I’ve been considering how to move forwards with traditional #proofreading and a more complete #qualitycontrol of different channels of #contentdelivery.
• qcdocu.com (my new proposal, as it stands right now)
Background
I got into this in the first place for two reasons:
1. In the early 2000s I studied, whilst living in #spain, a #spanish University Master in #publishing. I’d always been interested in content of all kinds: when a child and adolescent, almost engulfing my local library’s bookshelves; and when older, blogging every day on a whole range of subjects in response to the imagination and occurrences of many known and many relatively unknown writers.
The Master then served to put me in touch with #editors of the very best: I even interned for three months or so in the University of Salamanca’s fabulous #publishing house. This only sharpened my interest in the role and activity of #editing #reality.
2. From about 2012-2013 onwards, I started working for a major #london-based #marketingagency. This was in the field of #bigtech, and involved ensuring that the #sales #documentation which ended up in front of the #csuite clients of my client’s clients was in the best condition possible — including grammar, flow and related, and even in some cases picking up on domain-related inaccuracies.
This second activity has been the mainstay of my working-life since then. Until this autumn, that is. The most recent relationship — volumes and so forth — which I had with my main client was settled for over a year or more, at levels which enabled me to deliver an exclusive dedication. Then staff changed, agreements were left by the wayside, #generativeai seemed to promise a world of automated #csuite-competent comms, and two things happened … or at least, my client tried really aggressively for two things to take place.
The new revenue stream and NDA
One, reduce substantially my income over a period of two months with minimal warning; and two, demand I signed a new #nda which not only required me not to work as #proofreader for my client’s clients — most of the #bigtech corporations and quite a few niche ones, too, being an absolutely reasonable and understandable condition — were I ever to leave the relationship, but also demanded I did not work in any #tech field which my #proofreading over the years might touch on … or, maybe even, have touched on. And remember, the only documentation I ever came into contact with — or would be coming into contact with, for sure — was sales & marketing documentation aimed at the #csuite. Never manuals, never secret sauces … none of this at all, in any way whatsoever.
I couldn’t sign, obviously; and so I didn’t.
And so I guess, because the #marketingagency is influential globally, that locks me out of future work of this nature elsewhere.
Yet I love the industry. Still.
Next steps …
So what next? Well. I’m considering moving into bigger-project publishing: I’m already editing the translation of a #croatian 20th century novel on behalf of a family member. We have obtained the rights to proceed with the translation’s publication, and now we’re working through final versions of the same.
But this, for the moment, is clearly a side hustle. ‘Keeps my brain ticking over, I guess. (Something I am grateful for, too.)
The question itself
A question then, to you all. Whilst #openai and #microsoft have wilfully upturned the world on the basis of presumption and unvalidated notions around the utility of their #generativeai escapades, people who have worked skilfully and with deep wisdom in the industry of #content and #publishing more widely have seen their livelihoods destroyed in less than six months.
I now hear of a case where a smaller agency which automated their content processes using #ai a year ago are not only continuing to pay out for the #tech, but are having to take on four more people to revert back to a manual and human delivery, as well as pay for lawyers to identify any injuries these obviously fairly unwise changes may already have incurred for clients over the past twelve months.
As someone has observed of the #openai/#microsoft nexus, a shit-show all round.
The question, then? Will common sense now ever return to high-level marketing & sales, and their related communication?
WDYT?
Yay or nay?
mil's page 