Reinventing the Editor
My job used to be to read the text of an article, correct grammatical and punctuation errors, make queries to the author for clarification, go back over the revised text to fix any new errors, and shepherd the article through production. The finished article appeared live on java.sun.com. Simple, right?
Jobs change over time, maybe especially at a technology company. I still do that kind of editing and still enjoy it, but other duties are slowly coming to take up about half my time.
Newer assignments include finding blog entries by Sun employees and affiliates to feature in the blog sections on the java.sun.com and developers.sun.com home pages, gathering material to publicize updates to core Java and Java ME technologies and student-developer activities on SDN Program News, writing entries for this blog, working on lexicon entries for search-engine optimization as our developer sites move to a different search engine, identifying good material on the Web for a new developer-news page in the works (on hold since the team leader’s layoff a few weeks ago) and for the My Sun Connection portal, and working with a team of people from all different parts of Sun to provide material that will attract student developers to Sun technologies.
At times, I feel like a fish out of water, wondering how a copy editor ever got here and where this is all going.
At other times, I feel more part of a school of fish, each of us threading in and out of a group, sometimes taking the lead, sometimes filling out the main part of the school, occasionally falling behind, then catching back up again.
This isn’t the life I’d imagined for myself when I graduated college in 1981, but I like to think that some threads of that old imagined future are still present in this current life and career.
