A case for monster media [knowledge management]

People with irreplaceable knowledge retire, move on, or pass-on every day. Only after their knowledge is gone is the loss recognized. Sometimes, however, a thoughtful manager will recognize the significance of the loss of an employee's knowledge and will do something to preserve that endangered knowledge. For example, Larry Whinery, one of the last men in the country (USA) who knows how to pack high-performance, nuclear weapons parachutes retires in less than three years. These Kevlar-ribbon parachutes are packed around specialized explosives and use specialized cutters and bindings that have to be very carefully integrated into the project. Each step is an exercise in multiple, unique skills. In this case, the process has been archived in a 6.4 Gigabyte collection of 10 CD-ROM disks, and Sandia National Laboratories paid $29000 to have it done. The author's point and the point of the paper is this: there is a new genre available to technical communicators. The genre is not quite instruction, not quite online help, and not quite multimedia textbook. The author calls the project: archived processes, and for want of a descriptive term, he calls it "the genre". The genre is identifiable by its size (typically in the multiple-gigabyte range), its structure (a cross between a multimedia text book and online help), its server (typically a dedicated computer), its industrial quality (more like a railcar than an auto), and its potential for profit (one person can do it and charge $25000-$40000 for a single project).