| My background .... I started
my working life as a shorthand typist which led me in time
to a position of Personal Assistant in a small family
printing company.
This was a varied role as we all helped out as necessary
so I learnt how to typeset, proof-read and even how to
operate a printing press.
This came in very useful subsequently when I found myself
- again supposedly a PA - taking orders, proof-reading and
even creating artwork in a specialist label printing
company. Oh yes, and the shorthand came in very useful as
well when taking orders over the telephone!
And then I started out on my own ...
In the early days the projects were extremely varied, and
included :-
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Word processing the translation from Russian of
Boris Yeltsin's memoirs (before he came to power). |
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Manipulating word processed data of the contents of
the house in Paris previously owned by the late Duke &
Duchess of Windsor into database format for a firm of
Historical Consultants. |
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Keying in book text for various publishers - usually
to very tight deadlines. |
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The production of booklets on more than 200 medical
problems "written by medical specialists in language
which could be understood by the ordinary person". This
included liaison with the medical community, editing and
proof reading, typesetting, and producing finished text,
via Desk Top Publishing, for printing. |
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Training members of a Youth Club in the use of
computer systems on a contract with the Local Authority |
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Supporting a widespread group of Direct Marketing
Consultants in the use of both Macintosh and Windows
systems and electronic communications. |
But as time went by a pattern became to emerge, and more
and more of the projects involved manipulating and
reformatting the electronic copy of word processed
documents, and thus the specialisation in Document
Conversion and Migration Issues and Solutions evolved.
Initially it was just Document Conversion, and a lot of
the work was fairly manual, taking the content of word
processed documents from an old - often DOS based - word
processor and "converting" them via copy and paste and then
various search and replace actions.
Then we progressed to using specialist Document
Conversion software - this speeded the process up, but the
resulting electronic document almost always needed further,
manual, attention afterwards, and this was something that
clients didn't want to do themselves! This is where
the consultancy grew via the recruitment of self-employed
associates with good editing skills who came onto client
site - or worked from home - as and when required.
The next step came with the introduction of Microsoft
Word for Windows® which heralded the start of the migration
of many major companies to that word processor format.
This product came with conversion filters for all the main
competing word processors, but again the resulting document
required further editing! Two changes came about at
this time for Wilcom Services, firstly identifying the best
route to take to convert documents - often a two step
process was found to be preferable to a direct import, and
secondly the introduction in Microsoft Word® of automation
in the form of Word Basic Macros.
Identifying formatting problems and writing macros to
solve them seemed an ideal course of action.
Unfortunately this automation was very new at this time and,
of course, the type of macros required were not in any way
what you might consider to be "normal" or that anybody had
any experience of writing, so this was a very challenging -
but interesting - time. Gradually a suite of macros
evolved, continually being tested and refined against
documents which displayed yet another new formatting
"feature".
Since then versions of Microsoft Word for Windows® have
come and gone - each with its own new features which always
seemed to require new solutions, and Word Basic was changed
to Visual Basic for Applications - more scope for
automations, but another big step as most macros had to be
rewritten at that time.
Around this time Document Management came into the arena
for my main client groups - pharmaceuticals and legal.
Previously documents had been stored on network file shares,
or even on disk or CD, but where version control was
essential this was not sufficient. Storing the
electronic document in a document management system ensured
that the current version was easily accessible and where
formal approvals were required - often described as ensuring
the documents were "in compliance" - that these could be
correctly managed.
Document Management opened up the way to new automation
requirements, often coupling conversion - either outside or
within the document management system - with user friendly
editing shortcuts.
To date I have worked with clients in the United Kingdom,
United States of America, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden,
Norway, China and Japan.
And now there's a new Windows operating system - VISTA -
and a new file format - XML - for Word documents! New
challenges, but that's what makes it all so interesting!
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