Essential Communication Strategies: For Scientists, Engineers, and Technology Professionals

Learn the tricks-of-the-trade of becoming a great technical communicator

Remember when you were an undergraduate and freshman composition seemed so irrelevant to your life? After all, you were going to conquer the world with technological know-how. Your spellcheck software would handle the details. Now that you're a professional - pitching an idea, vying for a contract or grant, or presenting at a meeting - getting your point across effectively suddenly seems pretty essential for success, doesn't it?

Fear not. This light-hearted text, brimming with proven techniques, good advice, and real-world examples that you can easily apply to your own case, will turn you into an adept communicator. Written expressly for technologists, this is a simple, concise, and practical guide to the communication dynamics of writing, presentation delivery, and meeting interaction.

Herbert Hirsch, in-demand consultant who developed these techniques for his own prolific engineering career, teaches you how to use "scripting" to plan for communication events. More than a mere outline or storyboard, scripting is a powerful technique that assists you in getting the right structure and content, in the proper order.

Using scripting, you will master the fundamental principles of communicating:

• How to grab the reader's or audience's attention from the start
• How to maintain the connection while proceeding smoothly from topic to topic
• How to provide the substantiation for the points you made
• How to communicate with people from other groups, such as marketers, investors, users, and others
• How to overcome such obstacles as fear, boredom, and aversion to your material

Distilling the art of communication to its essence, Essential Communication Strategies empowers you to communicate with confidence and authority in every situation, to every audience.

HERBERT L. HIRSCH began his career at Systems Research Laboratories (now part of Veridian Corporation) in Dayton, Ohio, and rose to the position of Senior Engineer. Mr. Hirsch has also served as an Engineering Group Leader for Quest Research Corporation, Director of Systems Engineering for Applications Research Corporation, Director of Engineering for Defense Technology, Inc., and Chief Engineer for MTL Systems, Inc. He has also authored and coauthored books on radar antenna simulation, statistical signal processing, hardware description languages, and electronic countermeasures. Mr. Hirsch currently operates his consulting business, Hirsch Engineering and Communications, Inc., from his home in Vandalia, Ohio.