Daryl Colquhoun--technical writer

Professional Details

Pontifex. Latin for "bridge builder". It's what I am. I build bridges between different groups of workers. I am a business-oriented communicator skilled at conversing with colleagues, persuading them to share information with me, and organising that information so that other stakeholders, present and future, internal and external, can learn what they need in order to work more effectively.

I have produced user guides, procedures and much more, both on-screen and on paper in these areas:

Business processes Information security Biotechnology Government Finance Banking Payroll Engineering & manufacture Mining Education Payroll SCADA

A technical writer works with your product experts to produce on-screen and paper documentation: user manuals, on-screen context-sensitive help, installer and service manuals, administrator manuals. Why use a technical writer? A technical writer does nothing else and has experience in doing the kind of work that product experts only do as a sideline, and one they usually dislike. The technical writer can be the first "outsider" to use your product. I can spot inconsistencies and areas your clients might find difficult, and find them before your clients do, at a stage when they are easy to fix. A technical writer can write the documentation in parallel with product development. This way, inconsistencies and user difficulties can be identified even earlier and fixed at the design stage.

Check out my profile.

Contact

me.

Tools

• Microsoft Office--Word, Excel, Access. Including VBA (formerly known as WordBasic, ExcelBasic, etc.)
• FrameMaker and its companion Webworks Publisher
• Adobe Creative Suite: InDesign, Illustrator, PhotoShop, Acrobat
• Microsoft Visio
• Visual Basic, Javascript, Python, Perl, CGI, ASP
• HDK

Other experience

I have worked in IT and taught it at university.

Education

• BSc (Honours). University of Adelaide. Majors in Computer Science and Mathematics.
• Master of Cognitive Science. UNSW.

Sample work

In early 2012 I started to write a regular column, Colquhoun's Crypto Corner, in the ASTC's newsletter, now known as Context. Find more, with a sample, here. I write lots of different kinds of documentation; this is descriptive.

Short courses

I have attended MOOCs through Coursera. (A MOOC is a massive open online course. These MOOCs do not confer standing with the respective universities.)

• Malicious Software and its Underground Economy from the University of London.
• Cryptography from Stanford University.

I have attended short courses and conferences in

• Writing Effective Process Documentation
• Indexing
• Adobe Framemaker
• Graphic design
• Visual Basic
• Educational techniques
• Software maintenance
• Electronic theory
• Writing business procedures
• Documentation
• Project management
• Multimedia & virtual reality
• Business ethics

Membership

I am a member of the Australian Society for Technical Communication.