People to People Ambassador Program
to The People’s Republic of China
Technical Communication Delegation
Linda Oestreich, STC Fellow and Delegation Leader
Jenny Redfern, STC Senior Member
Alexia Idoura, STC Senior Member

Agenda
1
Delegation overview, background, and goals
2
Beijing
3
Guilin
4
Shanghai
5
Conclusions—professional and personal
2

Delegation overview,
background, and goals
3

2008 STC delegation to China
 15 professionals and 5 guests
 A global and multifaceted group
 USA, Canada, Belgium, and Australia/Indonesia
 HP, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Molex, Accenture,
American Academy of Dermatology, Acrolinx,
Geomodeling, and others
 Writers, trainers, managers, application developers
 Computer software and hardware, health care,
geophysical exploration, telecomm, nuclear exploration,
and other industries
 Detailed delegate list on delegate blog:
http://techcommchina.livejournal.com
 One of several P2P delegations in China at the
time: Ground Water Specialists, Midwives,
Phlebotomists, and Emergency Room Nurses
4

Today's panel
 Linda L. Oestreich, Delegation Leader, STC
Fellow and Past President (Hewlett-Packard
Company)
 Jenny R. Redfern, Delegate, STC Senior
Member (Sun Microsystems, Inc.)
 Alexia Idoura, Delegate, STC Senior Member
(Symantec Corporation)
5

People to People
Citizen Ambassador Program
 In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower founded
an organization to promote world peace and
understanding: People to People.
 Eisenhower believed strongly in the power of the
citizen ambassador. According to him, “the people
want peace; indeed, I believe they want peace so
badly that the governments will just have to step
aside and let them have it.”
 Since that time, thousands of delegates have
explored fascinating destinations — from North
America to Europe, Asia, Africa, the South Pacific
and even Antarctica — making friends all along
the way.
6

Cities on our journey
 Beijing  Shanghai
 Municipality  Municipality
 Capital of China  Southeast coast
 Northeast  ~17 million
 ~14 million  ~ latitude of Gulfport,
 ~latitude of Denver or MS
Baltimore  Western influence
 Financial/high tech
 Guilin
 Pudong = Silicon
 ln the Guangxi Zhuang
Valley, The Bund =
autonomous region
European waterfront
bordering Vietnam
 <1 million/city; ~5 million
in area
 ~ latitude of Key West, FL
7

On the map
8

Goals of the trip
 Gain a better understanding of the common
interests and challenges we share with our
colleagues in China
 Assess the state of technical communication and
content development in China
 Investigate starting an STC chapter in China
 (And later, investigate starting an STC China SIG)
 Learn more about China to support STC’s goal of
becoming a more global organization
9

Beijing
10

Cultural days
11

From the P2P in-country briefing
In-country guides spoke at length about Chinese
history and recent cultural changes.
“Dramatic changes are happening. Practice
makes perfect.”
12

Professional agenda: Peking University
Host: Professor Lai Mao-Sheng
 Department of Information Management
 Formerly Dept. of Library and Info. Science
 Established in 1947
 One of its students invented Baidu, the Chinese version of
Google
Hosted previous STC delegation, in 2002
13

Professional agenda: Peking University
 Presentations from profs and grad students
 Research and practice of techcomm in China
 Relationship between media literacy and new media use
 CIO as a new role in China: turning technical information
into business information
 Selling IT to the organization: using understandable
terminology, common language
 Designing and delivering information in the new China:
Digital Museum of Science and Art
14

Peking University: STC presentations
 Presentations from delegates
 Current state of the profession in the West
 Curriculum of one techcomm Masters program in the US,
returning to school for a second career, working and
going to school
 Distance learning: Masters in techcomm
15

Professor Lai’s business card
 Chief Member, Council of China’s
Information Association
 Member, Council of the China Society
for Sci-Tech Information
 Chief member, Council of the Chinese
Association of Information Economics
 Chief Member, Council of the China
Society for Sci-/Tech Journalism
 Director of the National Institute for
Information Resource Management
(Beijing)
 Consultant, Occupation Skill Testing
Authority, Ministry of Labor and Social
Security of the People’s Republic of
China
• “We have two very different ideas about technical communications. In
China, technical communications is more about communicating with the
people. In the U.S., technical communications is about communicating
about products in technology and business.”
 “I graduated from Peking University, and have been teaching here ever
since. Some years have been difficult. In the 1980s, Chinese businesses
and industry began to grow, and to make attractive offers to our
students. For several years, more of our graduates would go to work in
industry rather than return to the university to obtain graduate degrees.”
16

Chinese netizen’s top requirements
 Accessibility: in China, this means making online content
comprehensible to a wide audience, i.e., young people
and those with less education
 Content must be designed to
 Entertain
 Inform and communicate visually
 Create interest
 Be usable
 Information architecture to address these needs includes
 Content organization
 Two levels deep
 Taxonomy/tags
 Behavior design
 Visual design (function over form, invisible design)
 Technical considerations (standards, search, content
management)
17

Professional agenda: Beijing Association of
Science and Technology
 BAST purpose
 Bridge between scientists and technologists, and government
 Popularize science with lay community, especially youth
• Youth Science and Technology Innovation Contest
 Develop international academic exchanges
 Scientific think tank for local agencies
 Presentations
 BAST: Website to popularize science
 STC: Why tech writers should develop medical information
 Discussion
 Popularizing science in China
 Developing a digital information base
 Role of professional associations in technical communication
 Skills that make for successful job candidates in techcomm
18

Professional agenda:
Digital Industry Development Base
 Beijing Cyber Recreation
District (CRD)
 First virtual reality interactive
 economic zone
 Experiencing
 Entertaining
 Interacting
 Competing
 Interesting environment – white gleaming tubular
walls, meeting rooms in concentric circles, seating
in modular form
 Theme music!
 Dotman and Dotwoman on the bathroom doors...
19

Presentations at the BCRD
 Overview: Hosts emphasize that the Chinese audience is
more visually oriented, and Westerners are more text
oriented (And the presentations demonstrated this)
 Kent Taylor on technology for information quality
management (Acrolinx IQ Suite)—possibly will help them
write better English
 DotMan: a business-focused virtual world, similar to Second
Life, but more secure and user-friendly
 DotMan estimates they have 150 million Avatars with 7 million
online at any one time (Second Life’s figures are 10 million and
50K respectively).
 They have 9 similar worlds in the pipeline
 Virtual worlds are fast becoming used for business meetings,
distance learning, banking, shopping, etc.
 Gartner states that in 5 years, 80% of regular internet users will
have a virtual world presence.
 See Virtual Worlds and China
20

BCRD: Tour of computer graphics
companies
 Computer graphics business is big in China
 Outsourcing all phases of development
 Great first jobs for new CE university grads
 Two companies have development offices in the BCRD
21

Guilin
22

Cultural days
23

What were the four ancient Chinese
inventions?
1. Papermaking, gunpowder, printing, the
compass
2. Papermaking, gunpowder, printing, the
wheel
3. Papermaking, ink, printing, the compass
4. Spaghetti, gunpowder, printing, the
compass
24

Professional agenda: Guilin Hunter
Information Industry Ltd. Corp
 Guilin Hunter Information Industry Limited Corporation
 Chairman and Professor of Guilin University in Dept of
Electronic Sciences
 Main areas of business: software outsourcing, product
development (RFID), information service products
 Very interested in impact of economic problems in US
 Interesting thoughts about India vs. China (next slide)
 Two software engineers just returned from Japan
 More interested in Asian partners than the West
 Hs in the logo stand for Hunter-Highway-Hero:
• Honesty, information & innovation
• We must find our own characteristics in the sea of
information
• Listed on stock exchange: strategic goals for 2015:
1000 employees & $50M
25

Guilin Hunter chairman’s thoughts on
advantages of India vs. China
26

Professional agenda: Guilin
Programmers Club
 Guilin Programmers Club
 Engineers are the same the world over
 Not so aware of tech comm, so it might be a good
educational opportunity
 Very aware of importance of professional societies,
though; this one sponsored by Microsoft
 One asked why Americans write narrative and
personal stories when he just wants step-by-step
instructions
27

Shanghai
28

Cultural days
29

Accenture Strategic Delivery Organization,
Greater China
 Accenture is well-known throughout the world.
 One of the "Big 5" in the global consulting industry.
 More than 3000 employees in China, specializing in four
areas: consulting, outsourcing, solutions, and technical
support.
 By far most relaxed, open discussion – very little “protocol”
 Similarities and differences in our culture (Why do
you…?) See list on next slide
 Open feel: even non-Accenture employees were
invited to join us
30

Discussion topics at Accenture
We made observations about the similarities and differences in our
cultures:
 China's "learning from a master" culture: our mentors
 How the long history affects the rate of change in China
 Engaging employees—both their minds and their hearts
 "Creative" and "people" work versus "logical" and "machine" work
 Today’s employees are looking for the complete package--not just
the salary, but benefits and the company's culture
 What hiring managers look for in potential employees, and how to
retain employees
 Hiring professional coaches for executives
 The best way to train, leading to a discussion on visual
communication, and "culturally loaded icons." :-)
 Copyright protection discussion, re: Microsoft's actions against piracy
of its software in China. It's estimated that 50-60% of MS software
is pirated; they have launched an anti-piracy tool targeting Chinese
computer users to ensure they buy genuine software.
31

HP Global Development China Center
 Software outsourcing, the whole lifecycle (R&D
through packaging)
 GDCC Agenda
 International collaboration, virtual teams, knowledge
management
 Intercultural communication and business
opportunities for technical communication consultants
as solution providers in China
 Some miscommunication initially around techcomm,
but quickly turned around when we talked to actual
writers
 Tour: could be any dev site anywhere. Cubes, strong
focus on courting Japan
32

Dr. Andy Lai, General Manager at GDCC
 Requirement to improve localization and communication--forming deeper relationships
with global companies represented in China.
 The growth of global enterprise is expanding quickly, and scale of relationships is global
(remote teams)
 GDCC has 3,400 employees in China.
 Growth is expected to continue for GDCC along with all economic growth in China because
of low labor costs, availability of great talent, and the low cost of living in China.
 A huge challenge: necessity for non-Chinese language training so that improvements can
continue in stronger communication, especially at the technical levels.
 Desires to improve technical writing efforts in Korean, Japanese, and English for the
Chinese writers.
 Discussed rapid growth of technical abilities in China with new construction and new
software applications, all increasing the need for more focus on the end users of software.
That end-user focus drives an increased importance of competence for [technical] writers
in the localized language of the end users.
 Recognizes the need of good English end-user guides and the necessity to build the skills
within HP GDCC.
 Applauded STC Delegation's efforts and endorsed the benefits of exchanging ideas; he
hopes to work more with STC in future.
 Discussed "Open Mouth," a volunteer-run language learning program based on the
immersion learning method that focuses primarily on speaking.
 Although English is part of the Chinese standard education curriculum, Dr. Lai said that
many official English teachers in China have learned Chinese without ever hearing any
native English speakers speak.
33

Conclusions:
professional and
personal
34

Our professional conclusions
 Overall
 Juxtaposition of old and new in every aspect of life and business
 Friendliness of people
 Western influence: very important, but more in certain areas
 Sensory overload
 Freedoms and restrictions, i.e. Internet access
 Many were interested in tech comm, but few knew it as a profession
 Understanding and use of tech comm varies widely
 Larger US-based and -influenced companies are more sophisticated
 More universities are developing programs
 Small, local companies are more likely to have engineers do the writing
 Most companies start by hiring English majors, often through L10N
• Tech comm is not credentialed and rarely organized
 Most professionals in China write and produce their own docs
•The exceptions are large companies and foreign companies
 Regional differences
 Shanghai = most sophisticated about tech com, Guilin the least, Beijing in
the middle, more traditional
 Don’t underestimate China’s determination and ability to be
successful – need to watch and see how the profession develops
35

InfoDev in China and India: Conclusions (by
Hackos/CIDM)
 Organizations offshore for many reasons, not only to cut costs
 Successful organizations have carefully planned their
implementations
 Many offshore implementations are co-located with product
development
 Addressing cultural differences is important to success
 Organizations use on-site managers with cultural experience in
both West and East
 Hiring is difficult because of English skills
 Organizations provide training after hiring
 Successful implementations have more than six information
developers at startup
 Startup costs are high; ongoing costs, other than salary, are
higher than domestic costs
 Savings are not as high as expected, based on salary
differences
36

Our personal conclusions
 China's size and will to succeed give it
enormous momentum
 China has an enormous national (internal)
audience yet to be addressed by tech comm
 Accessible has very different meanings
 West: Content available to persons with
disabilities
 China: Content available to lower classes and
younger people
 Communication has very different meanings
 West: Expressing information
 China: Building relationships
37

Reflections from Linda
 The juxtaposition of extremely  The tenacity of the street
old and extremely new. vendors.
 The constant ant-like activity of  The etched faces of the older
the construction trades women in the countryside.
everywhere you looked.  The toothless old man who
 The chaotic traffic and constant wanted to sell two really ugly
near-misses. turquoise-colored Chinese lions.
 The connection and  The overpowering surrealism of
collaboration of our delegation. the whole trip.
 The beauty of Guilin (even in the  The gratitude I feel for having
rain). been part of it.
 The fun of walking in the rain.  And, the knowledge that the
world truly is minuscule and that
 The grandeur and history of the
we can all coexist if we only
Great Wall.
open our minds and hearts.
 The graciousness of our hosts.
38

Resources and suggested readings
 People to People web site
 Official trip journal
 Delegation blog
 Some interesting books and articles
 Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China
 China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future --
and the Challenge for America
 What Does China Think?
 China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest?
 Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan
Will Shape Our Next Decade
 The Atlantic: “Their Own Worst Enemy,” James Fallows,
November 2008.
 If interested in an STC China SIG, please email
Linda and let her know.
39

Questions?
Thank you!
Linda Oestreich: linda.oestreich@hp.com
Jenny Redfern: Jenny.Redfern@Sun.COM
Alexia Idoura: alexia_idoura@symantec.com
40