Zohra 0:08

Hello listeners. If you are curious about technical communications, then this podcast is for you. On each episode, I will interview a guest who will share the unique journey. This is Inside Techcom with Zahra Matabana. Let's get started. Hello, listeners. You're on the Insight Techcom show, and I'm your host, Zahra Matabana. I'm honored to welcome today's guest, Addison Cleaver. Hey Addison, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Hey Zora, I'm doing great. How are you?

Zohra 0:41

I'm doing great. I'm really looking forward to this chat of ours. So thank you. This is an honor for me to have you. So tell us a little about yourself, Addison.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

So I'm a big sports fan. I like basketball, martial arts, those sort of things. And I'm originally from Austin, but I moved to the Dallas area to study technical communication. Now I work in the technical communication field. And I really like going to the beach. That's one of my favorite activities to do.

Zohra 1:11

Oh, lovely. Do you have beaches in Austin? I don't suppose so, right? We are pretty landlocked in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, we actually, there's a lot of lakes in Austin and also here there too. But my favorite ones are on the coast, like uh Padre Island and the the other islands surrounding that. That's one of my favorite places to visit.

Zohra 1:30

Awesome. I haven't been to Padre Island, but I would love to go there. So uh maybe we'll I'll get some tips from you after the show. How about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

That sounds good to me.

Zohra 1:38

So you said you're from Austin and you like basketball. And since I've met you, I know how tall you are. So probably you get your height because you've played basketball.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, I my whole family is a tall family. Like my dad's uh like six five. So we joke about like uh since I have four brothers together, we're five, that makes us a basketball team. So that's awesome.

Zohra 2:01

Oh, I envy that. I envy the height because I I don't have the height at all. So you mentioned that you came to Dallas to pursue an education in technical communications. Is that correct? Okay. So now you tell me how did you learn about technical communications?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Before I was born, both of my parents were more math major, math and engineering majors who switched to English. And so they both decided to go to the same techcom internship, even though they were from different states and that's how they met. It was pretty cool. And that was sort of my introduction before my introduction to technical.

Zohra 2:38

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

It's super cool. After that, as I was like growing up, we would do scrums, and so we would put things into categories of to do, doing, and done, like who's raked the yard, who's cleaned up after the dog, all of these different activities that we chores that we needed to get done. So that was a fun, sort of different family activity that we would do because my dad was in software.

Zohra 3:05

That is very unusual, right? When I say unusual, most technical writers that I have known, or even for myself, we have accidentally discovered this field. But for you, you were born into that field.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah, exactly.

Zohra 3:20

Right? And I'm curious, you mentioned scrums and your dad doing scrums. Can you please tell us a little more about that? It's intriguing.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah. So my brother, like as I was studying English and then eventually technical communication, my brother was learning more about software engineering, and we brought it up to my dad. He was learning about Scrum. So we were like, okay, we got to integrate this into our daily routine. So we would all sit around our big TV and we would project all of the chores and stuff that need to get done for the day. And we would each pick one out and then we would report each week how much progress we had made. Sort of like stand-ups, I guess.

Zohra 3:58

That's good. That's good. Did that help you? Did that help as a family?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah, I think it it helped us as a family. It's always a work in progress, but of course. Yeah, it was a fun thing to integrate. And then it was something that came, a flow that came naturally to me when I started working as a technical communicator.

Zohra 4:16

That's what I was going to ask you. So you also shared that you've started a new job as a technical writer. Can you share a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Right now I work as a software technical writer for a pest control company. And in order to get the job, I started early this year in January, and I used a bunch of different search engines to look LinkedIn, Linsa 24, Glassdoor, all of these different search engines. And I would list down in an Excel sheet every day how many jobs I had applied for. And in June, I got a couple callbacks, and I worked on talking about what was in my portfolio, all these different things that I had worked on while I was in the master's program at UNT. And that helped me get the role.

Zohra 5:07

That's excellent. Well, congratulations, Mr. Fall. You've got your first big break.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Thank you.

Zohra 5:12

Yes. Is it exciting?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yeah, I've really enjoyed my time working as a software technical writer. I feel like there's a lot to contribute. There's a lot to because it's a smaller or software company, I've been given a little bit more leeway to think about how we can develop our current materials. So I've really enjoyed that.

Zohra 5:30

That's actually great. That's a great opportunity because you will learn. You've been thrown to the wolves in a way. So you will definitely come out much more, I say, I would say successful because you you may have to take some of the initiatives probably.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, exactly. Like yesterday we were talking about thinking about single sourcing and how to introduce our documentation, how to do adoption that way. So it's definitely been fun to break new ground that way.

Zohra 6:00

That is exciting, I would say. Yes, absolutely. For somebody who's just in their first job, that is tremendous. Which also kind of tells me that they trust your opinion and they want to collaborate with you.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, yeah, that was something that I was thinking about the other day. I was reading like the the sort of romance of technical communication, like the passion, the reason why we do, or I I think I do technical writing. There's something about being like the pathfinder in exploring new ground and showing your users about a new product that's something that may have not been done before, or maybe the development team has shown you what paths have been taken. So you get to show them, oh, this new ground, and it's really fun, and it's part of the reason why I have a passion for technical communication.

Zohra 6:53

Beautifully articulated, Addison. I couldn't agree more with you. There is absolutely you have to have a passion for the field.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yes.

Zohra 7:01

I would say I agree with you on that. Because if you don't, then because you have to do a lot of, you have to be inquisitive, you have to be curious, and you have to put yourself out there to ask those questions, right? So that you can be the pathfinder.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah.

Zohra 7:19

So it's a very collaborative effort. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah. Uh like there's so many different teams that I work with in a daily basis: marketing, development, product managers, uh, all these different teams that ask me for assistance or they give me their assistance and their knowledge. And I've really enjoyed that aspect of being able to talk with a lot of different people in my role with following my role.

Zohra 7:46

Yeah, thank you for sharing that information. I was that was going to be one of my questions to you. Which teams do you work with? And with you sharing the teams that you have to collaborate with, there is definitely an opportunity here for you to offer your suggestions, participate in that product development process, and also learn from them. So they become your SMEs and you become an SME to them as you learn more about the product. But it also appears to me that this appears to be more of a well-oiled machine. Would you say that? The reason I ask is there might be listeners out there who may not have this kind of support, and you seem to have that support at the company. So would you think it would have been different if you had not had this collaboration?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Well, one thing that I found that besides collaborating in order to learn is outside of my work, I would go on LinkedIn learning, I would go talk to other technical writers in order to advance my skills and to understand more, even when it wasn't necessarily information that was coming from other teams. I think there's a lot of like critical thinking skills that you can use to find other resources, even when there are other SME resources that might not be available to you if you're in uh in a software company.

Zohra 9:09

Got it. The question I asked, maybe I should have asked it differently. What you shared was interesting that what you're doing outside of your company to develop your skills and to become better at it, those are great suggestions. Absolutely. So anybody that is listening to this podcast should keep that in mind that you have a community out there that you can tap into. So don't hesitate. One resource that you mentioned was LinkedIn, where you just reached out to technical writers, right? Yeah. And they helped you with right. And then within the company, so I think my question was more about within your company, you have a very supportive team, it appears, a cross-functional team that is very supportive, that is more where there is collaboration. What I was trying to ask was if you did not have a very collaborative environment at this company, would the challenge have been different?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, I would say that there is a very collaborative element to being a technical communicator. And what you don't know is what you don't know. And sometimes you'll have documented resources, but if you don't have that, it really depends on the people. So I would say that it would be a little bit more difficult if I didn't have people that were willing to interact with me and give me their knowledge on a day-to-day basis.

Zohra 10:26

I'm happy for you that you have that, especially in your first job. It definitely sets you up for success when you have a collaborative team. So the other thing that I'm trying to bring attention to is sometimes even if you have a collaborative team, the information not come to you. You have to get your seat at the table, quote unquote, so that you can get the information as you're learning about the product.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yes.

Zohra 10:50

And you you seem to be doing that.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, one of the ways that I do that is I look at old procedures and I try to do them on my own and learn that way, learn by doing. So I think if you don't have have somebody that that has that product knowledge, sometimes uh attempting it yourself is one way to learn, even if you don't have have those resources.

Zohra 11:15

You make a very, very good observation, a very important comment here. Yes, by doing it, right? You look at the old procedures because there might be some content, some type of content out there that you can fall back on and learn, right? Before you go on to document something new about it. Thank you for sharing these uh very important observations. I think these are good pointers. What I mean to say is these are very good pointers for anybody, whether we are career changers or whether we are new to the field, or even somebody that's been in the field, right? You're always doing something new as a technical writer. So this is a skill that we need to develop and not be fearful. If you break something, you can always fix it, but you have to break something first to fix it.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Exactly.

Zohra 11:58

You know, you mentioned about single sourcing. So is there any particular tool that you're using?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Not at the moment.

Zohra 12:06

Okay. So you're just talking about it. Do you have any tools in mind, or have you st are you going to be looking for it?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Oh, we're going to be looking at more topic-based authoring because that wasn't really an approach that we had used. We had used parallel and is that a tool?

Zohra 12:24

Parallel?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Uh no, parallel and serial development. So parallel Oh, I get it.

Zohra 12:29

Okay, I see what you mean. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah.

Zohra 12:32

Okay, you want to share how you understand those terms since you brought it up?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, sure. I was actually looking into this week and learning some new terms. And so parallel is when you develop two pieces of content at the same time, which is good, but you don't want to have those documents overlap at the same time, because then you're you're duplicating your work, which is the same with serial development. If you're developing one uh piece of content first, and then you're developing another piece of content following that, then when you're making changes to your second document, you might realize, oh, I need to make changes to my first document, and it's not very efficient. So that's where topic-based authoring and single slash multi-sourcing and drawing in more common material and just editing that is a better approach.

Zohra 13:25

This is a fascinating conversation. Absolutely. And you know, so I my question was going to be why single sourcing, but you answered that already. This form of development is forcing you to think how can we multi-source slash single source content?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yes, because we're a very small team and we have to think, think about how we can make our systems more efficient, possibly as we add more people or if when we add more people.

Zohra 13:49

Yeah, these are very hard questions, but I'm impressed that you're forced to think these hard questions so early on in your career because these are strategic decisions that you're starting to make. Yes. So that's you know, you're in the driver's seat. That is actually, it sounds so fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yeah, that's one of the things I've appreciated about my time working at a startup uh software company, is that my mentors and other people working at the company have been willing to hear what I'm thinking about and what I know. And so we've been able to sort of begin, begin that process and of thinking about it.

Zohra 14:24

Yeah, yeah, that is awesome. Now, do you go to your parents for advice if you're stuck?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

That's the interesting thing, is when you have uh a family of technical communicators, it like everybody there's like a there's difference in opinion sometimes.

Zohra 14:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

But my I've I've definitely relied on my parents to give me good and good and sound advice. But there's definitely been times where everybody thinks that they they have the have the answer, but I've always turned the turn to them for for good advice.

Zohra 14:56

I think I think you gave a very diplomatic answer there. But but it's the truth, right? We all think we know the answer, but then you have to find your way. Yes. You take those inputs and then you carve your own.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yes.

Zohra 15:07

Well said, Addison.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, yeah, it's basically like when whenever you have a family of people who are studying in the same field, that's that's the general experience, I think.

Zohra 15:18

Yes, absolutely. But then this also, you know, uh excuse me, this also kind of goes back to an experience as you as you grow in your career, you peer reviews and feedback is going to be very critical, right? Exactly. Right. It's it's one of the cornerstones of our profession where you your content only can get better with input.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, yeah, that was something that I really enjoyed when I was in the tech content program at UNT, was because I would have certain insights as a technical communicator, but all my classmates would have different, would come from a lot of different backgrounds. They would give me inputs that I hadn't even thought about or approaches that I or ways of thinking about how can we create this content or do it a different way. And I think that's also at a professional level, you meet people from a variety of backgrounds with a variety of experiences and knowledge.

Zohra 16:09

Absolutely. Yes, yes, exactly. And my earlier question to you, where you said you take different inputs, and especially with family, there could be more sometimes there can be a little bit of resistance or tension. That will be true even in your career when you have professionals giving advice and you you have had firsthand experience. How do you take that advice and then put your own spin on it without offending anybody?

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, I think there's definitely like an element to mindfulness to sort of take yourself out of, like, not marry yourself to your ideas or your content if they're they have different inputs or ideas, like maybe you should uh do your documentation this way, or maybe you should make your videos more like this to be sort of open and be like, okay, that that is possibly a way I could improve my documentation, or I'm really passionate about the way I feel about my documentation or my videos in this way. And I really think this is the best way. Let me tell you why. I think that's one way to really interact with the different ideas that you come across as a technical communication.

Zohra 17:20

Yes, yes. Uh what you're really trying to say is that you got to put your ego aside, right? Because this is not you are writing that content, but you don't own the content. It's a team deliverable. So you you have to keep yourself out of it. And absolutely what you everything that you said is true. It is a give and take, and you you shouldn't marry yourself to that content. Very, very, very, very important. All right. Moving on to the next question here, Addison. I think I was gonna ask you how did you decide on getting into technical communications? But I think you you had that, your parents' sort of influence that probably moved you in this direction.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, so originally I was I loved reading books a lot. So I was like, I wanted to do English, so that's what I studied up until I was a junior, and then I interacted with the professor and he said, Maybe this isn't quite the quite the field for you. So I thought about it really hard. Like at first, I was a little bit frustrated because that's what I built myself up to be more of an English English literature major. But I thought about it a little bit more and sort of like what we talked about earlier about like that passion of being a a writer that helps people to move through steps and to have a lasting impact. Um, that was something that appealed to me with technical communication. So I ended up um deciding to study professional and technical communication, UNT, and and I've joined professional organizations to learn more about the different areas of technical communication, user experience, all those things.

Zohra 19:02

I would say that you've done all the right things to kind of get into the field. Now, you mentioned that you do software documentation, right? Now, technical writing can be a pretty vast field. It could have different industries within it, right? You could be a technical writer for a medical company, or you could be in banking, software. I mean, there are these different niche areas that you can get into and specialize. Did you have was there anything that influenced you to get into software documentation and not something else?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

I felt that the skill set I currently had mostly fit software, but I interviewed with uh a variety of companies and I found that while there are usually specific skills and softwares that certain fields are looking for and maybe certain backgrounds that they're looking for, that if you know how to write and you know how to apply the principles of technical communication, it's a pretty vast field. There's a lot of different companies that would be interested in your skills as a technical communicator. That's what I found.

Zohra 20:09

Oh, that's good. That's good. Thanks for sharing that with us. Before you kind of found your first big break, you went to the university, you know, to get a degree in technical communications. You also reached out to technical writers. You also kind of uh kept up, right? You you kept yourself current by reading what's available. Is there anything other than that that you would like to talk about? I think to be more specific, what would you recommend to someone that is entering the field that is in your place?

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Someone who is like looking for for a position?

Zohra 20:44

Let me rephrase that question. What would you recommend to anybody that is starting off as a technical communicator and hasn't found their break? How would you cultivate and sharpen your skills?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

One thing that I found is that I feel like I had the skills that I would have later on. But one thing is uh uh show, don't tell. And that was something I hadn't realized that I wasn't uh shaping my portfolio, my cover letters, and my resume. I hadn't um been sharpening that to apply to very specifically to each position that it applied to. So I think that's super important for someone to evaluate if they've just gotten started, if they've really poured over their portfolio critically, asked for feedback, and also mentioned a couple of deliverables that they had worked on in their cover letter and making sure that that shows up in their in their resume. I think that's super important to make sure that you're you're showing and telling when you're looking for that first big break.

Zohra 21:51

You said show and not tell. I like that phrase. So what you're saying is to show and tell.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yes.

Zohra 21:58

And to kind of build up a a Portfolio that is you don't want to build up a very vast portfolio, but you want enough uh breadth in there and depth to show the kind of writing that you can produce.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah, I would also recommend if thinking about a niche, because like we talked about how I sort of settled in software, I found that a lot of companies that were hiring software technical writers had the specific set of tools that I was working with and the specific knowledge that I was working with. And each field has a little bit different demands. So you can apply for a lot of different technical writing positions, but I think new technical writers that are looking to make that first big break should sort of hone their uh current materials to maybe a more specific field.

Zohra 22:50

Yeah, absolutely. I think that is very, very important, very important observation there. You know, when you and I were talking before we started our recording, you mentioned that to kind of challenge yourself, you've participated in hackathon and latent learning. Can you speak a little about that? Because that really was fascinating to me. And for somebody who I've been in this career a long time, I haven't done those things. And I would like you to touch upon that because that may be relevant to the younger technical writers that are trying to enter the field. You know, how these different avenues have helped you.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Yeah, that was something that I had heard when I first started looking into hackathons. Like, if you don't know how to code, you may not be able to contribute in a big way. But I decided to go to this hackathon for cell phone company. And so I worked with students that were in computer science and were more developers. And I mentioned that. I was like, I don't know if I can contribute in the same way that you guys are. And he told me, no, there's a variety of ways that you can contribute to a product specifically in this, it was like software. You can totally contribute. And I worked on making a super nice slide with all the technical details of our of our document, and then I helped pitch our product when we had finished. And he was like, that's super helpful on that you're focusing on that, and we were focusing on this, and you can really help contribute in that way. So if somebody's considering going into a technical communicator or a writing, somebody who's not like specifically coding, they can definitely find a way to contribute. And even when you're not a student, you can't go to hackathons.

Zohra 24:38

I would love to go for one, but what was revealing about what you shared was you were literally doing the marketing.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yes.

Zohra 24:45

And as technical writers, we are also when we are not just writing about the product, but we are also in a way trying to market the product. And what would you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah, there was a marketing aspect, and I think um we do think about how we can make the product more accessible to the users. But I also found that I was talking to our sort of mini development team and getting their insights, and that's something that I do as a day-to-day software technical writer is I do reach out to our more technical members and ask them what's the new feature that we're working on? How does it work? How can I convert that into documentation that our users can refer to?

Zohra 25:28

Awesome. These are all some really good pointers. I keep saying that, but I think this is what is going to set you up for success. So yeah, these are all great, great pointers that you're sharing with us. When you were building your portfolio at school, was there any website that you referred to for any guidance?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Yeah. One site that I looked at was cofolios.com. And if you're looking more for like if you just search technical communication portfolios on Google, there's there's a lot of portfolios out there. But I found Cofolios had a real was a real source of inspiration when I was developing my portfolios. It made me think about the the star method, the situation task.

Zohra 26:12

Yeah, I think you're covering quite a bit there. Absolutely. The use cases and the situation and what kind of content would you prepare for that? Very relevant uh inf information that you've provided here. And I think even I would I'm gonna go check it out. So I'm definitely going to provide that information in my show notes, and I will get that from you later. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. This is like advice to me for me because I don't have an online portfolio. And do you have one?

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yes.

Zohra 26:40

Did you provide that to your company or wherever you applied to, what did it make it easier for them to access it and kind of for you to not worry about having an a printed portfolio?

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah, yeah, I had an online portfolio, and it really helped because I would refer to certain deliverables that I worked on as a student and outside of being a student, and I would list those in my resume and in my cover letter. And then if they wanted to learn more information, they could go to my online portfolio and learn more about my thought process when creating those deliverables.

Zohra 27:17

Yeah, and and this specific uh question is more for I think the reason I'm asking that is, you know, for young students who are starting off, most of them are going to have an online portfolio. So I think for somebody from your age group, that is a given. This question is more for somebody who's changing into a career, a career changer is getting into technical communications, building an online portfolio would be a great foot in the door for them. And you've given you given some examples of where they can go look up these portfolios for samples. Now, where are you hosting it? You don't have to give too many details, but just something that was it easy to set it up? I the kind I think what I'm looking for is where are you setting it up and how was it easy for you to set it up?

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah, I use uh WordPress for for my portfolio, and then I host it, I believe it's called Blue Host. Okay. And those are fairly inexpensive uh resources to use, and they're not too difficult. Like I was a first-time user when I set mine up. So perfect.

Zohra 28:17

Yeah, I think that is very important because what you're saying, uh what you shared was that it was simple enough for you to set it up and it was affordable, so you're not investing too much. Yes, right? So when we are changing our careers, you're probably working on a tight budget. And so these are very valuable tips. And then it's also showing your grasp of technology. Because if you let's say it doesn't matter which kind of writing you want to go into, it's it is a vast field, but you have to be technically savvy because at the end you you are a technical writer. That is the baseline expectation. So having an online portfolio shows that you're comfortable with technology.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Yes. And also you can dis display your deliverables. If you've worked with tools, you can say, not just say, I've worked with MadCap Flare or another technical communication tool. Here it is.

Zohra 29:10

Yeah, I completely agree with you on that. I think we've covered a pretty good number of questions here. Is there anything that you would like to add to the questions that I've already asked you?

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah, I would say if you're interested in technical communication, reach out to technical writers in your field, in your area. Make sure to personalize it. And if they don't respond, that's okay. But usually the technical communicators that I've reached out and spoken to, they've been willing to share some advice or some insights or some direction. So if you're considering going into technical communication, look around online, but also feel free to reach out to people that are local that have established themselves in the field, and maybe they'll give you some tips.

Zohra 29:57

Yeah, I think this conversation overall has been full of valuable tips and pointers. You've given some great advice and suggestions, which will come in handy for anybody, whether they are new to the field or they are changing careers. So I think you've covered a pretty wide circle of uh audience for me, actually. So thank you for all that awesome input. So thank you, Addison. This was a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Thank you, Sora. Thank you for having me on.

Zohra 30:23

My pleasure. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share on your social media to help me reach a wider audience. Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app, including Apple, Google, or Spotify. Follow us on Twitter at Inside Techcom or visit us at www.inside techcom.show for the latest updates. Catch you on another episode.