Devoted to technical writing and technical writers

In line with my earlier post on the value of finding a niche, I'm going to point you towards the area of Business Intelligence. It's a high growth area that really needs good technical writers.

My interest in the business application of data started way back when I interviewed with a San Diego start-up called MohoMine (which is now a division of Kofax). At that time (2001), the company had a new major client and no documentation describing how to use their innovative data mining software. It turned out the client was the CIA, who had funded MohoMine through their VC company In-Q-Tel. I had several interviews with them, and learned some intriguing things about their product but never actually got the contract to write the documentation. However, the bug has stayed with me ever since.

Today, Microsoft is doing a lot of innovative work with their Business Scorecard Manager ( Nick Barclay reminds us not to refer to it as BS Manager!). Check out the linked site because it gives a good synopsis of what writing documentation for a BI application generally includes.

Most of the firms that are developing BI applications are utilizing SQL Server 2005. There's almost always a shortage of good documentation for this tool, and the contract rate for writers who are also experts in SQL Server is generally excellent ($85/hr plus).