Seeking a new role in a changed world

It's time for me to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

I've had many kinds of work experiences. I've worked for a company of 110,000 people, a company of five people, and many in between. I've worked in a copy shop and I've screen-printed T-shirts. I've been self-employed, working solely as a technical writer in that brief dot-com period when everything seemed possible. I need something new.

My sweet spot has been technical publishing, explaining the ever-growing possibilities created by expanding technologies. My natural role seems to be translator, taking complex and often unstable new developments and explaining them in plainer language than was available before. I've joked that I walk up to the cutting edge, get cut, and then explain to others how to do the same with less damage. While the cutting edge is often the most lucrative spot, there are also many safer and more stable things to explain. Even old technology can be complex and fascinating.

Unfortunately, technical publishing as a business peaked in 2000, with the dot-com bubble. When Hungry Minds, formerly IDG Books, changed its logo to a flying pig, we'd reached the top. Within a year, they'd crashed, and we've all been persevering ever since. Technology hasn't slowed - if anything it's accelerating - but the ways people get their information have changed. Coverage of later waves shifted more and more to the Web and away from additional purchases of professional publications. Companies keep thrashing through business models. Books, video courses, conferences and much more still exist, but are much less central to the conversation. Many people in tech publishing see AI chat bots and agents as the final blow, though that still feels uncertain.

On top of that, tech seems less and less interested in being explained. "There's an app for that" constantly promises that the things that were difficult will suddenly be easy, though I can't say that user interfaces have especially improved. AI's heavy reliance on chat models also makes it harder to describe how to perform tasks repeatably. Constantly changing interfaces make it difficult to cover them before they are obsolete again.

Beyond technical publishing, the publishing industry in general has been shrinking and consolidating for decades. Publishing's prestige and profitability probably peaked before I was born, though the afterglow continues. Self-publishing has opened a lot of new doors, reducing the industry's gatekeeping powers, though authors still seem to crave the validation of formal publishing. I'd be happy to stay in publishing somewhere, but the options seem few and mostly freelance. (Which could be okay.)

The broader tech world has thrived, at least for investors, but is now hemorrhaging employees. Sometimes it's because managers think AI can replace employees, sometimes it's because companies think they need to invest in expensive AI infrastructure, and sometimes it's because too many metric-driven decisions have cost companies the customers or collaborators they took for granted. The massive cultural premium on new makes stability difficult, while investors' intense valuation of lock-in limits possibilities.

I'm not sure where or if I fit into these worlds any longer. Part of me would like to find something more concrete, more directly involved in creating projects, than the work I've done since about 2012 at the roadmap and conference program level. Some of me would like to shift to a job where I'm actively making things. (Though no, my woodworking and handyman skills are not professional level.) I would welcome something like the old roles in Richard Scarry's Busy Busy Town.

Let me know - here or privately - if you have thoughts on what might be good for me to do as a next act, I'd love to hear them. I'm applying for a lot of things that could work but eagerly searching for something that might be a great fit.