As we consider the networks involved in technical communication work, we must recognize the web of personal connections between academics and practitioners across the country and around the world. Our “ways of knowing” are strongly influenced by the people we know and the places where we have studied. The connections we make as graduate students--to advisers and to other students--continue even after we scatter across the country. Those connections multiply and strengthen through organizations like ATTW.
With that concept of network in mind, I propose a poster to present the Technical Communication Genealogy Project, a collection of information about graduates of master’s and doctoral programs in technical communication, although that is a broad term that includes people who have studied professional communication, business communication, rhetoric, information design, and related fields. Using data solicited from members of ATTW and from the ProQuest Dissertation Abstracts database, the poster will illustrate the network of relationships that connect us. In addition to the poster presentation, members of ATTW will be invited to contribute their own information to the database during the conference. Following the ATTW conference, the family tree will be updated and posted on a website devoted to the project. Users will also be able to search the database by name to see individual branches on the family tree.