!I have worked with engineers who are "twice" the engineer of anyone else on my team. They prototyped quickly, they knew the answer to almost every problem, they could carry the heavy load… and yet I wanted them on another team, or I was thrilled to hear they were looking for another job. Why? They were difficult to work with which totally overshadowed their technical ability. They always came across as rude,  ambiguous, or know-it-alls to both everyone their team and to management. On the other hand, I have worked with engineers who were just barely able to do their job, but we're excellent communicators. I gladly committed to them, because I knew I could teach them the hard skills, their soft skills were there, and they make my life better, the team chemistry better, and the company better.That's what this course is about. It comes in 2 primary parts:Sections 1, 2, & 3 focus on the soft skills of communication. These are difficult to nail down for engineers! They focus on audience analysis and strategies a technical person can employ to improve. We spend this time primarily exploring conceptually and doing exercises.Section 4 focuses on the hard skills of technical communication. How to write technical documents, focusing on reports, proposals, and memos, editing and proofreading, and using visuals effectively. This time is spent looking at structure and formatting.When you (or your staff) are finished with the course, you will be better equipped to communicate with both non-technical staff and peers, as more human, more approachable, and more understandable. You will also have the tools to write well structured technical documents. Get started improving your soft engineering skills today!

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 Is This Worth My (Staffs) Time? The Value of Technical Communication

Lecture 3 Challenges Engineers Face

Section 2: Audience Analysis

Lecture 4 Practical Exercise

Lecture 5 Post Assignment Breakdown

Lecture 6 Different Audience Types

Lecture 7 How To Better Analyze

Lecture 8 Why Bother Analyze?

Section 3: General Techniques, Strategies, & Exercises

Lecture 9 Introduction and Strategy #1

Lecture 10 Strategy #2 - Define the AUDIENCE goals!

Lecture 11 Strategy #3 - Meet the Audience Where They Are At

Lecture 12 Strategy #4 - Assumptions and Presuppositions

Lecture 13 Strategy #5 - Analogies and Illustrations

Lecture 14 Strategy #6 - Be A StoryTeller

Lecture 15 Strategy #7 - Empathy (The Impossible, Omnipotent Strategy )

Lecture 16 Strategy #9 - Eliminate Jargon

Section 4: Technical Documents and Writing

Lecture 17 Section Introduction

Lecture 18 The Purpose of Technical Documents

Lecture 19 Types of Technical Documents

Lecture 20 Focus 1 - Reports

Lecture 21 Focus 2 - Proposals

Any and every technical person who isn't perfect at communication (author included!)