The Not-Boring Tech Writer

In this episode, I talk with Heather Zoppetti, a senior technical writer who came to the field through software development and a decade spent running a hand-knitting pattern business. We talk about how technical communication shows up far beyond software documentation, how to recognize and reframe the transferable skills hiding in a nonlinear career, and why being willing to try something matters more than doing it perfectly.

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Heather and I discuss her winding path into technical writing, which started with a career in software development, took a decade-long detour into running a hand-knitting pattern and yarn business, and eventually circled back to tech. When she returned to job hunting and realized she no longer recognized the skills developers were expected to have, she stumbled on a technical writing posting and recognized the work immediately: writing knitting patterns is technical communication. She applied using her knitting patterns as her writing portfolio, and we talk about why her tech writing instincts came more from designing knitwear than from her years as a developer.

A central thread of our conversation is the idea that technical communication is far broader than software documentation. Heather pushed me to think beyond written text to formats like videos, live workshops, interactive lessons, and animated GIFs, and to recognize that different audiences and learning styles call for different approaches. We dig into her experiments with internal documentation at Vanguard, including running user research cohorts to learn the why behind how people use content, and why metrics alone can't tell you whether someone was genuinely absorbed or just stepped away from their desk. We also explore what happens when a docs team builds its own site using the design system it documents, and how "drinking your own champagne" surfaces bugs and builds trust with users.

We spend much of the second half on transferable skills and how to reframe a nonlinear career for a tech writing role. Heather and I both believe more people have technical communication experience than they realize, whether it's a pet medication schedule, a tax prep sheet, a restaurant menu, or a cheat sheet you wrote so your family stops calling you for help. We talk about treating your resume and cover letter as their own forms of technical communication, mapping your experience to the language in a job description, and why good documentation ultimately leaves your reader feeling confident they can do the thing. Heather closes with a reminder that stuck with me: you don't have to go all in to try something, and the only real way to find out if something is for you is to give it a go.

About Heather Zoppetti:

Heather Zoppetti, from Philadelphia, has a rich background in computer science and technical writing. Her current professional journey has her spending her days programming, creating tooling for engineers, and writing documentation. When she’s not typing away at code or text, Heather’s knitting, painting, or performing some other needle witchcraft like cross-stitch. She loves coffee, cats, and the Oxford comma.

In this episode:

• [00:01:20]: Heather's origin story: from software developer to hand-knitting business owner to technical writer
• [00:03:15]: Recognizing knitting patterns as technical writing and using them as a portfolio
• [00:05:59]: Heather's current UX writing role and the value of not being a lone writer
• [00:08:51]: How companies value documentation and where it sits in the org
• [00:12:42]: Why "technical communication" is broader than "technical writing"
• [00:13:51]: Meeting different learning styles with video, GIFs, workshops, and more
• [00:18:04]: Experimenting with internal docs, user research cohorts, and the limits of metrics
• [00:23:06]: How different roles (designers vs. developers) prefer to learn
• [00:28:13]: Job titles: technical writer, content writer, or documentation engineer?
• [00:29:52]: Tooling constraints and building a docs site with your own design system
• [00:31:03]: "Drinking your own champagne": how dogfooding surfaces bugs and builds trust
• [00:34:40]: The case for transferable skills and the tech comm you already do
• [00:39:37]: Technical communication everywhere: medicine labels, pet care, tax prep, and menus
• [00:47:48]: Reframing a nonlinear career in cover letters, resumes, and interviews
• [00:52:36]: Interviewing, imposter syndrome, and transferable skills
• [00:58:52]: How good documentation leaves your reader feeling confident
• [01:01:08]: Resource recommendation: the Write the Docs Slack and community
• [01:03:15]: Best advice: just try it, and treat new things as experiments

Resources discussed in this episode:

• "Knitting Together a Technical Writing Career": Heather's Write the Docs Portland 2025 talk
• Write the Docs Slack

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Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

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• thenotboringtechwriter.com
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Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
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Contact Heather Zoppetti:

• heatherzoppetti.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
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In this solo episode, I share my latest content updates progress and reflect on my takeaways from Florian Lefebvre’s interview (S3:E36). I also share some thoughts on how documentation leads can reduce stress for contributors or reviewers.

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I’ve been continuing to update docs as part of the article editor redesign, though somehow despite updating a lot, the total number hasn’t changed much. I've also helped with docs on a few new features, including small updates to our API endpoint documentation, writing some best practices for using URL redirect articles and categories, major changes to our URL checker, and writing some guidance on robots.txt customizations to prevent certain types of user agent traffic. I also reviewed docs someone else updated when we finally transitioned Advanced search to being a full find-and-replace feature. And, of course, I kept quite busy with Write the Docs Portland, serving as the Writing Day Coordinator!

I reflect on my interview with Florian Lefebvre, co-maintainer of Astro. I love Florian’s story arc of going from someone who self-described as “lazy” and “not enthusiastic” about docs to becoming someone for whom docs are an essential part of building a feature. And I love how Astro Docs uses "talking and doc-ing" meetings to work through core concepts rather than turn them into grammar nitpick fests, lowering the barrier for non-native English speakers and folks who aren’t professional writers to produce clear, accurate documentation.

I close by reflecting on the ways that the processes Sarah Rainsberger, docs lead at Astro Docs, has built processes that have reduced stress for her contributors, including the talking and doc-ing meetings but also the single page for experimental features, taking on the responsibility of content hierarchy, multiple pages, and cross-references for herself. I use a vaguely similar approach here at KnowledgeOwl but I haven’t tried the single page approach, and I may have to try this out with my team. In my own experience, decisions about naming pages and deciding where they live in the content hierarchy are some of the most stressful tasks for my team, and removing those as tasks has made them a lot more excited to contribute to documentation.

In this episode:

• [00:00:44]: Progress updates
• [00:03:25]: Reflections on Florian’s story arc
• [00:05:06]: Reflections on Astro Docs’ talking and doc-ing meetings
• [00:07:59]: Reflections on how we can reduce stress for SMEs, contributors, or reviewers

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Writing docs as an open source developer with Florian Lefebvre (S3:E36)
• Empathy advocacy: Designing docs for all emotional states with Ryan Macklin (S3:E16)
• Kate sounds off on cognitive capital and learning (S3:E17)
• Astro Docs Docs (AD2)

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Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

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• thenotboringtechwriter.com
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• knowledgewithsass.com
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Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
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In this episode, I talk with Florian Lefebvre, a core maintainer of the open source Astro framework, about what it looks like to write and contribute to docs as a developer. We discuss his mindset shift from being reluctant about docs to seeing them as essential to shipping a feature, how he collaborates with a dedicated docs lead through "talking and doc-ing" calls, the importance of writing changesets from the user's perspective, and how reviewing community contributions doubles as a way to teach new contributors your project's docs conventions.

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Florian and I discuss his path into the Astro core team, which started with answering questions on the project's Discord as a user and eventually led to being invited to join the core team. He shares how he was initially reluctant about writing docs, but his perspective shifted as he came to see docs as inseparable from shipping a feature. As Florian puts it, if you build something and nobody knows it exists or how to use it, your feature doesn't really exist.

A central thread of our conversation is Florian's collaboration with Sarah Rainsberger, the Astro docs lead. We dig into their "talking and doc-ing" calls, where Sarah reads back her understanding of a feature and the two iterate together until the docs are technically accurate. Florian highlights how having a dedicated docs lead removes a lot of pressure, especially as a non-native English speaker. He can focus on getting the technical content right and trust Sarah to handle phrasing. We also discuss the value of asking "Is this what you meant?" as a confidence check, rather than making edits based on assumed understanding.

Beyond the collaboration with Sarah, we also cover the practical side of contributing docs as a developer, including reviewing community PRs, writing user-focused changesets, and handling docs for experimental features. Florian explains his approach to coaching new contributors through review comments rather than pointing them to guidelines, why he writes changesets focused on what the user cares about rather than what the developer did to fix something, and how Astro keeps experimental feature docs as a single page until the feature stabilizes. Florian closes with a small but powerful philosophy from the Astro Docs team: every contribution just has to be "not worse than what we had before."

About Florian Lefebvre:

Fullstack developer. Freelancer. Astro core maintainer & TSC member. Open-Source lover. French. Two-time winner of the Astro Community Award.

In this episode:

• [00:01:38]: Florian's origin story: from coding his high school orchestra's website to joining the Astro core team
• [00:03:22]: Astro's governance: maintainers, core maintainers, and how community involvement leads to those roles
• [00:05:19]: Astro features Florian has contributed: Astro Env and the Fonts API
• [00:11:01]: From reluctant docs contributor to seeing docs as essential to shipping a feature
• [00:13:50]: How Astro's docs work: a dedicated docs lead plus community contributions
• [00:14:58]: Community contributions and the "banner everywhere" problem
• [00:17:10]: Astro Docs Docs and coaching new contributors through review comments
• [00:22:44]: Writing changesets that focus on what the user cares about, not what the developer did
• [00:32:57]: Docs for experimental features: the single-page approach
• [00:40:44]: Using existing pages as templates for new docs
• [00:42:45]: Writing docs as a non-native English speaker
• [00:46:55]: The "talking and doc-ing" call process: drafts, iteration, and confidence checks
• [00:52:51]: Resource recommendations: Astro Docs Docs, Diátaxis, and Sarah's 50 docs tips
• [00:54:21]: Florian's best advice: every contribution should be "not worse than what we had before"

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Astro Docs
• Astro Docs Docs - Astro's docs about contributing to and writing for their docs
• Astro Env - The environment variables feature Florian contributed to Astro
• Astro Fonts API - The fonts feature Florian worked on
• Starlight - A docs framework built on top of Astro
• The Diátaxis framework
• 50 docs tips in 50 days - Sarah Rainsberger's blog series

Also recommended by Florian:

• Supporting the future of Astro

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Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
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• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
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• Bluesky

Contact Florian Lefebvre:

• florian-lefebvre.dev
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this solo episode, I share my latest content updates progress and reflect on my takeaways from Eric Holscher’s interview (S3:E34). I also share some thoughts on supporting institutions we care about and how to keep “community” from being an unpleasant word.

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KnowledgeOwl just released a major redesign of our article editor, so I’ve been spending a lot of time testing that redesign and preparing documentation updates for its release. Since the editor is initially opt-in for existing customers, I had to handle both the existing editor layout and the new editor layout in our documentation. I chose an introductory snippet to explain the difference and then manually built tabs for the instructions for each editor layout. I believe this gradual rollout before we move everyone over is a great experience for our authors, but it has definitely made the documentation process a lot more involved, since I know I’ll have to revisit these pages and update them again once we complete that forced rollout.

I reflect on my interview with Eric Holscher, co-founder of the Write the Docs conference. The conference had very humble, minimal roots: the founders all wanted a space for people passionate about documentation to come together and share ideas and then just decided to launch a conference. It grew organically over time. I finally tracked down where I got the idea of “supporting the institutions you care about” from my interview with Eric. Turns out it came from Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century, from his lesson titled “Defend Institutions.” Volunteering for something like Write the Docs is a form of defending an institution I care about, and I hope you can similarly find ways to defend the institutions you care about.

I also dig into the idea of community, especially on the fact that community exists on a spectrum between value-adding and value-extracting, which Eric mentioned in his interview. I introduce some ideas from Ari Weinzweig’s newsletter that recast this dichotomy as making and taking, and I explore ways that building community is like building documentation, tying these ideas to a quote from Wendell Berry.

In this episode:

• [00:00:44]: Progress updates
• [00:06:40]: Reflections on how Write the Docs first began
• [00:09:46]: Reflections on supporting the institutions we care about
• [00:12:42]: Reflections on the idea of community and building communities centered around making rather than taking

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl Support KB
• Building a home for documentarians with Eric Holscher (S3:E34)
• How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert
• The Sensemakers Club
• On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century by Timothy Snyder
• Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition by Wendell Berry 
• “What It Means to Make Democracy in the Day to Day: Why the power of making tops the power of taking” by Ari Weinzweig

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

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Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
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• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
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• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
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In this episode, I talk with Eric Holscher, co-founder of Read the Docs and Write the Docs, about building and sustaining a community for people who care about documentation. We discuss the origin story of Write the Docs, how the conference and community have evolved over 13 years, the value of Lightning Talks and Unconference sessions for fostering organic connection, how AI is reshaping the role of technical writers and developers, and why supporting the institutions you care about matters now more than ever.

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Eric and I discuss his path into caring about documentation, which started as a computer science student reading the Django documentation on a family vacation and discovering how well-written docs could transform his understanding. This experience, combined with his deep roots in the Python and Django open source communities, eventually led him to co-found Read the Docs in 2010 and Write the Docs in 2013. We talk about how Write the Docs was originally conceived as a conference for Read the Docs users but quickly took on a life of its own and eventually became a global community for anyone who cares about documentation. We also discuss the origin of the term "documentarian" as an identity for people who are passionate about docs regardless of their job title, and the value that comes from having a single word to describe that identity.

We explore the conference elements that make Write the Docs feel different from other events, including Lightning Talks as an on-ramp for first-time speakers, Unconference sessions that let attendees organize discussions around what they're excited about, and Writing Day as a hands-on collaborative experience. I share how Writing Day is evolving this year to include skill-based tracks like Git workshops and resume/portfolio reviews to address the community's changing needs. We also discuss how the community's makeup has shifted over the years from a more developer-heavy audience to one that's primarily tech writers, and the intentional work that goes into keeping the conference broadly welcoming.

We dig into Eric's values-driven approach to conference organizing, including keeping sponsors off the main stage, avoiding tool-specific talks that can feel like sales pitches, and defaulting to openness with resources like talk recordings and the Write the Docs topic index. We also touch on AI's impact on the tech writing profession, where Eric offers an optimistic perspective: because writing quality is harder to objectively test than code, the depth of understanding and explainability that writers bring may become even more valuable. The episode wraps up with a discussion of supporting the institutions you care about and the challenges of building sustainable community organizations.

About Eric Holscher:

Eric Holscher is the co-founder of Read the Docs, Write the Docs, and EthicalAds. While studying computer science at the University of Mary Washington, Eric's passion for documentation was sparked by reading the Django documentation on a family vacation and discovering how transformative well-written docs could be. He co-founded Read the Docs in 2010 as an open source documentation hosting platform, which has grown into his full-time work for over a decade. In 2013, he co-founded Write the Docs, which began as a conference for Read the Docs users but quickly evolved into a global community for anyone who cares about documentation, with conferences on multiple continents, a thriving Slack community, and local meetups worldwide. He also co-founded EthicalAds, a privacy-focused ad network, and helped start PyCascades, a Pacific Northwest Python conference. Eric lives in Bend, Oregon, and spends as much time as possible exploring the outdoors on foot or by bike. If you run into him at an event, remember the Pac-Man Rule: always leave room for someone else to join the circle.

In this episode:

• [00:01:20]: Eric's origin story: discovering the power of documentation through Django docs on a family vacation
• [00:04:11]: Read the Docs, Write the Docs, and the confusing naming story
• [00:05:26]: The Write the Docs elevator pitch: a community for anyone who cares about documentation
• [00:09:20]: The origin and meaning of "documentarian" as a professional identity
• [00:12:09]: How Write the Docs got started in 2013
• [00:15:02]: The power of community in professional life and finding your people
• [00:20:49]: Conference structures that foster connection: Lightning Talks, Unconference sessions, and Writing Day
• [00:24:29]: Lightning Talks as a gateway to public speaking
• [00:29:03]: How the conference and community have evolved since 2013
• [00:33:14]: Navigating AI and the future of technical writing
• [00:34:36]: Why writers may be less at risk from AI than developers
• [00:38:48]: Writing Day's evolution: adding skill-based tracks like Git workshops and resume reviews
• [00:44:22]: Sponsor relationships and creating value without being extractive
• [00:47:41]: Lessons learned from building a values-driven community
• [00:52:27]: Finding product-market fit and letting the community shape itself
• [00:55:23]: Eric's advice: you need the cloudy days to appreciate the sunny ones
• [00:58:12]: Resource recommendation: the Write the Docs topic index
• [01:01:11]: Supporting the institutions you want to see exist

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Write the Docs topic index
• Write the Docs Slack
• Write the Docs Portland 2026
• Write the Docs Berlin 2026
• Definition of "documentarian" from Write the Docs
• The Pac-Man Rule at Conferences by Eric Holscher
• Read the Docs
• PyCascades
• PyCon US
• DjangoCon US
• Related TNBTW episodes:
  • S1:E5: Getting involved in a community with Eric Holscher
  • S3:E14: Docs as Tests: Keeping documentation resilient to product changes with Manny Silva
• Kate Mueller's Write the Docs Portland 2022 talk: Beating the Virginia Blues: Thru-hiking strategies for your next big project

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

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Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
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In this solo episode, I share my latest content updates progress and reflect on my takeaways from Jacob Moses’ interview (S3:E32). I also share some thoughts on applying concepts about lovable neighborhoods to documentation.

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I updated the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base (Support KB) to create all the documentation for our new Owl Analytics Export API, including API endpoint documentation and a public Postman collection of the endpoint. I also wrote a release note and documentation for several new import tools, including HubSpot and a generic CSV importer. My change management toolkit is more or less ready for release, which will happen in two phases: a larger toolkit released for KnowledgeOwl customers only, and a more streamlined version released to the general public. I’ll share more once that streamlined version is available so you can check it out if you’d like!

I reflect on my interview with Jacob Moses, especially all the skills he took from his tech writing career and used in his real estate development work at Care Block. I share five ideas that came up in our discussion around neighborhoods and community development that are equally applicable to documentation:

1. You don’t necessarily have to plow a lot of resources into big changes to have a big impact on your reader experience.
2. Have conversations–or at least, bear witness to conversations–where your readers are most comfortable having those conversations.
3. Don’t just copy and paste best practices or templates from other places; use them as starting points and iterate as you go.
4. Incorporate documentation into your customer and employee onboarding.
5. Support readers who have differing levels of engagement styles.

I also dig a lot deeper into the idea of lovable neighbors and lovable documentation, sharing some insights from Henrik Kniberg’s blog post on earliest testable/usable/lovable products and trying to apply those principles to documentation. I argue that documentation can be one of the most lovable parts of your product or company, and that if we recognize that premise, we should identify ways that readers will feel loved by our documentation to focus our efforts on. I tie this to Kelton Noyes’ changes to new employee orientation and ramp-up time shared in S3:E28, where he reduced onboarding and ramp-up from three weeks of training plus a three month ramp-up period down to two weeks total.

I also argue that the idea of reciprocity can help guide us toward more lovable docs, quoting Jacob: “If you build a lovable place, it will be loved in return by whomever you’re leasing the home to.” Our readers won’t love our docs unless we do, so we should focus on building documentation we know our readers need and doing it in a way that is thorough and lovely.

I close by reflecting on the idea of if my documentation is a neighborhood, what kind of neighborhood would it be and how does that change what I prioritize?

In this episode:

• [00:01:03]: Progress updates
• [00:03:47]: Reflections on how Jacob Moses has transferred his tech writing skills to real estate development
• [00:08:22]: Five principles of building good neighborhoods that apply to building good documentation
• [00:16:09]: Reflections on the idea of lovability

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl Owl Analytics Export API documentation
• KnowledgeOwl import documentation
• From tech writing to building lovable neighborhoods with Jacob Moses (S3:E32)
• Skill #3: Creating Just-in-Time Documentation (S1:E3)
• Advocating for docs and choosing tools with Kelton Noyes (S3:E28)
• Making sense of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) – and why I prefer Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable by Henrik Kniberg
• Diátaxis
• The Seven-Action Documentation Model by Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

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Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this episode, I talk with Jacob Moses, the founder and original host of The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast, about how the skills and values he developed as a tech writer have shaped his journey into community development and real estate. We discuss his concept of building "lovable places," how user-centered thinking and empathy translate from documentation to neighborhood development, the power of tight feedback loops and self-service documentation for tenants and clients, and how the Write the Docs Pac-Man rule has changed his life and his work.

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Jacob and I discuss his path from studying technical communication at the University of North Texas to founding The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast in 2016 to his current work as owner of Care Block Development, a real estate development company specializing in historic rehabs in Denton, Texas. Throughout his career transitions, Jacob has carried core tech writing values with him, including user empathy, iterative improvement, and the importance of tight feedback loops. We explore how Care Block's mission of building "lovable places" connects to ideas about product lovability in the software world and why solvency matters for any organization that wants to do good work for the people it serves.

We dig into the ways Jacob applies tech writing skills and principles in his real estate and community development work. He walks us through examples like creating onboarding documentation for new tenants with laminated cards and QR codes, offering multiple communication paths for work orders to accommodate different engagement preferences, and providing self-help guides for emergency situations. On the general contracting side, he shares how he uses project management software to give clients real-time transparency into the estimating process, a move that was counterintuitive to others in his industry but aligned with his commitment to centering humans in every interaction.

We also discuss the Strong Towns approach to public investment, which centers on humbly observing where people struggle, doing the next small thing to address that struggle, and repeating. Jacob connects this to tech writing's iterative, user-centered mindset and to Elinor Ostrom's concept of "cheap talk," which emphasizes meeting people where they are and letting them communicate in ways that feel comfortable. We touch on AI's role in documentation and the irreplaceable value of human empathy, and Jacob shares the piece of advice that has most impacted his life and work: the Write the Docs Pac-Man rule of always leaving room for another person to join the circle.

About Jacob Moses:

Jacob Moses is the founder and original host of The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast, which he launched in 2016 to celebrate tech writers and push back against the stereotype that technical writing is boring. He studied technical communication at the University of North Texas, and his first gig out of college was as a tech writer at Rainmaker Digital (formerly Copyblogger Media). Since then, he's carried the skills and values he cultivated as a tech writer into community development and real estate.

Today, Jacob is owner of Care Block Development, a real estate development company that acquires, rehabs, and manages historic buildings in Denton, Texas. Pairing historic preservation with thoughtful improvements, Care Block honors the culture of the neighborhoods in which it works to create lovable places for the people it serves. He's also the owner of Sardinha, a premium tinned seafood pop-up pushing premium tins in Denton. If you need a tinfish plug in Denton, Jacob is your guy.

In this episode:

• [00:01:00]: Jacob's origin story: a chance meeting at a coffee shop that led to tech writing
• [00:08:06]: From Blue Bag Market to affordable housing to Care Block Development
• [00:10:11]: Care Block's mission: building lovable places through historic rehabs
• [00:13:51]: Lovability as a concept for software, documentation, and community
• [00:24:51]: Tenant onboarding documentation: laminated cards, QR codes, and multiple communication paths
• [00:27:59]: Self-service documentation and accommodating different engagement preferences
• [00:31:33]: Using project management software for transparency in the general contracting process
• [00:37:15]: Tech writing skills that translate beyond documentation
• [00:40:13]: The Strong Towns approach: observe, do the next small thing, repeat
• [00:41:20]: Elinor Ostrom's "cheap talk" and meeting people where they are
• [00:45:38]: Humility, listening, and centering the end user as the expert
• [00:51:02]: AI, empathy, and what makes good documentation good
• [00:54:19]: Resource recommendations: Bird by Bird, Death and Life of Great American Cities, and more
• [00:59:46]: Best advice: the Write the Docs Pac-Man rule

Resources discussed in this episode:

• The Pac-Man Rule at conferences by Eric Holscher
• Strong Towns
• Books:
  • Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom
  • Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
  • Joe Jones by Anne Lamott
  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
  • Dying and Living in the Neighborhood by Prabhjot Singh
  • The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts
  • The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
  • We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider
• Joanne Rohde's "On knowing when to get in, and to get out" (New York Times)
• Related TNBTW episodes:
  • S1:E1: Applying empathy to your audience analysis with Dr. Chris Lam
  • S1:E3: Creating just-in-time documentation with Bri Hillmer
  • S1:E5: Getting involved in a community with Eric Holscher
  • S1:E8 and S1...

In this solo episode, I share my latest content updates progress and reflect on my takeaways from Bill Holland’s interview (S3:E30). I also share my attempts to reframe the idea of strategic documentation projects and maintenance as competing for time to the idea of them being in a deeply symbiotic relationship.

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I’ve been quietly adding documentation to our Support Knowledge Base for recent releases and to fix some display issues in our API endpoint documentation. I’m also achingly close to finishing the knowledge base change management toolkit I’ve been working on.

I reflect on my interview with Bill Holland and how many of the tips he gives for tech writers to communicate with designers are the kinds of work we do all the time. First, provide a brief that explains things in detail, especially any special terminology or acronyms. Define what you want to get out of the project, what its intent is, and what the most important thing you want to communicate is. Assume that the designer knows nothing about the project or industry. Second, share moodboards, graphic samples, or video playlists that have an aesthetic you like so a designer can get a feel for the style you’re after. Third, provide solid, detailed feedback on designs or roughs, tying the criticism back to your style samples or your brief. Tech writers and designers have a lot in common: we all need to educate our clients about how the process works, guide them to what they need, potentially justify the cost of our services and our expertise, and handle the opportunities and disruption that AI is throwing into our respective fields.

I’m trying to find new ways to manage the tension between spending time on routine documentation maintenance and tackling large strategic projects. We tend to talk about this tension as a form of competition, that the tasks compete for our time. Instead, I’m applying a narrative reframing I borrowed from Suzanne Simard’s book Finding the Mother Tree, and recognizing that there’s a symbiotic relationship between the two. One can’t exist without the other, and they each help the other. I hope that reframing might be useful for you.

In this episode:

• [00:01:28]: Updates on my change management toolkit
• [00:04:23]: Reflecting on Bill Holland’s advice for working with designers
• [00:06:42]: Exploring the similarities between tech writers and designers
• [00:10:38]: Changing the narrative on “competing” docs priorities to symbiotic docs priorities

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard
• Kate sounds off on beliefs and maintenance work (S3:E21)
• Kate sounds off on small things and repairs (S3:E23)
• KnowledgeOwl API endpoint reference documentation

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this episode, I talk with Bill Holland, a motion graphics designer and video producer, about how tech writers can effectively collaborate with visual creators. We discuss what to include in a creative brief, how to give constructive feedback to designers, setting realistic expectations for animation types and budgets, and how AI is changing but not replacing visual creative work.

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Bill and I discuss how tech writers and other non-designers can effectively collaborate with visual creators. He walks through what makes a good creative brief, including the importance of assuming the designer knows nothing about your field, spelling out acronyms, clearly identifying what's most important to communicate, and providing mood boards or reference examples for style direction. We use the creation of The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast logo as a real-world example of how the collaboration process works, from initial brief through iteration to a finished product.

We dig into the world of motion graphics and animation, where Bill explains the wide range of animation types and their associated costs, from simple text animation to puppet animation to traditional hand-drawn animation. He stresses the importance of investing in pre-production, including style frames and storyboards, to catch problems early before animation work begins. We also discuss how to give constructive feedback to designers: lead with what's working, be specific about what isn't, and reference your original mood board or brief to articulate where the disconnect is.

We also explore how to evaluate potential designers or animators when hiring, including what to look for in a portfolio and the trade-offs between hiring experienced professionals versus newer talent. The episode wraps up with a discussion of AI's role in visual creation. Bill shares his perspective as someone actively working with AI tools alongside traditional methods, emphasizing that AI works best as part of a hybrid workflow rather than as a wholesale replacement for skilled designers.

About Bill Holland:

Bill Holland (also known by his alias Bill Netherlands) is a motion graphics generalist with an extensive background in video production. With an educational foundation in Art and Design, Bill has worked on every aspect of the motion process from scripting through sound mixing. His early career shooting and editing video informs his storytelling, staging, and pacing in motion graphics today. Bill has created motion graphics and editing work for clients including Google, PBS, NASCAR, the American Dental Association, and Hilton Hotels, earning multiple Telly, Communicator, and Davey awards. He previously ran his own company, Middlebranch Productions, Inc., before rebranding under the Bill Netherlands name at a fellow designer's suggestion.

In this episode:

• [00:01:20]: Bill's motion graphics origin story and his current hybrid AI content creator role
• [00:09:43]: How tech writers often create technical documentation without realizing it
• [00:14:42]: What to include in a creative brief when working with a designer
• [00:21:38]: Handling clients who come in with too much or too little direction
• [00:23:58]: The Not-Boring Tech Writer logo as a real-world collaboration example
• [00:29:29]: Using mood boards and sketching to establish style direction
• [00:32:13]: How to give constructive feedback to designers
• [00:40:22]: Working with motion graphics and animation: types, costs, and setting expectations
• [00:48:33]: The animation production process: style frames, storyboards, and rough animatics
• [00:58:58]: What to look for when hiring a designer or animator
• [01:05:42]: AI's role in animation and visual creation
• [01:12:19]: Using AI as a research and organization tool
• [01:20:10]: Bill's favorite piece of advice

Resources discussed in this episode:

• School of Motion: schoolofmotion.com
• School of Motion Podcast: Apple Podcasts, Spotify
• The Not-Boring Tech Writer logo design iterations
• KnowledgeOwl Linus animation discussed in this episode
• Related episode: Humor and visuals in technical writing with Dennis Dawson (S3:E22)
• Bill Netherlands on Vimeo
• Bill Netherlands on YouTube
• Bill Netherlands on TikTok
• Bill Netherlands on Instagram: Bill Netherlands Motion
• Bill Netherlands on Instagram: Mr. Automatic (DJ)
• Bill’s podcast: Morally Offensive

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Bill Holland:

• Website
• LinkedIn

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn

In this solo episode, I share my latest progress updates as I recover from finishing my big project, along with updates on my daily check-in form. I reflect on some of the key takeaways from Kelton Noyes’ interview (S3:E28) and how my love for process makes my life easier as a tech writer.

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I’ve been working on catching up on the release tail from finishing my project and getting my docs backlog under control, which has included replacing gifs with short mp4s, creating guidelines for my coworkers to more easily create new pages or update existing pages in the KnowledgeOwl Support Knowledge Base, and knocking out a bunch of low-hanging fruit docs tasks.

I’ve also picked up a project I paused in late 2024: updating our API endpoint documentation. I’ve been reworking the documentation to better align with our API’s current reality and requirements and adding some quality of life improvements for myself. I’ve been consistently using the daily check-in form I outlined in episode 27, and I’m largely happy with it, though it hasn’t yet helped me improve my appreciations and high-fives for my teammates.

I also reflect on Kelton’s observations about how documentation should help people to not feel dumb, how getting hands-on with tools during the evaluation process can help refine and reshape your documentation hierarchy of needs, and how his success in transitioning from a support role to a tech writing role was about focusing on selling himself as the person to do documentation, rather than on selling the documentation itself.

I also reflect on one of my key personality traits that I believe makes me more successful as a tech writer: loving the process to do things rather than the product I create. I share anecdotes about LEGO, jigsaw puzzles, and thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Sometimes this strength is also my biggest weakness, so this month I’m focusing on trying to release more even if it feels like the process still wants me to keep working.

In this episode:

• [00:00:58]: My progress updates
• [00:08:32]: Reflecting on Kelton’s episode
• [00:14:35]: LEGO, jigsaw puzzles, and thru-hiking

Resources discussed in this episode:

• KnowledgeOwl API endpoint documentation
• S3:E24: Self-documentation for career growth with Kate Pond
• S3:E27: Kate sounds off on self-documentation
• Beating the Virginia Blues: Thru-hiking strategies to help you survive your next big project
• The Wild Reeds' song “Fruition”:
  • On YouTube
  • On Apple Music
  • On Spotify

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• Guest suggestions form

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• knowledgeowl.com
• LinkedIn