Professional Information

Where I Work....

I work as a technical writer for Citrix Systems, Inc., in the Application Networking Group (ANG) in the San Jose area. In November 2005, Citrix acquired the start-up company I worked for, Teros (formerly Stratum8 Networks), in Sunnyvale, California, so I have actually been working with the same people for almost five years.

Teros released its first product, a web site security system, in summer 2002. Over the next few years, it released a series of what came to be called "web application firewalls" based on the same software platform. The Teros web application firewalls analyzed web site traffic to spot and block hacking attempts, malicious code, and other kinds of web site abuses. After the acquisition, Citrix continued to support and update the Teros platform, renaming it the Citrix Application Firewall (application firewall).

As the lead technical writer in ANG, I get to do lots of fun stuff. I am the primary writer for the application firewall documentation. This involves maintaining the existing documentation for the current stand-alone product, and developing and writing the documentation for new products based on the same technology. With the help of the other writers (one in particular), I have also been developing the FrameMaker templates we will use for future ANG product releases. This involves setting the look and feel of the technical documentation, writing style guidelines, and drawing technical illustrations.

I have a number of talented coworkers and that helps considerably. First is a bright and talented young coworker who joined ANG not long before I did, when Citrix acquired his start-up company, NetScaler. In addition, there are some unusually talented engineers and product management people (many of them former engineers) at ANG.

I keep busy.

My Resume and Contact Information

Citrix keeps me thoroughly employed. My employment agreement forbids me to take work for a customer or work in the same field as the work I do for them. I also don't have time for other large projects.

Keeping this in mind, if you have a short-term project that requires a technical writer, technical editor, technical illustrator, or web designer and feel my skills will meet your needs, please feel free to contact me. This especially applies to work involving physics or engineering research, or help with material related to human rights. If I can't do the job, I may know someone who can.

My resume is posted on my web site. I update it regularly. If you need to contact me about a job offer for something in my field, please use this email address: champton@devsite.org. This is not a blanket invitation to job recruiters to add me to their spam lists. If you use a keyword search program, don't bother to review resumes individually, and send out bulk email using a bulk email program, do not include me on your list. I report spam to the spammer's ISPs, and I consider clearly bulk and untargeted job recruitment email to be spam. If you send private, non-bulk email, however, you're okay, even if it isn't about a job I might want. (Yes, I can tell the difference between bulk and private email. So can anyone with one eye and half a brain; "privatized" email is obviously not private.)

If you want to send me secure private email, you can use my PGP public key.

Technical Writing

Technical writing is writing about technical or scientific subjects. It is a broad field, and covers a lot of different kinds of writing.

Some technical writers explain technical subjects in non-technical language to people who know little or nothing about the subject. These technical writers write the manuals and on-line help that explain to end users how to operate a piece of software, a computer, or another piece of equipment.

Other technical writers explain technical subjects in technical language to people with a strong technical background who need to understand how to use or administer a complex product. These technical writers write installation guides and administration guides for IT professionals, and user's manuals for software engineers and others using highly complex and technical products.

Still other technical writers write complex, detailed documents intended to explain exactly how a piece of equipment, software, or combination of those things is designed and works. These technical writers write specifications, and API documents. Engineers use these documents to learn how a system is designed, and therefore how to modify the design of that system, or write other software to communicate with it.

Still other technical writers write research reports for scientists and engineers studying all sorts of scientific and engineering subjects. My first technical writing work was done for environmental engineering firms that researched and cleaned up toxic spills around gas stations and other small businesses. Other such technical writers work for national laboratories, research departments of large companies, and occasionally in colleges and universities.

While there are many web pages about technical writing on the Internet, unfortunately most of them are primarily there to market the services of a company or individual writers, not to provide information about technical writing to those who are not familiar with the field. The links below contain substantial information about the field and should help those who want to learn what technical writing is and how to become a technical writer.

Last modified on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 8:40 AM PDT.