by Bill Gotha , Ward Hill Marketing, Inc.

Talk about a rock and a hard place. There are few environments that are as challenging as facilitating communications between an engineer and an engineering audience. It's not like an end-user environment, where color, smell, and personal goals come into play. It's further still from retail (cosmetics copywriters beware). For marketers of technology, the challenge is a daily one, whether you're creating a web site, marketing brochure, white paper, technical article, application sheet, or simple product release. Mentally, it's exhausting.

For one thing, the topics are, at times, so esoteric that creating a focused point of discussion stretches human language to the breaking point. At other times, the discussion swirls around a physical space literally as small as the head of a pin, or smaller. And after all, how many words can you fit on the head of pin?

Define the Parties

In engineer-to-engineer communications, you have two parties: the applications engineer who creates a product or process and the manufacturing engineer who applies it to his/her own product/process. For the second process to succeed, the first has to live within certain parameters or specifications. For the manufacturing engineer to accept a product/process from the applications engineer, he/she has to agree with the methodology and level of specificity and process control employed. Enter the technical communicator.

Play by the Rules

Rule number one: listen and take good notes. Talk to the manufacturing engineer first, for that's your target audience. After all, know your audience. Learn the process, learn the tolerances, and learn the technical language. If possible, see - first hand - the manufacturing environment and quality control operation that are dictating process specifications for the applications engineer.

Next, talk to the applications engineer. Learn the limitations of the tools that will create the process that creates the product that will be sold to the audience (manufacturing engineer). Again, learn the technical language.

By now your pad is full and you're ready for rule number two: be respectful of the topic. In other words, love the material you're writing about as much as the engineers who live with it. Describe it as they would describe it - to a point. The great disadvantage to being an engineer in a communications environment is the tendency to be too generous with knowledge. There's also a tendency to be thorough to a fault, providing every exception to every statement of fact, and burying the main point in the process. Engineers also believe that to simplify a complex concept for the purpose of communication, especially to another engineer, is to diminish it. Diminished, it may not appear on the surface to be robust enough to solve the problem at hand. Therefore, as a technical communicator, you must be selective in your descriptions, but substantive, and choose avenues that allow for clear descriptions without major diversions.

Rule number three: be thorough, yourself. Don't surmise in your writing, don't invent, and whatever you do, don't assume. Stick to the specifics of the process. You're describing what one engineer has to offer another engineer in terms of process concept and control. The product/process of the applications engineer will build into the product/process of the manufacturing engineer, and with any luck solve a major problem. The manufacturing engineer sets the specifications; the applications engineer meets them, through the language you use in your technical paper, brochure, web site, or advertising.

Had enough? Ready for the Clairol account? Be patient. And get a good filing system for your notes. One technical writer I know fills a carton with notes and research for each major writing project he tackles. When he's finished, he knows as much about the topic as anyone, certainly more than the audience. And that's an accomplishment in itself.

Engineer-to-engineer communication is not for the faint of heart. But it warms the soul to see these terribly complex topics explained for all to understand. In reality, to simplify is to make powerful. You just have to survive the process.

Ward Hill Marketing, Inc. is a full service marketing company specializing in technical marketing.