All Posts

PyCon 2023 retrospective

I was at PyCon this week and I wanted to give a wrap-up from the perspective of The Good Docs Project.

Apr 23, 2023 - 4 min read

The maturity phases of open source projects and working groups

This is my first attempt at describing the maturity lifecycle of open source projects and working groups. These observations are based on my three years in the project and the patterns I’ve observed.

Mar 9, 2023 - 4 min read

The open source mindset shift

In this blog post, I share some tips and tricks about the mindset shift that sometimes comes from working in open source to help our new contributors get used to open source culture.

Feb 17, 2023 - 4 min read

The docs are in: making OSS sticky

In this interview for The Docs Are In series, I explain how to make open source sticky.

Jan 27, 2023 - 1 min read

Working effectively with other teams as a technical writer

In this guide, I hope to inspire you by showing you how building relationship with team members in other roles (such as product management, UX, and customer support) can enrich your documentation work.

Dec 15, 2022 - 18 min read

Attracting writers to OSS

In this blog entry, I share a presentation I gave about how to attract more technical writers to your open source project.

Nov 16, 2022 - 11 min read

UX and technical writers: a powerful partnership

UX and technical writing teams can benefit from collaborating together at various stages in the software development lifecycle. Both UX and technical writing teams want to improve the customer experience and they both have different perspectives and strengths to offer.

Sep 15, 2022 - 22 min read

Working as a technical writer in open source

As part of a work project, I created a comprehensive list of possible tasks that tech writers working in OSS might possibly work on. I also created a document explaining the unique challenges faced by writers working in OSS.

Mar 12, 2022 - 10 min read

Where do docs live?

In this lightning talk, I argue that documentation thrives when it is in the same department as product. If that’s not feasible, documentation is at least improved by applying product management strategies.

Feb 22, 2022 - 9 min read

Growing a healthy DevOps community inside Salt Project

This week I presented at SaltConf 21 about how Salt became such a successful open source project. Spoiler alert: the secret was all in its community management!

Nov 6, 2021 - 30 min read

Bridging the docs gap

In this lightning talk that I gave for the October 2020 Salt docs jam, I describe a phenomenon I call the docs value-action gap. Then, I discuss strategies for bridging that gap in open source documentation.

Aug 15, 2021 - 8 min read

The power of personas

Personas make it easy for technical writers to identify the audiences they are creating documentation for. Personas get me maybe 65-75% of the way there in terms of understanding my audience.

May 17, 2021 - 6 min read