Tech Docs & Training

I’ve created product documentation from scratch and contributed to existing documentation. Sometimes I’ve worked alone, but many times have collaborated with or led teammates.

I’m familiar with structured authoring and single-sourced topics — I’ve worked extensively in DITA editors and Flare and know my way around semantic tagging, DITAVALs and DTDs.

Learn by doing

problem solving = sticky learning

I firmly believe that we learn better when we do things ourselves — hands-on practice. I also believe that we learn best when we’re asked to solve a real-world problem using new knowledge and skills.

My training is designed around hands-on practice and problem-solving opportunities. I also try to incorporate those elements into the documentation when possible.

Take a peek at some of the examples below. They range from full-on content strategy and implementation for a whole company to significant contributions to IBM’s large enterprise application middleware products.

Rhiza Docs & Training

Featured

Overall Strategy + Content

As the first Manager of Docs & Training, I had a lot of work ahead of me. Luckily, I loved all of it, from determining what problems needed to be solved to figuring out how to solve them.

See more details about the strategy and the XHTML-based knowledge centers that helped users create beautiful stories with data.

Customer Training Session

One of the first — but very effective — trainings I did for complex SaaS-based data visualization software. See excerpts and information here.

I had to overcome some user resistance to the product. Good prep work and the use of problem-solving activities along the way made the difference.

IBM Documentation

Featured

WebSphere Process Server: Hypervisor Edition

I was asked to document IBM’s new cloud-based version of our WPS enterprise middleware. See the docs here— they were authored in DITA using Arbortext Editor.

This was a great project all around. I had fun learning new technology and I worked with an amazing team of developers in Beijing. (When I traveled to China, they took me and my family to dinner at a famous roast duck restaurant.)

The distance could have been a problem, but wasn’t. We had daily/nightly calls, IMs, and online meetings, and I had my own VM to break while I learned how to use the software. I also had the opportunity to contribute to the GUI Loader design from a usability perspective.

Business Process Manager User Assistance

As an author, I contributed heavily to several sections, including Managing the Process Center Repository and Installing, Deploying, and Undeploying Apps in the Runtime Environment.

As an information architect, I spent time working on findability, organization, and ensuring the right content made it into the right version (we had at least 4 versions for each release). In this release, I dug into the Getting Started section. In the previous release, this section was an unwieldy 200+ topics, most of which were too detailed for new users or evaluators. These topics were placed without thought as to where or when users might need or expect to see them.

I performed a thorough content audit, then streamlined the section to about 25 crucial topics. I also made sure we actually had an overview of business process management. When we presented this change to customers and other stakeholders, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

BPM + Worklight Sample

This document + sample code was delivered to customers that wanted to create mobile apps using IBM Business Process Manager and IBM Worklight. See the doc here.

It was featured at the IBM Impact! conference, a yearly event that draws customers and BPM experts from across the world to see what's new and exciting in the upcoming product release.

The sample was targeted toward BPM users who were new to mobile development in general, and often new to Worklight as well. I authored the content in close collaboration with the architect who worked on the project; I did not write the sample code, but I did read it while creating the supporting content.

This document was unusual for IBM: It was authored in MS Word, then exported to PDF.

Bayer Docs

I freelanced for Bayer and helped them create some non-software technical documentation:

eNewsletter article on waterborne synthetic textiles (Bayer MaterialScience NAFTA). This freelance opportunity allowed me to step outside of the software industry and do some science writing. I had to do all of the necessary research to pull together the original version of the article (linked to above). After I submitted it, the editors made minor changes and published it to the eAutomotive Update site.

Sustainability strategy and process document (Bayer North America): This document was intended for Advance Sales teams; it aligned with the company's strategic push toward lifecycle thinking (LCT) and sustainability. The document delves into these concepts, provides case studies and example scenarios relevant for each business division, and tells users exactly what to do to comply with this initiative. Because it was a large document that had to meet the needs of many users, I created a roadmap to direct specific roles to specific chapters. This is one of my favorite freelance projects; it was a great combination of conceptual, procedural, and reference material and posed unique challenges in how to use relatively basic technology (MS Word-to-PDF) to deliver custom content to various readers. Because it contains potentially sensitive corporate information, some text is redacted or rendered in Lorem Ipsum.