EXPERIENCE
ObjectRocket, a Rackspace Company, Content and Community Builder (August 2019 - February 2020)
- Created technical content blogs (using WordPress and HubSpot)
- Maintained ObjectRocket’s social media presence on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Work with Product Managers to serve as focal person (project management, research, writing) developing Service Offering Descriptions that describe our offerings, capture processes and guidelines, information about upgrades and maintenance processes, RACI charts, ticketing and billing, and other facets.
- Work with cross-org teams to produce customized Runbooks for our offerings and database platforms (DBaas/Cloud for AWS, GCP, Azure).
- Defined and implemented a strategy for building out our community and amplifying the ecosystem; run our local MeetUps, use social media to spread the word about ObjectRocket.
- Work closely with UX Designer to test and improve customer-facing UIs, SSO experience, and clarity around offerings.
- Support a technical writer in creating and maintaining our technical documentation.
Red Hat, Associate Manager, Documentation (2017 - 2019)
- At Red Hat I led a large team of writers who produce documentation for our cloud-based Management products.
- Support and mentor writers, coaching towards optimum solutions and quality deliverables with a focus on collaboration and continuous learning and development.
- Advocated for writers and for quality products; worked with dev and QA and others to define optimal processes for all. We used a wide variety of CI/CD processes, based on the specific product and dev team, but worked to insert common workflows where possible.
- Manage administrative duties such as PTO/leave approvals, travel requests, salary increases, quarterly OKRs, bonuses, equity grants, and promotions.
- Interview and hire new writers, oversee onboarding and training.
- Work closely with content strategists and documentation program managers on workloads, processes, and delivery dates.
- Collaborate with peer Technical Writing managers on hiring best practices and cross-product initiatives.
- Coach writers in the area of building strong open source communities around documentation; using GitLab, templates, conferences, Twitter and other resources and techniques for creating relationships and increasing doc contributions from external developers and users.
Magento Commerce, Manager of Developer Documentation (2014 - 2017)
- Responsibilities included: defining roadmap for Docs team, correlating long-term strategy into monthly/weekly goals, supporting writers where needed with cross-team projects, acting as liaison with community via GitHub and Twitter.
- Accomplishments: expanded team by 400%, grew doc set from 3 books to 17, built passionate community around our devdocs and managed contributions to GitHub repo, conducted Docathons at annual conference in 2016 and 2017, moderated Doc Sprint in Kyiv, Ukraine, and helped grow team Twitter account to almost 2,ooo followers.
My role at Magento focused primarily on building a great team of writers (from 2 writers in January 2015 to 8 writers in April 2017), supporting their development and growth, defining a roadmap, strategy, and vision for the team, and implementing the necessary tactical steps to achieve our goals and deliver on the roadmap. An equally important role was to increase community engagement and contributions from the community developers to our docs, which are hosted on a public GitHub repo. We moved to GitHub in late 2014, began our Twitter account @MagentoDevDocs, and created high-value and deeply “real” conversations with our external developers and merchants. My focus was on evangelizing the ease and value of developers making technical contributions.
CA Technologies, Sr. Services Consultant/Technical Writer (2013 – 2014)
- Sole tech writer on the Services team; hired specifically to create detailed, deeply technical Operation Manuals for each customer (all Fortune 500 to 100). Managed all weekly global video-conference working sessions with technical and PM attendees from both customer and CA to define Operations Manual content; specified exact environment of costumer site, timeline for multi-year project, defined Expected Outcome, exact Solutions to be delivered, Escalation paths, RACI chart for all involved parties.
- Developed and documented processes for customer on-boarding, training for new project managers.
- Created new wiki for team, provided training and support for use of wiki.
3Seventy, Technical Writer (2013)
• Contract Writer for short project; wrote procedural topics for an MSM/text messaging platform and developed team wiki.
Calxeda, Information Architect (2011 - 2013)
- Responsible for defining full Doc set of 23 Guides, and the security/architecture of the wiki docs site (Confluence).
- Led two successful Doc Sprints with 12 engineers participating, created first set of docs from scratch
- As Lead, managed the contract writer and overall Docs Team direction, worked with Marketing to determine exact
- deliverables and required dates to coincide with product releases, created detailed Documentation plans
- Worked directly with customers to define/implement process for OEMs/ODMs to re-brand/redistribute end-user docs.
- Wrote detailed System User's Guide, which covered system installation and configuration, networking requirements,
- Linux OS and Kernel installation and upgrade, system management, and performance and power optimization.
- Worked with Sales to migrate documentation to Salesforce.com portals, populate with KB articles.
Quest Software (formerly Surgient), Senior Technical Writer (2007 –2011)
- Sole writer for a mid-size virtualization management software company. Replaced two writers and a Docs manager when company downsized in 2007; responsible for redefining the deliverables and producing streamlined documentation, selecting a new authoring tool, and improving user experience in both the documentation and product.
- Frequently consulted with product manager and marketing team, to ensure that the documentation is in-line with the marketing concepts for product in a very fast-moving and evolving “hot” market space.
DATABASE-BROTHERS, INC. (DBI) Senior Technical Writer/Business Analyst (2006 – 2007)
- Sole writer for small start-up company (software for database security, auditing, and performance). Responsible for choosing and purchasing authoring tools, installing software, and defining version control for documentation files, working with colleagues in Pune, India; access remote servers/utilities in Houston offices of BMC, and work closely with partner company to utilize their production processes.
- Created initial Eclipse online Help system for a cross-platform product, using Webworks Publisher to convert FrameMaker to XHTML, then creating Eclipse toc.xml file and the plug-in (.doc) file.
- Within first 5 weeks of starting the job, researched a new product that was still in development, and wrote a 110-page installation and user guide. Ran the install scripts myself in order to provide detailed documentation of the complex installation process for Linux/AIX/Unix environments.
- Defined 16 reports for a new data security auditing product, the majority of which are being implemented in the product. Researched business requirements, competitive analysis, and data retrieval capabilities (using Oracle native Auditing) to determine what pre-defined reports our product needs to include, the value-add of each report, and data returned for each report.
TROUX TECHNOLOGIES Senior Technical Writer (2005 – 2006)
- Responsible for writing documentation for first release of Services Management software product.
- Responsible for all text on UI, including error messages, tooltips, UI labels. Consulted for usability and workflow issues.
- Completed two-week task involving a rebranding e ort when two product lines merged. Heavily involved in JAD (Joint Application Development) meetings; instrumental in writing and maintaining functional specification documents. Tana Berry
BMC SOFTWARE, Austin, TX Lead Information Developer, Information Developer II (1998 – 2005)
- Managed release of documentation set for a large suite of products; fulfilled Team Lead responsibilities, wrote the primary Solutions manuals (installation, configuration, and getting started information), developed Information Plans detailing release documentation specifics and estimated work e ort, and worked with development and QA to meet timelines.
- Wrote end-user and SDK (software development kit) documentation for infrastructure component of BMC’s SmartDBA suites for administering Oracle, DB2 UDB, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase DBs.
- Worked closely with other writers and editor to set standards; designed, tested and implemented an integrated help system; and produced internal documentation for writers whose products used the infrastructure.
- Attended Development design and integration meetings; worked with Development, Usability, and QA to ensure the best possible implementation of Help system in a complex architecture.
- Produced SDK documentation and maintained a Developer’s Guide on an internal Web site.
- Served as liaison between our centralized ID tools group and writing team.
SMART TECHNOLOGIES (acquired by i2) Information Developer January 1998 – October 1998
- Produced documentation for a Web-based e-commerce application developed in Java. The product was sold as a base set of Java code, which would then be extended by the customer.
- Responsible for developing content, scope, and layout for Application Developer’s Guide (SDK); assigning chapters to other writers, working with developers to ensure appropriate content and organization of book.
- Documented complex process of customizing and extending the component-based product and linking the product to legacy databases and applications.
- Worked with developers to research use of JavaDoc, was instrumental in the company’s first implementation of this tool.
- Worked with developers to improve GUI design and overall usability and work-flow of product.
- Developed strong relationship with developers and earned a reputation as an aggressive writer with an ability to capture complex processes and ideas during design meetings, and then translate the information into solid original writing.
- Produced internal reference and procedural document for use by SMART developers during migration from PowerBuilder to Java and object-oriented programming.
IBM (contract) Information Developer/Field Manager 1997
- Participated in ISO certification e orts; served as Field Manager on IBM site for CTG contract agency. Produced hardcopy and online documentation for AIX division, used CMVC software to track changes and version control.
- All source files work done in Unix environment (managing directories, etc.)
- Validated files converted from Interleaf to HTML; received and incorporated new source from developers; built hypertext navigation and index references.
- Converted HTML files to SGML; cleaned and validated SGML files against IDDoc DTD, used VI Editor to separate single SGML file into separate chapters; created postscript output.
- Worked with team’s developer to create scripts to solve needs across entire writing team; created internal Web page detailing hardcopy production process.
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS DEVELOPMENT OFFICE Information Specialist, Trainer (1996 - 1997)
- Produced documentation and training curricula, provided help-desk support, and instructed UT staff in use of Development Office alumni/donor database and fund-raising software.
- Tested Web-applications in development phase, attended design and implementation meetings.
- Wrote online Help for Web and mainframe applications; managed Unix directory structure.
- Produced 350+ page reference guide detailing policies within the Development Office. Responsible for soliciting and
- editing articles, routing articles through review process, acquiring relevant charts and graphics, design and layout In PageMaker, and all production issues.