The Not-Boring Tech Writer

Throughout technical writers’ careers, they may find themselves working in several different industries: they could start their career writing end-user documentation for a software company; shift to healthcare to write white papers; maybe transition into marketing to write web copy. 

And this shouldn’t surprise us: technical writers have several skills that transfer well to different industries. 

That’s why, in this episode, you’re going to learn how to write for an industry that you perhaps haven’t considered—or, if you’re like me before I recorded this episode, you had a limited understanding of its opportunity. 

And that’s writing for nonprofit organizations. 

Turns out, technical writers have far more opportunities to contribute to a nonprofit’s mission beyond grant writing—and it this episode, you’ll learn how to use your technical writing skills to capture those opportunities. 

To help us unpack this skill, we have Kathleen Franks on the podcast: recent graduate of Auburn University’s Tech Comm Masters program and—throughout university— used her technical writing skills to assist several nonprofits. 

In this episode, Kathleen shares how you can use your skills to start writing for nonprofit organizations, including: 

• Which technical writing skills best assist nonprofits
• How to use your skills to advocate for nonprofits 
• How to use your skills for more than just grant writing

Show Notes: 

• Strong Towns 
• Kathleen on Twitter

Anyone who’s been in technical writing for a few years or has attended a technical writing conference has witnessed how quickly the field has evolved. Technical writers have had to shift from Microsoft Word docs to single-source authoring; they’ve had to learn how to become project managers; they’ve had to learn basic programming skills. 

In short, technical writers have had to learn how to be flexible—shifting their skills and focus as needed to prepare themselves for shifts in the industry. 

It’s essential to surviving the long game of technical writing; however, it’s not easy. It can require continuing education outside of your 9 to 5; it can mean feeling very uncomfortable in a new setting; and, most important, it can mean, understandably, forgetting to create a enjoyable life for yourself outside of work.

That’s why, in this episode, we have Jody Winter on the podcast: Auckland, New Zealand based technical writer of 15 years who’s faced all the struggles that come with embracing the long game of technical writing—and, thankfully, has lived to tell the story with insights that will help any technical writer prepare for and embrace the challenges of growing and fostering their career. 

In this episode, Jody shares how you can embrace the long game of technical writing, including: 

• How to observe changes in the field and how to respond
• How to respond to seasons of burnout, where you feel like your technical writing career really isn’t going anywhere
• And how to find opportunities to ramp up your technical writing skills

Show Notes: 

• TechCommNZ
• Jody Winter on LinkedIn
• Michal and Pawel on surviving in the dev world
• Write the Docs

As a technical writer, you’ve likely not considered branding yourself and your work—and understandably so: your documentation—no matter how masterful and easy to understand—often isn’t associated with yourself. 

You don’t get a byline; you don’t get a image of yourself below the headline; instead, it’s just another piece of content created by “the documentation team.”

However, that doesn’t mean there’s value in creating your brand as a technical writer. And you can do so in ways that align with your philosophy and perspective of the industry. 

Take Tom Johnson, for example, who’s built a brand for himself around his tech writing site, I’d Rather Be Writing (which, I highly recommend, as you’ll sense in this episode); or Sarah Maddox at Google Maps, who’s built a brand through her site, Ffeathers, combining her interests in technical writing and science fiction. 

You have a unique perspective on technical writing that could build your brand while helping your peers lead more fulfilling careers—and in this episode, you’re gonna learn how to do it. 

We have Ash Blankenship on the podcast: former fellow podcast co-host at Parskify podcast, where we first met, and today, is the founder at Acme Design: a web design agency that helps entrepreneurs and creatives build their brand. 

In this episode, Ash shares how you can find your unique perspective on technical writing to brand your work, including: 

• How to use content to build your brand
• How to choose the right platform to build your brand
• How to build a tribe that believes in your approach to technical writing

Show Notes: 

• Acme Design
• Tom Johnson’s I’d Rather Be Writing 
• Sarah Maddox’s Ffeathers 
• Michal and Pawel’s new Polish tech writing podcast
• Medium
• Tiny Letter

As a technical writer, what does it mean to make your writing interesting? It’s a question you perhaps have never pondered—and understandably so: you spend your time ensuring that your docs are correct and easy to understand for users—not so much that the work is interesting to read. 

It’s a comfortable approach to technical writing that’s easy to get stuck in—however, to the detriment of our work. Enter Anne Janzer: this epsiode’s guest and author of, well, several great books, but as we’ll highlight today, Writing to be Understood. 

In her book, Anne discovered the essential techniques to making nonfiction writing more interesting for readers, including how to use analogies effectively to illustrate unseen concepts, appeal to readers’ innate curiosity, and balance humility with credibility.

In this episode, Anne shares takes her research on making nonfiction writing more interesting and shifts the focus to how technical writers can apply the concepts as well. We discuss:

• where technical writers may currently miss the mark in their writing 
• how technical writers can use cognitive science to make their writing more interesting
• small steps technical writers can take today to make their writing more interesting. 

Show Notes: 

• Applying Empathy to Your Audience Analysis with Chris Lam
• Vellum’s documentation
• Anne’s website
• Anne’s blog

Instructional design, as described by my guest, instructional designer Katie Price, means you create courses to help people—whether it’s students at a university or end-users for a product—learn a new subject. 

Take Lynda, for example: the career development website from LinkedIn. You visit the site to learn a new skill—and you find a course that, through videos, powerpoints, graphics, and good ole’ written content, teaches you that skill. 

That’s instructional design and—as you’ll learn in this episode—it’s a wonderful career move for technical writers hoping to transition into a new field. 

To help us unpack this skill, I’ve got Katie Price, instructional designer at Azusa university, on the podcast to share with us how technical writers can transition into instructional design, including:

• what types of projects instructional designers work on
• what skills you need to learn to excel in instructional design
• how to use your existing skills to transition into the field

Show Notes: 

• Adobe Capture
• Adobe Captivate
• Camtasia

An open source project is a software program that’s open for anyone to use or modify as they see it. For example, a developer—anywhere in the world—could create an open source project that gives users real-time updates on the location of, let’s say, city buses. 

The developer had the idea, coded the software, then released a rough version to the world. It likely has bugs and missing features. But because it’s open source, anyone who’s interested in the project can use their expertise to make the project better—including technical writers. 

As you’ll learn in this episode, documentation is essential to a successful open source project. However, for developers actually coding the software, documentation is an afterthought. The result: possible users don’t know what the software does—and even if they do—they struggle to figure out how to use it. 

This is where technical writers—both new and seasoned—can use their skills not only to contribute to the beauty that is open source projects, but also challenge themselves to learn new types of documentation. 

To help us unpack this skill, I’ve got Kyle Taylor, solutions architect at FFW and President of a Denton-based technology nonprofit TechMill, on the podcast to share with us how technical writers can contribute to open source projects, including:

• how to choose the right project to contribute to
• how to translate your contributions into your portfolio
• how to create open source documentation that developers will love. 

Show Notes: 

• Docksal
• Bootstrap
• Learn how to program
• Jlorde
• FFW
• Kyle on GitHub 
• Kyle on Twitter

Thaddeus Dieken – Technical Writer at Accuray – shares how you can get your first job in technical communication, including how to effectively search for jobs, market yourself as a qualified entry-level candidate, and how to navigate the workplace.

The technical writer has a variety of valuable skills – such as making documents enjoyable to read and complex topics easy to understand – however, the skill that I think is most valuable for the technical writer is the desire to stay relevant and advance their career. 

So we pick up a programming language; we get continued education; we dig into API documentation, hopefully through Tom Johnson’s course on his site, I’d rather be writing. 

But there’s another way to advance our career in technical writing – one that many of you in industry have perhaps never considered: teaching technical writing. 

Jobs in teaching technical writing are rising – a great opportunity for the new and seasoned technical writer alike to make a career shift – and in this episode, our guest, Kim Campbell, professor and chair of Technical Communication at the University of North Texas, will tell you how to make it happen, including: 

• how to gain the right skills 
• how to adopt the right mindset for teaching
• how to enjoy a fulfilling career in academia

Show Notes: 

• Write the Docs
• Technical Communication at the University of North Texas
• Graduate Certificate in Teaching Technical Writing
• Kim Campbell on LinkedIn

We all know that successful technical writers are more than writers: they’re designers; they’re knowledge managers; they’re support. However, for technical writers in the dev world, they’re expected to gain new skills, particularly, understanding (and writing) programming languages. 

That’s a challenging next step for technical writers – and understandably so: We can create docs, but introducing programming languages can make technical writers wonder what it really takes to survive in the dev world. 

In this episode, I chat with Michal Skowron and Pawel Kowaluk – technical writers at Guidewire Software in Kraków, Poland – about how you can survive in the dev world, including:

• the technical writers’ role in a development company
• how technical writers can gain trust and respect from developers
• how technical writers can start learning programming languages

Show Notes: 

• Michal Skowron on LinkedIn
• Pawel Kowaluk on LinkedIn
• Techwriter.pl
• soap! Conference

2016 was a lovely year for The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast. We had 10 episodes with 11 guests, covering a variety of topics that truly captured the theme of the podcast: how technical writers can break the stereotype that technical writing is a boring career.

This episode includes my favorite segment from each of the 10 episodes. So if you hear a segment that interests you and haven’t dove into its episode – now is your chance.

Thank you, listeners, for supporting The Not-Boring Tech Writer, and I look forward to bringing you more episodes in 2017.

Show Notes:

• Episode 1 with Dr. Chris Lam
• Episode 2 with Adam Fout
• Episode 3 with Bri Hillmer
• Episode 4 with Autumn Hood
• Episode 5 with Eric Holscher
• Episode 6 with Neal Kaplan
• Episode 7 with Ted Hudek
• Episode 8 with Tom Johnson and Lisa Meloncon
• Episode 9 with John Espirian
• Episode 10 with Paul Stoecklein