Unveiling the Future: Staying Relevant in the Ever-Evolving World of Technical Writing
Tags: writing, beginners, ai, markdown
Published: 2023-07-05 20:55:17

My colleague and I were fascinated by the emergence of Artificial Intelligence(AI) tools that are revolutionizing the world of technical writing, with their amazing capabilities. It occurred to us how much the field had changed and the trajectory on which things were. We realized how we could not overstate, the importance of staying up to date with the emerging trends in technical writing.

##Importance of staying updated with emerging trends  

1. ###Staying relevant within the industry
Most of the trends in technical writing are fueled by AI. The emergence of AI tools took the world by storm. It raised concerns about whether AI was going to replace people in the job market. 
Most industrial experts speculated that AI would not replace people, but rather, people utilizing the power of AI would replace those who did not. 
Staying updated with emerging trends enables people to remain relevant within their respective industries.

2. ###Stay up to date on relevant topics
Technical writers need to stay up to date with the topics they write about. This allows them to come up with more relevant and sought after content.

3. ###Improving User Experience(UX)
The goal of most production activities is to avail value to the end user of the product. For technical writers, the user experience of the reader is of great essence. Emerging trends to improve the user experience have maximized value creation for the end user.

4. ###Automize writing processes
AI has brought about the emergence of tools for technical writers to research and edit their content. These tools have made the tasks less time-consuming than before. The writer can utilize the time resource that the tools help save, to focus on other aspects of their craft.

5. ###Bring traction towards content
New technology fires up conversations among stakeholders. Take, the Apple Vision Pro, an AR/VR product by Apple. The ground-breaking technology used to put together this awesome tool has brought much interest among stakeholders. By staying updated with such emerging trends and writing about them, a writer is able to attract interested parties with their content.

6. ###Positioning for the coming trends
Michelangelo, the great artist says, _Become a student of change, for it is the only thing that remains constant._ New trends in technology are bound to come up. 
By staying up to date with current trends, technical writers are positioning themselves strategically to leverage new technological tools since new technology will most likely be built on already existing technology.

###Impact of Emerging technology
1. Emerging technologies birth new and often more efficient ways to handle older tasks. This fuels the revolutionization of industries and economies at large.
2. With new technology, comes new opportunities. Unlike the unpopular belief that technology takes roles from people, I rather believe that technology creates new opportunities that we can leverage and embrace.
3. By automating most activities in the technical writing process, creators are able to focus on more creative and innovative aspects to improve their craft.
4. New content formats. Emerging technology has introduced new content formats. These have scrapped off monotony in writing formats. A technical writer can choose from a variety of markdown styles as well as blog formats.

###Impact of evolving industry standards
Technical writing has evolved as an impact of evolving industry standards in the following ways:
1. _Improved User Experience._ Emerging trends have brought about more creative and interesting user interfaces. These add to the value availed to a reader interacting with technical content.
2. _New research methods._ Trends in technology have brought forth AI tools like Open AI's ChatGPT. This has increased the avenues where technical writers can look up information and compare it with findings from other sources. This has increased the credibility of the information availed to end-users
3. _Automating some practices._ New technology has seen the rise of tools like [Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/) and [Quillbot](https://quillbot.com/). These tools have revolutionized editing practices and improved the quality of technical writing content.
4. _A wide range of topics to write on._ As new technology brings about new opportunities, with the rise of AI, writers can tap into the realm of AI and emerging technologies that end users would have an interest in reading on.