Content At Heart

Profile of Aruna Ramjee

By Ram Venkatraman

Aruna with her family

What started as a chance encounter has turned out as a long career path for Aruna Ramjee. After 13 years as a technical writer, Aruna continues to have an intense passion for her job of creating technical manuals, mentoring new information developers, and the day-to-day challenges of managing a team.

It is remarkable to know that Aruna taught Computer Science at schools and colleges, and edited easy-to-learn books on Computer Science for ICSE students. She even made the defenders of the nation, army officers and soldiers, her students for a while.

The teacher in her makes her a mentor by default. At Honeywell India, where she now works as a project manager, mentoring technical writers is a part of her job profile. There is a need for people like Aruna to raise the bar for technical writing in India. She is not very satisfied with the pool of technical writing talent available in India. Obviously, as a hiring manager, she faces the reality first-hand.

Content development and information design are what Aruna likes most about technical writing. If you give her a choice to pick another career path, she would pick technical writing again. However, if you insist on something else, she might opt for a position as a usability expert. Yes, Aruna loves designing and placing her thoughts in the form of pictures. She said, "I like to design icons and the collage for the installation screens."

Interesting, you might think. Yes, of course. However, managing a team does come with some routine chores such as attending meetings, discussions, team meets, project planning and hiring new recruits to fit the slot. Though these are some challenges most managers face in any industry, Aruna, however, is rewarded with doing what she likes best, developing information.

While talking about mentoring, Aruna said, “We have a very good pool of senior resources at Honeywell India. We introduce our new writers to our Information Development Life Cycle (IDLC) and train them on information design (task-based approach), information mapping, and copy editing techniques.”

Writer, the word immediately brings to the mind the image of a novelist, a journalist, or perhaps a poet. So, the associating factor has something to do with creativity. However, do technical writers have any room for creativity at their work? The answer I have mostly heard is “No.” Aruna’s thoughts differ. She said, “I do feel there is scope for creativity in technical writing. We should get out of the monotonous way of documenting. There is a dire need for more innovative methods, aimed at better user experience, of presenting the information to users.”

Aruna immensely enjoys being a member of the Society for Technical Communicators (STC). She said, “I like the Intercom and the Technical Communication journals. I find very useful information in INDUS, the STC India chapter newsletter.”

Aruna gets enough of technology dose at home too, being married to an electronics engineer, Ramjee, and her first daughter, Neeraja, being a computer engineer. Aruna's second daughter, Swetha, is in the fourth semester of the Information Science graduate degree.

When she is not driving technical writing at Honeywell, and when not having fun with her family, Aruna spends time with their pet dog, Bebeto. Carnatic music is close to her heart too.

Profiled by Ram Venkatraman, Senior Technical Communicator with Sun Microsystems India Pvt Ltd.