Season Welcome And Sponsor

Zohra 0:02

Hello friends and welcome to season 8 of Inside Techcom with Zahra Mutabana. This season features a collection of conversations that explore the ideas, challenges, and opportunities shaping technical communication today. From AI and content strategy to leadership, product thinking, and the future of our profession. Each episode offers a fresh perspective from people doing the work. Let's get started. Season eight is proudly sponsored by LavaCon. Use discount code ITC26 to save $200 on registration for this year's conference. I'll share more about LavaCon later in this episode.

Meet Lindsay And The Goal

Zohra 0:45

Hello, listeners. Welcome to another episode of Inside Techcom. And today I am actually really excited because I get to pick the brains of one of the most modest writers on my team. We work together. So full disclosure there. Lindsay Riggs and I have been working together for the past six years at Blackboard. I've learned so much from her. And she's doing some really cool stuff. So this episode is all about what she's doing. And we are going to learn from her and pick her brains to really figure out how we can get there. So, audience, please tune in if you are a technical communicator, because this is going to be a very hands-on, not in terms of demo, but what Lindsay is doing at work that you can apply. And she actually gave a presentation recently, and we're going to talk about that as well. And I'm going to invite Lindsay to introduce herself and tell us a little bit about her presentation before we dive into our conversation. Lindsay, welcome to the show today. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

I am good, Sora. I am very happy that I finally got the invite to the show. You're our mini celebrity on our team. I always feel like I work in the background a little bit. I just feel like my whole career is about being a team player. So I am Lindsay Ricks. I just for geographic purposes, I am based near Ann Arbor, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. I have been a technical writer at BlackBod for over 20 years now. It always seems weird to say because it just it's gone by really fast. And I just didn't know that I would be doing it this long when I started. And I think, as Zora and I will touch on and we talk about, is I just really enjoy the hands-on approach and I enjoy the experimentation and the learning. And I just enjoy the craft of what we do. And I'm just really honored to be with the team that I have at BlogBot because I think I'm still here because of the people I work with. They're the ones that inspire me and they teach me things. And, you know, not just the technical writers, but also within engineering, I've always felt like we have a culture where we encourage and teach each other and share. And I don't know, I was just really excited when you invited

From AI Anxiety To Action

SPEAKER_00 3:05

me because it does build off that presentation. And then part of like why I decided to the presentation, I initially didn't want to. I had told our director that I just always feel so invested in what our team is doing. And so much of my energy goes into making us better. And sometimes it can be really hard to picture how to influence or help our field at large, right? Like, how do you have that influence? And one of the things that pushed me over was I had seen a lot about what we didn't like about AI. And I also heard from our company that they really just wanted us to transform with AI. So with those two things, it was like, well, I don't want to focus on what I don't want it to do. I'd rather think about what I do want to do with it. Like, what are the things I wouldn't mind having it help me? Like it just became an exploration. And then obviously part of it was probably anxiety. Like it was thinking about for the first time, I initially could not picture what our role would look like in five years. Like I felt like, you know, that moment you feel like I really understand what I'm doing. I really feel like I got the hang of this. And all of a sudden you're like, I don't have the hang of this. I don't know what our role will look like. And I thought, well, the easiest way is to start trying things and start putting, you know, my efforts and my voice into what that looks like. And I don't know what impact you and I will have, Zora, but it seems worth trying. And that's what my presentation was about was kind of encouraging. I don't know that we can say no AI and it's not here. Or I feel like it's any tool. Like I thought we've used a lot of different tools over the years. This one just happens to be particularly transformative. So it did benefit that in my career, I've always been willing to try whatever tool was given to us. So hopefully that gives you the background on like what pushed me into it. And the best part about it was just I also haven't had a chance to network with some more people on, you know, on LinkedIn and through work just by sharing our story.

Zohra 5:08

And we were in a meeting, and I thought this is my best time to invite her, and she would be accountable and say yes. So I put her in the hot seat there. My apologies for that. But this was right after she had done the presentation and she gave us her another walkthrough about it. And that's when I said, Lindsay, would you please? But it took me some courage to ask you.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Wasn't that a good moment though? Because I would have said yes previously, right? But there's always this moment where you're like, Can I, should I, would I? Yeah. And there's always people intimidating us. Like, I'm aware of that. Like sometimes uh the way my brain works, people tell me, like, I can do some things quicker, but then you start to realize everybody has different strengths. And for someone like me, I still get intimidated by other people. Like, I always remember reading Tom Johnson's API documentation, and I was like, oh my lord, like I have a lot of thinking to do. I wish I had more time. I really want to dig into this. And it's like, I never feel like we have enough time. And now I laugh because like I see like when you lean into some of the things that become available, like AI, I'm like, oh, cool. Now I can do a little bit more of what he can do. But everybody has that person, Zora. So I'm glad you finally asked because it models a lot of things that I've done in my career was not always waiting to ask permission, it is going ahead and trying something or asking or doing it, because a lot of times people can't always picture or understand what you want to do. And only when you just try it or give them an example, then they see the potential more. So maybe that moment was good for both of us. You saw the presentation and thought, I've got a topic, you know, I've got a topic

Content Standards Power Better AI

SPEAKER_00 6:50

we can talk about, you know.

Zohra 6:51

Absolutely. You're right. I think the universe kind of brought that moment together for us, which is great. But I mean, I think in your intro, you kind of gave us that insight. I want to kind of dive into your presentation because I want to capitalize on what you you didn't just say content strategy, you said content is the strategy. I want you to kind of give us a little bit of background about your presentation and why you came up with that title, because that title was very intriguing to me. Why not content strategy? Why is content is the strategy?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Honestly, it started with when Joe Walanski reached out. I said, Well, I'd be happy to, but you know, and here are the things that have been really what we've been working on and thinking on for the last year. And he was very open and supportive of like, what do you want to talk about? And I went back to my team and I said, Well, how do I choose what to make the talk about? And my our wonderful coworker, Ellen Hassel, said, Is there a way you can bring it together and find that thread? And so it was an example of when I used AI, like I gave it all the things we've been thinking about and like how would I frame it? And it evolved from there. But what it did show is there's a lot of lessons about what we do and what we deliver. And how do I shift that mindset? How do we show writers how to be indispensable in the AI era? What do you bring? You know, so one pillar of it was the things that we have naturally become experts at over the years through education, through experience, being that person who understands language, who develops standards, the way we write instructions, all those, you know, understanding in our audience, those when I looked at comparing that to like, well, and we had early success with AI. And I'm like, well, why did we have that? And a lot of it turns out is a lot of things we do well align very much with prompt engineering. And I think we were having early success because we were prompting better. Like we came with that natural way to kind of ask questions, and we naturally know how to take a problem and go step by step. It's the same thing we tell our customers. And like, are there ways we can transfer that? And then also learning like our understanding of language and the nuances and you know, there's more semantic, like with UI techs. It's not you could just pick different words, but understanding the semantic meaning of one word or another. And then also what was also inspiring was um I knew a lot of people weren't getting initially success, but what I found what was most impressive to me is we had spent a lot of years working on our strategy. And that's things like vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, our style, like what our consistency, right? And that paired with the same, we had very strong patterns and most of our help, you know, like what we generate, our release notes, our error messages. And when we fed the AI that our results were immediately better. And it really was, you know, it just kind of like it built one thing out of an after another. That's really part of what brought that presentation. And it's like we didn't learn overnight. And there was a group of us that really encouraged each other. I mean, you were one of them, Zora. I really I listened to your project with Liz, and you had a keyword around orchestration, or I would be watching how engineers did it, and I would think to myself, well, what does that look like with our role? And really what it brought to every time I brought it back is I thought about, well, what are we doing and how would we try it? And I do feel like we have a lot of encouragement and grace at BlackBod to try things, to learn, to they want us to use the tools, especially on our team. Like we have such strong leadership to say, bring your best self, but also be willing to experiment, be willing to say, this is how we think it could improve. And there's just so many avenues people can apply themselves. So that's what I was really bringing to the presentation. And I wanted to show too, it built, it didn't happen overnight. Like we built some custom agents and co-pilot. That's what we had access to first. And at the time I saw developers talking about skills, and I was like, I don't like how would we use that? It felt like every week a new term or a new methodology or a new workflow would be like, oh, that's really cool. How would I use that? Now, some are more obvious than others, you know that, right? I don't know how you felt about the pace, but a lot for me is the willingness to try things and what happened in that presentation always tied back to is it something that would be helpful for my role? Now I think, you know, that's early on. Early on, it's like improving our existing processes. I think you would also probably say we're now undercovering like new processes or new ways of working. And it's scary and intimidating and nerve-wracking. And the only way I know through, like when I'm anxious or nervous or I don't feel like I know something, the only way I know through is just try it. Because you always have the opportunity. I guess I think one of my favorite things about Git, and I tell that to our team, is like, just go create your branch, go try the thing, and if it does not work, just delete it and no one ever knows. Like, I love that we have tools that like help us secretly experiment without customers or peers even knowing, you know, you have to give your that yourself that permission to fail, to not be intimidated by the opportunity you get to to experiment

Safe Experimentation With Dev Tools

SPEAKER_00 12:15

with something because the more you try, the more new processes that we are discovering.

Zohra 12:19

So this actually brings me to the tools that I've been wanting to talk about. You've always been at the forefront of just diving in and using the developer tools or developer adjacent tools, right? Lindsay, what would you have some take on how somebody in that role or in that position should approach experimentation?

SPEAKER_00 12:41

I have a couple ideas. Like I think there's always opportunities to try to affordably try things outside your work. I laugh because I might be of the older crowd, I don't know of your audience, but I was that person in the 90s modifying my MySpace page, you know, or like wanting to play any HTML. I think I was a tinker, born tinker, right? So yeah, I did maybe have a propensity towards it. But along the ways, like I got my master's at Clemson, and in that professional communication program, one of the early things that inspired me in there was like they said, we're not gonna teach you the tool. We're gonna give you a project and then you're gonna have to figure out how to do it with a tool. And it was kind of a sink or swim crash course, but it was a really good philosophy because it is it really shifted my mindset around don't try to just use the tool, think of what you want to get out of it and see if you can do it. And that really kind of helped me through the years. So today looks like I didn't initially Blackbutt initially didn't even have Claude, but I wanted to do more agentic coding. And I didn't have necessarily early ideas for what I wanted to do that with our work, right? Like I always try to start with what I want to achieve and not just, hey, I want to try a tool. So what that looked like, I just started, I signed up for like one of the lower licenses for Claude Code, and I started building personal apps for myself, and that gave me permission to try. Like, I don't think I was good initially at some of my prompting, but what allowed me to do was just iterate and learn about like don't give it too many things at once, like layer on the requirements, have the vision of what you want it to look like, or give examples, or didn't even realize I was stumbling upon best practices, like giving a screenshot when you're like, no, you still have it wrong, like please fix it. That happened through the years. So if you don't have access to those tools that you have at work, you can try to find ways to do some of these things outside of work. My key thing there is start more with what you try want to try to accomplish with GitHub. If you wanted to build out, say you wanted more experience building out a personal website, a brand for your portfolio, you could learn about GitHub pages. And if you have that goal in mind of what you want to accomplish, it gives you more motivation of like how to learn how to use the tool. And not every training is going to be useful. You know, I listened a whole bunch through work and all of a sudden I might get like five ideas of things. Like I was like, oh, commands, oh, you know, plugins for skills. And I was like, okay, let me write that down. It was an interesting part I wanted to include in that conference talk is when you're thinking about things you want to learn or try, often you just need to start writing down the ideas or the things you want to do, but don't say, I have to do it right now. Just keep a list because you never know when like all of a sudden you're gonna have the idea that meets the tool. Like if earlier I learned about plugins, I've been like, cool, I don't I want to just create a plugin, but I'm like, well, what would I put in it? But now on our team, we started developing so many skills, I can now say to myself, I'd really like to bundle all of our analytics skills into one. Like I now have more of a purpose. So that's how I think I would inspire people. And if you think you might have access at work, but you're nervous, like that's the other angle, right? Right. Is um I would say the best thing to do is to obviously pay attention, like see, you can go to demos, you can see what people are posting in Slack. But my favorite thing over the years is just making friendships or just relationships with people at my work. So one of the things that early benefited from was having conversations and becoming friends with like my developers. And I was always so impressed and so grateful, they would often be willing to like show me how to do something. And oftentimes, or they would show me things and I was like, I don't know what they're showing me. And they would show tricks. Like one time I had developers show me this trick of like all this magic stuff that you can do in Visual Studio Code. And I was like, I'm never gonna find that again. That's magical, right? But yeah, I mean, and you start off sometimes just faking it. I don't know if you feel this way, but I remember the first person at BlackBot to teach me get and he's like, do these commands. I did those for the longest time, and I was like, I don't know what they mean until I made a mistake. And then all of a sudden, I didn't want to be the person that was like, holy crap, like, what did I just do? So went to Google, you know. I think that's a lot of it too, is taking the initiative to like seek out the answers, and that's part of curiosity is that problem solving, right? Is like, this is the error I got, how do I fix it? And then eventually it led to me be realizing I probably should learn what some of these commands are and what am I what I'm doing. And that's I think the way I approach a lot of these tools, just chip away at it, like and also be willing to stop using the tools if they don't bring you value.

Zohra 17:31

Yeah, it's not to say that you wouldn't have these nuggets before.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

I have always been like a painter's palette, I'm all over the place, Sora. There's always things I'm trying to do. I don't think so. I not not not right now, you are coming together, yeah. Now, but like through my career, I'd be like, I'd dabble in this and dabble in that, and I'd sign up for every like side project. I didn't know where it was all heading. And I always tell people that too. If you have the opportunity to say yes and you don't know why it would bring you value, just try it and then you'll store it. And then someday you're gonna be like, Oh, remember when you did that random thing? Like now that knowledge is valuable. So I do try to store those things away. Yeah, people worry a lot about that. They worry, like, how would I use this tool? Or how do I get it to do X, Y, and Z? And I always just try to encourage people to come back to like, what problem are you trying to solve? What would you like to be able to do? And if you have that strongly vision your head, it is so much easier to be like, okay, I'm gonna find how to do that piece. It comes together more naturally if you have a strong vision, especially like the more that you get to know what we do in technical writing, the more confident I feel about like all the things I've learned and done with content and content strategy. I feel like I keep pulling those tools out and just transform them, you know. So I'm trying for you, Zora. I'm trying to think about I can do this better, right? And right there are portions you of course can do better,

Learning By Building Personal Projects

SPEAKER_00 19:00

but then it's like pivoting, you know.

Zohra 19:02

Yeah, I want us to dive into some of the skills that we have developed to automate our workflows. And you have been at the forefront of those, of many of those.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

I like thinking of problems or pain points or exactly ass, right?

Zohra 19:22

Yeah. What problem can I solve? So you know, some of the earlier skills that you developed, once you discovered, oh, what is a skill and what can I do with it? How did you go about approaching that problem and solving it?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, and it really was the way that I got a lot of team members to try it too. I was like, here's a little user, this is how you do it too. So one of the funny ones I laughed at myself is I think we all feel like we don't have enough time, right? And I never used to be the person that's like, oh, I'm too good for this task, right? Like I used to love the boring work, and I still do if you put music on, but you know, back in the day, we would do things like condition a specific word over and over again manually. And I had a moment where I just felt like I didn't have, I had so many asks coming in. And I had a moment where I was trying to get something, we all know this, trying to get a release note done, right? You know, that new feature done right in time. And I didn't want to forget the variables for localization. And I was sitting there, it was past work hours, I was reading the topic, and I really thought to myself, I don't ever want to do this again, right? So you have a moment. So that's how it started for me. Now I've probably evolved to like how I build skills differently, but that was my moment. And so what I did and what I tell other people to do is you don't start by saying, I want a skill. What I did instead was use AI to kind of outline what I wanted to accomplish. And I really had to shift my mindset, like how I approached it is I think initially when we think of having conversations, you have like one line here or there, right? But what I've been learning was try to give it everything I want to accomplish, like all the requirements. Who's it for? How do I want it to work? Any samples. I have, you know, give it an example. In this case, I told it like where the variable file was, and I wanted to see if it could do it. So I usually start some of my skills, I start by just saying, can you do this? I say that in my head. And so then I outline it, we have a conversation, I get to the point, you know, go back and forth. A lot of times I start in plan mode, then I have it implement. And if it works the way I wanted it to, and of course I'm always surprised. I'm like, oh wow, look how amazing that was, right? And I'm like, I really shouldn't be because how advanced it's gotten. But then I say, once you get it to solve your problem together, at the end, ask it to turn it into a repeatable skill. Now every time we laugh because sometimes it's like it'll be very judgmental, be like, that is not a skill, that's a prompt. And we're like, I don't care. I just want it to be repeatable. But that's how we've gotten like we had someone that wanted it, did the same thing. We're like, oh, we don't want to manually. Cleanup. We were switching all of our proprietary Mad Cap cross references to hrefs. And they had a good idea. And it was like started with a conversation, and we wanted to be like, well, we don't want to manually look for everything and fix it. Now there still is some cleanup to do because we want to like embed those links in the sentence. But same thing with another coworker came to her in the middle of the night. Like, could we have AI evaluate our content and suggest new synonyms and then have it add it to our auto index and synonym file for us? That was a really fun breakthrough because we were underutilizing them and we knew we wanted our search to be better. And that really just that's the spark for me. I know other you might think that I create a lot of skills, Zora, but everything I do is usually like someone just talking to people or seeing them work, they spark my next idea. And I think that I learned that just from doing leading analytics on the team. There was uh another coworker, Justin Warren. I let have probably led it for most of my 20 years. And we felt very underprepared and unsure. There's so much to do with analytics and what we can do. And we just started back when we were in the office, we would just meet and talk about the data. And it just seems like we have these full circle moments. You know, I very much look forward to the conversations where we talk about AI or our jobs or our processes, because it's not always AI, it might be AI adjacent or similar tools. Like, how would we use them? And I just get inspiration from other people. I don't know if you feel that way. Like I said, you and uh Liz were doing orchestration work, and I thought I took it into like, well, what tools do I? I didn't have access to Copilot Studio at the time. But I thought to myself, what can we do well for now? And you also have to give your permission, yourself permission not to do it perfectly

Turning Busywork Into AI Skills

SPEAKER_00 23:55

the first time, because I look back now going, wow, I knew a lot more about creating an agent or a skill, and like I really could have done this a lot better the first time. But I probably would have never gotten started if I'd waited to know everything about what we were doing. I don't know if you feel that way, but I do answer your question. And to be clear, not everything's by choice, you know, like who you work for or you know, what you see happening in the field, sometimes you get pushed into things not by choice, and you're thinking, it can be a reckoning moment where you're like, I really enjoy the way I work. And I think back to when I first started, I worked with some people, and I noticed that they had gotten really comfortable doing things the way they had always done them, and they were struggling. They were struggling to adapt with we wanted to switch from Adobe Frame Maker to Madcat Flair, and that was a struggle, or we wanted to expand what we were doing so that we were more multi-purposeful, and that was a struggle. And I just really thought to myself, like, your examples can come from both good and bad places. And I thought to myself, like, there's gonna always be smarter people joining our team. And the one thing I can do is just learn from them. There's always like I love, like I love that I always have this philosophy that we each bring our strengths, and there's something I can learn from each person, you know, what people bring on the team. Like you have a great learning mindset and you love sharing it, and you love just talking about the field. I don't know that I could always say the same. Like when I'm at work, I am locked in, Zora, and I really enjoy it. But the moment work is done, I am not thinking about TechCom, right? Like I'm like, I have hobbies and I have things I want to do and I want to travel. And I need people like you to stay enthusiastic. Like you're like, oh, I like what they're doing, right? Or wow, they learn some new cool thing. And I still like we've had people on the team that are so good at Python and scripting, and I'm like, I still don't know what I'm doing with that. But they give me kind of a path forward of no, eventually I figure I will probably age out, right? We'll all age out. But at that point, I want to grow into like a mentoring, teacher, teaching, managing role when I know it's the right time. But for now, I don't know about you, it's been kind of stressful and chaotic, but still engaging. As long as you have that mindset, you can easily put yourself in either bucket, right? You can say, I know what I know, and I don't want to know anything else. I don't know. I just never feel like, even though I've become that position at BlackBot, you know, as one of the lead tech writers, I don't want to take that mindset and be like, I know everything. Like, I feel like the opposite. The more I learn, the more I know I need there's more to do, there's more to learn. And I think that helps is realizing everyone has something to teach you.

Zohra 26:45

Lindsay, you've been so candid with this conversation. So I think honest and transparent. I want to acknowledge one thing. You talk about mentoring later. I think with what you're doing right now, just sharing your knowledge, you are mentoring people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Well, it is funny too, because I've had a lot of people that are like, oh, I mean, you said it. You're like, how do you know so much? Or how do you know? And I was like, I failed so many times, and people don't realize like when you fail, you have to figure it out, right? Like git is a good example. There's so much to learn, and like it's so powerful. And people are like, How do you know all these git commands? And I'm like, Well, I probably have broke everything or did the wrong thing or working out of the wrong branch, or I need to just get rid of all of it and restore. And like the way I learn is like you gotta break things, you gotta fail. And I know a lot of times we don't always give, especially in these high-pressure software environments, you don't always have the time you feel like to fail. But you don't have to share your failures. I don't mind sharing it because it's part of my learning process. Like, I think I don't want people to think I'm a pedestal and didn't and made no mistakes and it was easy for me. Like, I think that's a big part of it too. And I don't maybe it's a different way of looking at it, but we've really gotten a chance to incorporate people from different companies at BlackBot and bring new people in. And gosh, it's been just so refreshing to hear how other people work or how you know, or things they've tried. And that's what I think brings people together. I am not a very like extroverted, showy person. So, but you you were always so gregarious and put yourself out there, and so you're just you're brave in a way that I'm not usually brave. Oh gosh. Yeah, I got asked a question once and I think they misinterpreted it. They're asking, like, I had done an exercise, and I don't think I did as well as I could, but they asked me, like, if I could go back and do it again, what would I do differently? And my answer is I wouldn't go back. Like, it is more important for me to learn from what I did before and incorporate those lessons or what I didn't do well. It's like there's no way we can ever revisit all our mistakes, right? But what we can do is say, what would I do better next time? And I think that's the point that I missed because I want to show people, especially in our team, that are kind of like they're overwhelmed as I don't want to think I'm not overwhelmed. I want people to know that every week there's something new that I'm like, oh boy, like I just feel that pressure and not having enough time. And I want them to know that I feel it too, because they might feel the same way and just understand that like we can't go fix the, it can't go change the past. Like it would be nice, but maybe not. Like maybe it's better that we collect these experiences and this knowledge and this effort, and we try to just do better the next time. Like, what would I do next time when I approach this situation? I I think that's the way like common sense gets developed. It's like I'm just building this, you know, lifelong experiences and I still do really dumb things, or I don't, I'm not maybe always like I try to be empathetic enough or understand people's positions. I think one of my early managers helped with that. He retired from Black Blood, but what he talked about was trying to look at for what each person's strengths are. Because we would always you always get in the habit of like, well, comparing yourself. Am I doing enough? Am I at that level? And I was very uh like achievement oriented. I wanted to really earn those promotions. And comparison is a thief, right? And so what I needed to do instead was learn like what good for me may not be good for them. Maybe they bring other strengths. And that's really like just a maturation I had to bring to it is just understanding it's not fair in the way you think, you know, like especially if you're like, well, they're a senior and I'm a senior. Like, are we doing like, no, you have to figure out what they're doing or bringing, and you also don't even know what their burden or what their work is. You don't may not know everything they're doing. And I've that's one of the things I've really been trying to work on, especially the mentoring. I never knew if I wanted to go into people management, but I do love the coaching and the mentoring. And I know everybody wants to keep me as an individual contributor, but I just like both. That's where I think the natural shift.

Zohra 31:06

I hope someday that when I move to a manager position, it could be more of like that mentorship and that growth mindset versus like I'm I'm gonna be selfish and to say that I want you as a manager, as the lead principal, yeah, technical writer, because you bring such amazing, I guess, advances to like you said, you know, you're picking up from ideas that others have shared and and actually going and trying to problem solve that. But yes, either way, if you had to become a people manager, I think you would have my vote there as well. But I I I'm selfishly going to recommend that you stay the individual contributor because because you are a thought leader.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

I might grow a little like group of power people who someday people will surpass me and just as tell me, and I'll know that that's the right time. Like I will have grown.

LavaCon Break And Big Question

Zohra 32:00

This is a very stereotypical question, and I know we don't have the answer to that. But you've been part of this journey over the last few years, and I'm sure you did not anticipate that you would be here today. The episode is sponsored by LavaCon, the content strategy conference taking place this October in Charlotte, North Carolina. With more than 70 sessions and workshops featuring speakers from companies like Salesforce, TikTok, T-Mobile, and Amazon. LavaCon brings together content strategists, documentation leaders, and content professionals to share practical ideas you can apply right away. And yes, it's known as the Fun Conference 2 with networking events, therapy docs, comfort llamas, storytelling, and karaoke. Use discount code IDC26 to save $200 on registration. But what's one prediction that you think about AI and technical communication that you think sounds bold

Why Tech Writers Will Expand

Zohra 32:50

today, but will be obvious, but will feel obvious in five years?

SPEAKER_00 32:53

I really did think about this. You shared that in advance because I really had a chance to think about it. And what I really came up with is I think often we think more about how AI will replace what we do, because it can write and we can all be more like, okay, but I'll provide style docs. And like we're thinking of ways that it replaces portions of our role or makes our life easier. But my bold prediction is if we position our skills, our expertise, our, you know, especially with things like language and communication, I could very much see our role expanding that we'd be able to do much more than we do today, because so much to me of what is strong AI is language. You know, you see companies like Anthropic hiring, you know, the people who are creating Claude hiring language and communication experts because I mean, I think we all know there's so much fascination and semantic meaning, and there's so many nuances with our language and how we communicate it. And it might be like slang or jargon, and it can have content that sounds perfectly well. But I think what becomes interesting is like I think our rule becomes more than a writer. I think we take our language skills and we are able to do more, whether it's architecting AI skills or orchestration, or there's a lot we can do with prompt engineering. I don't feel like we say enough about how our language and communication skills are a benefit. So if I had a prediction, and I don't know what that title will look like. I think we've we we know that titles change, but that's my bold prediction is that you could probably find yourself more useful today than you thought you did, especially if we lean into the problem solving. Like those are two areas, like one of your questions I was I was thinking about was what are the things people can work on? And it's really like the critical thinking and problem solving. Because if you like we were talking about all these problems we're trying to solve, is such a differentiator that I think those are like the gateway to like how we expand our skills, like what we're able to do. And it does bleed our role in different ways. Like, especially I've always, I don't know if you feel this way, it's always been such a benefit that we get to work with so many people across the company in a role. You know, obviously customers, they're our forefront, but we work with engineers and product managers and customer success or your support team and marketing, and you just feel like you start collecting information. And I think a big part of that is like being able to do really great research and understand having that vision and saying, you know, I actually can do these things that you didn't think I could do because I have this skill set. I just think it's a matter of how do we explain all the things that we can do. And one of the only ways I know to do it, as you know, is build an example, show that we can do something you didn't think we could do. So that's my bold prediction. I think because like even I think I told you, I was like, I think we all have that fear, like, will AI replace us? And it might replace the version of ourselves that we were two years ago before this kind of landed, right? Before this tool became accessible. And there will always be money restrictions. It can be very expensive, but it might replace that version of myself five years ago, but I might become, I think our role can become, you know, expanded. I don't know, do you feel that way at all? Like it often, I think we often talk about too much about like, I don't want it to do this, or I don't want it to, I'm worried it's gonna replace

MCP And Drafting From Source

SPEAKER_00 36:30

this part of your role. And it might, but I do feel like we are capable of more.

Zohra 36:34

As you were talking about, I think the the one thing that stood out for me in everything as you were speaking was the version that you were a couple of years ago. That version is gonna be replaced, and it has already been replaced, in fact. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Right? Oh my gosh, in some ways I don't mind how I think you and I uh you and I talk about like how things have changed, and I don't think I'll miss the person who the way I used to have to collect information, you know. Like I don't mind how I enjoy in conversations with developers, but you know, I don't know, do you ever feel like you're like there's their time is as valuable as mine? I don't want to use too much to like gather information and I want to make sure I'm reviewing the UI and everything I can do. And I may not always be comfortable kind of understanding how the code is talking to each other. And I enjoy now that my first draft can be collected from the source code. I think that's probably the skill I'm most excited about is when we're setting up MCP, having all of our different systems talk to.

Zohra 37:38

I'm starting to see the Lindsay that I see at work, get it all connected, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:43

And I like, and it obviously depends on all the pieces being, you know, doing its part in place. But with AI, I noticed all these pieces are getting a little better. Yeah, but it's like, oh, they put some really great outcome or background information and the user story or the feature, like in that ticket about why we're doing the work. Cool, grab that, right? And then, and this is all within like whether I was using GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code or using Claude and their connectors, and then I go out and I go, hey, here's the pull request, or here's the the source code repo. Tell me what changed. And honestly, it's like such a relief. Like my first relief with AI was thinking, wow, I feel like the content is good, but I don't want to have to use someone else's time to make sure my grammar and punctuation are correct. Like we've always had really strong reviewers on the team. I'm like, but they're busy too. So it started with something minor there was like, wouldn't it be nice if I actually wrote a proper sentence or like grammar? I didn't, you know, because I feel like I write more with intuition from all my years of English classes. Not always, I mean, we have some people in our team that like they know all the rules. They can name them, they can like identify them. They're like, boom. And I'm like, mmm, that is not my strength. Like, you have to recognize what not your strength, right? So that was like my first like, ooh, wouldn't it be nice? And then now the part I'm most excited about is saying, I can give my dev team, like my product manager and engineers, a first draft that is based on what the source code tells me it's doing. Now it still misses a few things or interprets it incorrectly. That's where like I come in. But man, is it a time saver? Especially as you know, I don't always feel confident with like documenting API changes. I can look at their PR request and be like, what did we do now with this endpoint? And what does this endpoint do? And now that could take, and we were making, you know, we're having developers help us with the first draft, and then you gotta, you know, they're busy and you're trying to interpret what they meant, and you're like, that doesn't sound like what we should say, and you're trying to, but now the first thing is have it review that pull request and do the first draft. And I'm like, yeah, like those connections feel the confidence, right? I think yeah, you just it feels just like we can keep up with the pace because we know that everybody else is being challenged as well with the pace, and they're not gonna stop development for us, you know. They're not gonna, you know, if anything, they're being asked to speed things up. You know, I know at our company they're asking them to do less manual coding and more agentic coding and you know, developing those specs, those requirements. So, how do we fit in there? How can we bring that pace? And honestly, it's just like, oh wow, I well, I don't know if you feel that way, like, but using like trying to test everything in the UI, you're like, did I conditionally get everything correct? Did I do all the scenarios? And there's a relief in knowing I have a better starting place, like it really can audit. I mean, I started just cloning the repo, right? Being like, and then go around in the chat and being like, tell me what you're what you like, just tell me everything. And then I'd have to sort through and figure out, like, oh yeah, that's like not something we tell a customer. But now, like getting, you know, I'm that's the next phase I want to do is figure out how to make MCP more accessible to the team. And it's gonna be a challenge because I feel like the greater these tools get, they can be fussy. Have you felt like they're fussy? Well, absolutely. Yeah, I think I wasted at least an hour today when Claude all of a sudden stopped using my Azure MCP that was working and it didn't tell me why it stopped working. And I had to change all the config again. And you're like, How am I gonna teach resiliency? That's like my next conflict, my next dilemma is like I do think about some things I feel like are easier to teach our team members. Resiliency is hard to teach, you know. But it feels like you need that with these tools because once you it can feel resilient and you get it working again. Wow, the payoff is nice when you can get these things to each other. So if you don't, then maybe this is an opportunity to bring that to your executives and ask for that access because it can enable you and Yeah, I had I had someone ask me that and they're like, Well, I don't have like we are very lucky to have access to the source code, like the reader. And they're like, How do I ask for it? And I'm like, Well, part of it is is your company pro AI? And if they want you using it, then one of the first things you can just ask for is can we find a way for me to have read-only access? I very much respect safety nets, and you're not trying to make you know changes, but a lot of what we do just requires pulling the information from the different sources and then acting on it in our content. And that maybe is one of the first ways to have that talk is like working with either an engineer and engineering managers or like who's in charge of it and saying, are there ways we can work it out so I just have read-only access? Because look what I'd be able to do to keep up with the pace of engineering. And it's not going to solve every time, but there might be other options. You know, maybe you could have I've had developers like with our some of our code create uh markdown content that like you know keeps it's something for themselves, but it's also in the code that says this is everything it's doing. Well, what if there's a way for them to generate these in a place you do have accessible? It's just kind of like every problem is like, well, is there another way to do it? In a way that it's not an obstruction or taking a lot of time. It's trying to find those ways to be like, listen, I would like to be able to do this. And so, yeah, sometimes you do need permission, and you know, like we are very lucky that we are given access to these tools, but the the it's lucky, but it's also like, well, now show me what you can do. You know, you have access. What are all the things you can do? And so it's a blessing and it's a burden. Because it can be a burden, that's what we're doing. Yeah, maybe you initially can't do something with the source code, but maybe if you showed other ways you're using MCP, like what you could accomplish, what information do you have access to at your work? Is there something you could show them? Be like, here's what I've done here. I would like to do, you know, like can you I do often have success showing a proof of concept, not just an idea. A lot of people are very easy to shut down ideas. I would set up an MCP connection. What does MCP stand for? Model context protocol. Thank you. I believe, I think Anthropocon. Topic came up with um the model. So like I believe that they were the ones to say we need a standard for how we communicate between systems. To me, it's like uh just a different variety of an API because you're making these calls and getting, you know, passing information back and forth is just a different protocol for the thanks for explaining that. It still uses tokens, it still uses tokens equal, like you know, portions of words and money, but I bounce between almost every AI chat tool that we have, whether it's Microsoft co-pilot or GitHub co-pilot, Claude, I'll even on my phone do Gemini. I don't know something, I ask it. So I'd recommend people do that. You can ask it to also tell it to you for your role. I mean, that's how I learned a lot of these things. I was like, like I wanted to know how we might use tools, you know, like there's like different things I was learning in training. How we use commands, like give me an example how I would do it. And I didn't like all the examples, but it might spark something. And the other thing you can do is like if you have something, like we just turned, we were in Visual Studio Code and we initially used GitHub Copilot. Now we can turn Claude on there. Same thing with uh the Claude desktop. You can ask it to create the config for you, or like whatever you're trying to do, be like, it does not hurt to ask. Be like, can you do this for me? I mean, it could troubleshoot you things too. You just have to think about like we were having an issue with a Microsoft product, so you might want to go use Microsoft Copilot to say, how do I fix this? Like it was clearly some kind of Windows issue. And I'm like, well, this Microsoft co-pilot is trained on Microsoft's documentation. Maybe they can help us. And I think we went through like, don't give up if it first doesn't work. That's part of it. I will just keep trying. And we were laughing about that in a meeting today. We're like, you know, sometimes the first suggestion it tells you how to do something, you're like, wow, that is way too complicated. Like, I don't feel comfortable doing that. So you just go back and say, are there any other ways? Like, I don't know how to do that. Like, or if it doesn't sound like something like security-wise, like you're like, yeah, I don't think that's the best. Like, just try to see if there's another way to do it. Never now and then you're like, it gives you an easy way, and you're like, why didn't you suggest that in the first place? Like, oh my gosh, that's so much easier. Like, I fussed a long time with Azure, and it just came down to just running AZ, I was AZ login in the terminal, and I was all of a sudden authenticated. I was like, oh my gosh, that was so much easier than however you were authenticating before with tokens and whatnot. I was like, oh please.

Zohra 46:33

Yeah, that's so true. And you know, use these tools to your advantage, Lon, and they're not gonna judge you, which is the

Autonomy Mastery Purpose And People

Zohra 46:40

robot, it cannot judge.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

I mean, it might judge you, but that's just fake stuff that they programmed.

Zohra 46:44

So as we wrap this up, do you have any thoughts that you want to share that you may not have?

SPEAKER_00 46:50

There was one thing that I thought about that influenced my career based on one of the questions you uh previously have asked me. And it was what is it from Daniel Pink's drive. Early Blackbot over the years has picked different philosophies to engage or talking about employees. And I was like, out of all the things, one thing really stuck me with you is his, which is a fully engaged person once you meet all their basic needs and financial needs, needs autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And so those things stuck with me because obviously I have the purpose. A lot of it has to do, it is the customers, like they make it so easy because what we do, like helping nonprofits, anything we help them, I feel like the impact compounds, but it's always been the people I work with. Like they help give me purpose and excitement, and I just enjoy working with them. But the other thing that drives me is like, yeah, I want to feel like I have autonomy to make decisions and do my best work. And then that mastery piece, and a lot of mastery, it constantly shifts. So it pushes me, like that was part of what happened a year ago. That shift was like I went from feeling like I had mastered, you know, a lot of portions of my work, and then all of a sudden you find out I'm being reset like everyone else, and that's okay. But what's driving me to try things is like I just want to feel like I, you know, not like we can have control, but you want to feel like you're proud and you understand what you do and how to do it. And I think that drives me. So you might have to find for me, it was autonomy, mastery, and purpose, but you might have to find your thing. And those are the people too that I think have done well, you know, that I've worked with is those people that figure out those things, you know. And I think some people they worry about I've I've worked with people that worry that they might think differently than me, and it, you know, like they may not be right. And I said, and and every time I try to say, that's actually when you talked about diversity, the diversity of thought and background and and everything you bring really makes what we do more valuable, and like you learn is that that's what I get out of it. So that's probably why I'm still in technical writing. It was not sold to me this way. I thought it was gonna be really boring. I thought we were just gonna be writing user guides. It has never been that, like it was at first. I will say, Zora, I think I fell asleep in one of my first days because they gave me like a 500-page user guide and told me to read every page and edit it. I thought I'm not gonna make it, like, I can't do that. You know, like so. I mean, you're in a quiet office, it's cool, and you're like, oh, I can't do this. But it's been the most surprising thing is that change, that always that desire to so yeah, I I want to do half a million other things. I think like you, I would be really good being independently wealthy reading all day and hanging out with cats and dogs and all that and traveling. But it's like, yeah, I still need to work and give back and have purpose and probably pay my bills. So it's like, well, what can I do well at? Because I think that's the hardest decision when you're at earlier in your career, you're like, is this really what I do? And it's like, well, you could really pick anything, right? I don't know if you felt that way. I felt like I could have gone into dozens of different fields, but you gotta pick one, something something that pays for the lifestyle you want to have, right? And you just have to figure out for me, it was autonomy, mastery, and purpose for but for someone else, what it gets you through the day, and variety gets me through the day. I don't know that's true for everyone. I don't know. Are you that way or do you prefer consistency? Probably the same thing. I don't think part of I mean my part of what I stayed was for the people, but also I have learned too, you have to find the workplace that matches the kind of enthusiasm we bring to the role because I do often hear from peers in the field, and I I think to myself, like I saw, I don't remember who did the poll on LinkedIn. They're like, what's your most frequent tool that you use? And people were still saying Microsoft Word, Sora, and I thought, I absolutely cannot. I don't think I could work in a place where like my primary tools word. And it just goes to show you, but that might be for someone else, right? Yes. But you have to find if you're unhappy, and it's hard. The it's not a great time to find different jobs, but if you're open, try to find a place that matches the kind of energy you bring and does the work that you enjoy. So, you know, we're the kind of work that our company does makes it easier because you know, what we're doing. And you have to find, I mean, I've heard people talk about the stress of other industries, and I think some people could thrive, like healthcare. Remember someone saying, you know, how very specific and technical, and you have to be 100% accurate. And I thought to myself, I don't think I'm the person to thrive in that environment. But I know there's other people that are so detailed and technical, and they thrive on that. So really, and that was always one of them, I used to love giving talks to college students. And I was trying to tell them what is great about this field is you can find technical writing in a variety of companies. And it's easier if you find a company that does the kind of work you like, you know, like for me, it's obviously I enjoy software and I enjoy the kind of customers we have. But for others, healthcare, like if you love science and medicine, but you're like, oh, I don't want to spend the money to become a doctor, and I'm really good at communicating, that might be your avenue, you know, like trying to figure out where we fit. Where we fit. Yeah, and just yeah, and giving, you know, I feel like I told you, I feel lucky that I didn't have to switch jobs a bunch. I looked every now and then just to see if there was something that struck my fancy. We all go through that's the other thing. I think everybody thinks that once you're a high performer, you're a high performer, right, Zora? But everybody has roller coasters in a calendar year. You get low motivation or you're just drained, and you have to give yourself permission to kind of have lows and highs. And I think you'll see that cycle in your career as well. Because sometimes you're thinking, I really want a new challenge. I want to see what that's out there. And sometimes it is the right move. And other times you're thinking, I don't know, the one I've got is pretty great. Obviously, I feel that way so far. I don't know what the next 10 years will bring. I think there's some colleagues we have in the field that probably thought they were bringing that to their company, and their company decided they didn't want them and they're kind of like forced to change. And I hope for each one of them they find that next company that feels the same way they do. And it might take some trying, but I do want people newer to the field that are thinking about it is if your situation's not great, or you know, I've had some not so great managers before Black Bot, and it's like, well, don't put up with it, you know, if you can, you know, it's it's much easier to get a new job while you have one, right? So, but know what you're worth and what if you want a company to match your energy, your your team to manage your energy, if you don't think it's the right fit, you have to give yourself permission to like be open to that, right? Yeah, I think I have enjoyed, I hope you have too, enjoyed the flexibility we have. Like I have my to-do list and my projects, and as long as I'm getting done, I get them done in the order that I I want to get them done. Absolutely. Yeah. And I yeah, and I think everybody needs to find what works for you, right? I mean, how have you felt about if you've been at BlackBod six of your 20 years? Has there been one particular thing you enjoy about? I had different like jobs and a little bit, you know, before BlackBod, but I've only been a t full-time technical writer here. But you still bring those things, those lessons, right? And I feel like we should brag about Denise Cadillac a little bit because I can't talk about my career without having someone like her model for someone like me. She was always so impressive and still is, and just the way that she approaches work and you know, the way that she has been so technical. And, you know, she I remember her trying to explain Dida to us and how we might use it. And I was like, I don't know, like, but the fact that you know, like she just had that, you know, modeled that curiosity and so intelligent, absolutely so positive. And when she got the opportunity to lead our team, I don't know, it just it was like we could have been nervous about the future when you have change, but I couldn't, I don't know about you. I just can't count myself luckier because every time I'm like, oh, I gonna meet with Denise, how's it gonna go? And she's just so positive and encouraging. And you think to yourself, wow, like I don't know what next year is gonna bring. But if you have people in your corner or people inspire you, people who model the behavior, like that's why I never initially thought I would switch from an individual contributor to managing people. But seeing what she's done, I'm like, there's so much inspiration there because now she compounds everything she's done by how she leads us. Right. Gosh, what a blessing. And that's what I I don't know. I can't gush enough about our team. Like, and there's times that you just you can't bring 100% of yourself. But I have such a group of people, some of them I have worked with for the whole 20 years. I don't think everybody gets that. But even the people who come and go, most of them have left such a good impact on me. Like, we just lost someone that like someone else out some other else snatched her away.

Zohra 56:21

I just learned so much from her time with our who you're talking about, and I am heartbroken about that, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

But you you realize what do they say? There's a theory that there's like a train, and people come into your life and they're with you on that train for those stops, and then they leave. And there's always a reason, but I try to focus instead on being lucky and like what I learned in that time. And I think sometimes we focus, you know. Yes, I try to focus my lessons and my learnings on the work and becoming more valuable and more experienced and understanding how to do things, but I think it always, I don't know about you, so it always comes back to the people.

Zohra 56:58

Like it does, absolutely. I think it's always the people because the person that you're talking about, for me, it's almost like a personal loss because I've learned so much from her. And this is my way of saying thanks. I wish I could name her, but I'm sure she would not approve of it. She wouldn't, yeah, she would hate it. But I'm definitely going to tell her privately to hopefully listen to this episode because because the impact that she's left on us on our team is tremendous, and it's it is always the people, and that's what has made me stay at this company because it's the people and the positive culture that we have.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

A lot can happen within your greater company, things you like or don't like, and it it's always this cycle, but our little bubble, our little team our little team, our little tribe has really looked out for each other, and that's that is what I value. Like the person that just I'm so proud and excited for her next opportunity, of course. But I don't think they always know what an impact they have. And sometimes you don't realize you, you know, I did try to say something before she left, but you just realize like you want to be able to share. And it's that's how I feel about like I haven't got a chance to work closely with every single person in our team. Not yet, you know, you things ebb and flow, but that's I think maybe like you said, there's so much you can learn from other people if you, you know, open yourself up to it and see how they do things. And this person, when they joined the team, they just I don't know, it's just so fun to they thought so different for me, right? And I could say that true for everyone, but this person in particular is like, I was just fascinated. Maybe that helps like some of my background and my undergrad with psychology, but oh gosh, I think I'm just fascinated by people. So yeah, anything that keeps it interesting and like people like that that come and go, you're like, oh, I'm so I instead try to reframe it from the loss to what I gain. Like, how lucky am I to have learned whatever that is from that person while I got to work with them? And personalities can clash with other, you know, with different people on the team. But it if you can try to figure out like what are you meant to learn from them? And sometimes it's like what not to do. I've had people like that in my life, including family members. You're like, oh, I don't that seems scary, or I don't like that, right? So you can learn both, you know, what not to do and what to do. But gosh, maybe that's the best part about being a technical writer is even though I'm an introvert and I love going off and tinkering in my brain, I almost love just being an observer and just learning or listening. And because I don't think we often retrospect on our careers and what we're learning and what excites us. And you know, if anybody wants to like chat more, Zora, you know, I love connecting on LinkedIn or however you want to reach, you know, if you you know see me at a conference, I think I'll have to do more of them. Um I think you should. Keep going. I'm rooting for you. Thank you for the encouragement and thank you for inviting me on your podcast. I really enjoyed kind of thinking about like what we're doing and I don't know, trying to be encouraging when things can feel very discouraging. Like I think we often hear, especially in our field, we're like we might hear some more of like we of course we want to share like the fears and the negative things, but it's like, well, how do we get through it? And I don't want to just sit and be afraid and wait for the change to happen. I at least want to be prepared. Like, and if for some reason it's not at my current company, I want to be prepared for wherever it takes me next. And I just I thought, heck, out of anything, I'll just make more connections with people where we'll talk, you know.

Zohra 1:00:40

All of the above, you know, there isn't right or wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

Yeah. I had a little caffeine to make sure my synapses were firing, but really, I think I'm excited, even though neither of us are spring chickens. Uh, I'm excited to see what you do next. Like, that's like part of this whole experiment, too, is like you you and I talked, and this is how I think it I'm like, okay, what is Zora gonna do next? Or what is someone else gonna do next? Yes, and thank you, Zora, for making that invitation. Maybe in another five years we'll regroup about whatever amazing things. Yeah, there's always some adventure. There's gonna be highs and lows, but I look forward to where we go next and I appreciate uh the chance to talk to you about it.

Zohra 1:01:21

Thanks, Lindsay.