Earlier this year, when I learned our department would be relocating to a single building, part of me would have liked to sit with the User Education team. Of course, this would have distanced me from development teams and made it more of a challenge to stay in their consciousness. But sitting with other technical communicators would make it easier to benefit from each others’ expertise and ideas.

However, I think things have developed in a couple of areas that give me the benefits of both situations.

First, our team has been using the blog feature in a team SharePoint site to ask questions, get feedback, voice ideas, and so on. It has been a fairly engaging way to have discussions that don’t need answers immediately, and we also have them later for reference. This has allowed us to have some of that interaction that we wouldn’t otherwise have, since we sit in different buildings currently and soon will sit on different floors of the same building.

Second, one of the guys we hired onto the User Education team a few months ago took over a project from me, and his workstation is next to mine, both now and in the new location. This gives me quick access to someone who is more experienced in the field than I am. So I have a bit of the User Education team sitting nearby.

Those who work on projects large enough to need a documentation team probably sit together and have the benefit of interacting constantly. But I think the arrangement I have now and will continue to have is the next best thing.

Related posts (auto-generated):

  1. Already Getting Distanced from Some Project Teams
  2. The Team I'd Like to Sit With
  3. Try a Quick Reference Guide for Short-Term Documentation Needs
  4. Help Security: An Elusive Team Standard
  5. A Team Member with the Heart of a Technical Communicator