Earlier this year, editor Sharon Burton weaved together contributions from female technical communicators in the anthology, “Women in Technical Communication: From Typewriters to Touchscreens, A History by the Women Who Did The Work” (XML Press).
Now Sharon is working on the next volume, Women in Engineering, and there is only about one week left for potential contributors to submit their stories.
If you know women engineers in your professional network, please encourage them to participate.
Too much of the history of technology is written through the lens of products, companies, patents, and executives. The people who solved the problems, built the systems, wrote the code, designed the products, tested the hardware, and kept projects moving often disappear from the historical record.
As techcomm pros, we understand the value of preserving knowledge. We spend our careers documenting products, processes, and decisions so they aren’t lost. The same principle applies to the history of our professions.
We need to capture the history of technology from the people who did the actual work. Our stories matter because we lived them.
A recommendation, introduction, or simple email to someone in your network may help ensure that these experiences are preserved and available for future generations to read, study, and understand.
Technical communicators often serve as the custodians of organizational memory. This is an opportunity to help preserve the human history of technology itself.
If you know an engineer whose story deserves to be told, now is the time to encourage them to share it. 🤠
