Behind the Docs

Heretto
  • 0.0（0）
  • テクノロジー

Welcome to Behind the Docs — the podcast that spotlights the people who make technical content come to life. Whether you're a seasoned tech writer, content strategist, or just curious about the brains behind the docs you rely on every day, this show is for you. Each episode features real conversations with the folks who build help sites, craft user guides, and keep the content engine running behind the scenes. No jargon, just smart, engaging stories about the work, the wins, and the humans making it happen.

  1. 2日前

    Write the F****** Manual with CT Smith

    WTFM is out today! 📚 Today’s episode of Behind the Docs is a special one because it lands on the official release day of CT Smith’s first book, WTFM: A Practical Guide for Standing Up Docs at a Startup. In this episode of Behind the Docs, Ren Taylor talks with technical writer and documentation leader CT Smith about her path into technical writing, the thinking behind her new book, and what it really takes to build documentation that works. CT wrote WFTM for people who find themselves responsible for documentation before they’re ready—or able—to hire a dedicated technical writer. The book focuses on making smart decisions early so teams can avoid creating documentation problems that become harder to solve as the company grows. The conversation covers CT’s path into tech writing, the value her philosophy background brings to her work, and why she believes documentation should be treated as a specialized craft. Ren and CT also discuss working effectively with marketing, using AI in documentation workflows, and where humans still need to stay firmly in the loop. In this episodeHow CT went from studying philosophy and working at Waffle House to becoming a technical writerHow to build relevant experience when you don’t have a traditional technical writing backgroundWhy CT wrote WTFM and who she wrote it forThe importance of setting up documentation well before a company needs a dedicated docs teamWhy documentation and marketing teams should work together, and where their goals differHow CT uses AI to automate parts of her documentation workflowWhy AI should support, rather than replace, human judgment and empathyThe characteristics CT looks for in genuinely good documentationHow to make the business case for technical writingWhy CT believes technical writers are important, and why the profession may be headed for a renaissance About the bookWTFM is available September 1 in EPUB, paperback, and online. CT has also created an interactive calculator and additional resources to accompany the book, which you can find on her website! Guest: CT Smith CT's website: https://docsgoblin.com/ The Global English Style Guide: https://books.google.vu/books?id=r0AiqqRBPF0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Host: Ren Taylor

  2. 8月25日

    Building Bridges Between Teams with Rahul Garg

    A different kind of guest this episode: Ren talks with Rahul Garg, a project management professional who's spent his career in telecom and fintech coordinating between developers, testers, quality teams, and senior stakeholders. Rahul isn't a technical writer, but his approach to communication, audience-tailoring, and building a team newsletter has striking overlap with what technical writers do every day. Rahul breaks down why he sees himself as "the bridge" between isolated stakeholder groups, how ambiguous words like "done" or "highlight" can derail a project if teams aren't aligned on meaning, and how he turned a messy, jargon-heavy team newsletter into a concise, consistent communication tool that became a single source of truth for his project. In this episodeRahul's background in telecom and fintech project management, and how his role evolved from "managing work" to helping people understand what they're doing and whyWhy he calls himself a bridge between stakeholders working in isolation, and how he tailors content differently for developers, testers, quality teams, and senior leadershipThe importance of defining shared vocabulary on a project (what does "done" actually mean?) before work even startsBuilding a communication plan for distributed, cross-timezone teams, and using handoff notes to bridge gaps when no meeting time overlapsHow Rahul launched a team newsletter, why the first version flopped (too long, too jargon-heavy, almost nobody read it), and the structure he landed on: quick wins, risks, delivery updates, blockers, and recognitionWhy consistency and recognition matter so much in a recurring newsletter, and how it created two-sided value — visibility for the team and a documented record protecting against "I wasn't aware" moments laterStreamlining how he collects input from contributors so the newsletter doesn't become an unmanageable dump of blockers and non-highlightsWhere project management and technical writing overlap and diverge: technical writers own the "how," project managers own the "what and why" — and where friction between the two roles can show upHis hill to die on: organizations massively underestimate the cost of poor communication, and transparency has declined since the pre-COVID era

  3. 8月18日

    A Tech Comm Career Old Enough to Drink with Archer Berryman

    Ren talks with Archer Berryman, a documentation leader at Broadcom, about a 21-year career in tech comm that started with an internship at Computer Associates (Archer thought it was a computer repair shop) and has spanned an acquisition, a shift from Word docs to structured CMSs, folding product education into the doc team, and now the AI disruption reshaping the field. Archer talks candor about staying in one place for two decades, why he thinks writers get an unfair reputation for job-hopping less than other disciplines, how his team absorbed Broadcom's product education function after the training org was cut, and his management philosophy of giving writers positive feedback since — like referees — they usually only hear about their work when something's wrong. In this episodeArcher's path into tech writing: an English degree, a recruiter call he almost turned down, and 21 years at Computer Associates/BroadcomWhy longevity in tech comm often comes down to luck, timing, and finding the "niche nobody else has expertise in" (for Archer, it was early structured/object-oriented CMS adoption)Surviving the Broadcom acquisition and absorbing product education into the documentation team after the training department was cutLessons learned turning technical writers into instructional designers, and why training content needs a different discipline than reference docsArcher's management philosophy: zero ego, be yourself, and the importance of giving writers positive feedback so the work doesn't become an echo chamberAdvice for new writers: use the "gift of time" early in your career to build an advantage, and lean into AI rather than resist itHow Archer is guiding his team through the accelerating pace of AI adoption in documentation, and reframing it as time given back rather than an existential threatHis hill to die on: documentation is a mirror — a writer's job is to reflect the product honestly, not make it look simpler or more polished than it is

  4. 8月11日

    Docs as a Decision System with Danielle Washington

    We're back! This episode marks our return from summer break, and we couldn't have picked a better guest to kick things off. Ren sits down with Danielle Washington — technical documentation writer with stops at HPE, Weaviate, and now 10A Labs — for a conversation about how she found her way into tech comm through candle-making, teaching English in Spain, and political science, and what that winding path taught her about writing for readers. Danielle shares her "Day 0, Day 1, Day 2" framework for structuring documentation around the decisions readers are actually making, why she treats herself as "user zero" by testing everything she writes, the EKS configurator she built at Weaviate to replace words with a tool, and her take on where AI is pushing (and sometimes pressuring) the technical writing profession. In this episodeDanielle's unconventional path into technical writing — from a high school blog, to political science, to running a candle company, to landing at HPEBeing the first and only technical writer embedded on an engineering team, and how she learned to prioritize what to document first"Docs as a decision system": the Day 0 / Day 1 / Day 2 framework for thinking about what a reader needs to decide at each stageWhy Danielle tests her own documentation as "user zero" instead of only writing from the user's perspectiveThe EKS configurator she built at Weaviate to replace fragile, error-prone YAML instructions with a real toolHer move from HPE (GreenLake) to Weaviate (deployment docs, vector databases) to 10A Labs (information retrieval systems)Agent-friendly documentation, the shift toward tooling over pure prose, and why AI shouldn't be a scapegoat for layoffsHer hill to die on: documentation is a product surface, not a support feature Resources mentionedFrom Kitchen Experiments to Five Star Service: The Weaviate Development Journey — Danielle's Weaviate blog post applying the Day 0/Day 1/Day 2 framework to the developer journeyHow We Are Building the Core of the AI-Native Stack — the original Weaviate post that introduced the Day 0/Day 1/Day 2 mindsetDanielle Washington on LinkedInPrevious Behind the Docs episodes referenced in this conversation:Designing Documentation for Agents, Not Just Users — with Dachary Carey of MongoDBDoc testing, skills files, and the guardians of knowledge — with Manny Silva of Skyflow, creator of Doc Detective

  5. 5月12日

    The Future of Docs Is More Human Than You Think with Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti

    In this episode of Behind the Docs, Patrick Bosek sits down with Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti to explore what AI actually means for the future of technical communication — beyond the hype. Fabri shares his journey from software reviewer and blogger to Principal Technical Writer at Elastic, where he helps shape documentation tooling, AI workflows, and collaborative content systems. The conversation dives into the evolving role of technical writers, why AI works best as a collaborator rather than a replacement, and how documentation teams are becoming increasingly responsible for architecture, tooling, and content operations. Patrick and Fabri also unpack the growing tension between AI acceleration and thoughtful implementation. They discuss the shift toward local and self-hosted models, the hidden value of “busy work” in building understanding, and why foundational content architecture matters more than ever in an AI-assisted world. The episode closes with a thoughtful look at what “great documentation” will mean in the future: content that is accessible to both humans and machines, structured with intent, and designed as coherent knowledge systems rather than disconnected pages. In This EpisodeFabri’s path from blogging and SEO into technical writingHow personal writing helps sharpen thinking in the age of AIWhy AI should be treated as a collaborator, not an autopilotThe role of technical writers in AI tooling and DocOpsHow documentation tools reflect organizational culture and “taste”Why AI hype may plateau over the next 18 monthsThe rise of local and self-hosted AI modelsWhat orchestration work looks like for future technical writersWhy foundational documentation still requires deep human expertiseThe importance of content types, metadata, and structure for AI consumptionAdvice for early-career technical communicators learning AIWhy the future of docs may look surprisingly similar to the past About the GuestFabri Ferri-Benedetti is a Principal Technical Writer at Elastic and a widely respected voice in the technical communication community. Through his blog, Passo Uno, and active online presence, Fabri explores the intersection of AI, documentation tooling, developer experience, and the evolving future of technical communication. Links & ResourcesFabri Ferri Benedetti’s Blog – Passo UnoElasticWrite the Docs

  6. 4月28日

    BtD at ConVEx'26!

    This episode of Behind the Docs is coming straight from the conference floor at ConVEx 2025 in Pittsburgh — a collection of candid conversations with the people who make this community what it is. From first-timers to veterans with decades in the field, the throughline is clear: this industry is in the middle of something real, and the people here are figuring it out together. They also dig into: why metadata keeps coming up in every single conversation — and why it matters more than ever for AIhow well-structured content is already separating teams that are succeeding with AI from teams that are strugglingwhat it actually feels like to show up to a TechCom conference as a newcomer (spoiler: everyone becomes an extrovert)the best real-world example of faceted search you've probably never thought to look at (hint: it's a knitting website)and why "garbage in, garbage out" is just as relevant today as its always been If you care about where this profession is headed — and you want to hear it from the people actually doing the work — this one's for you. Big, big thank you to the team at the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) for putting on another great conference. Looking forward to doing it again next year!

  7. 4月21日

    Special Episode! Who controls your content? AI and content governance - Sarah O'Keefe of Scriptorium

    In this special replay from Scriptorium's Content Operations podcast, Sarah O'Keefe sits down with our very own Patrick Bosek to tackle one of the thorniest problems in AI-powered content work: governance. Patrick and Sarah unpack why governing AI outputs gets harder as the technology improves, and why the structure you put into your content before it ever reaches a model may be your most important quality lever. They also dig into: why "garbage in, garbage out" is too simple and what good upstream governance actually looks likehow content structure serves humans first (and why that makes it better for AI too)what happens when end users start stripping warnings and summarizing away critical informationwhy you should never replace a working deterministic system with an AI one If you work in content strategy, technical writing, or are watching your organization stand up an AI team and wondering how to prepare, this one's for you. You can listen to this episode and many more Content Operations conversations on Scriptorium's website.

  8. 3月31日

    What Great Documentation Actually Means in Cybersecurity - Jeff Cross at Arctic Wolf

    Jeff Cross didn't plan to become a technical writer. He started a computer science degree, dropped out, spent a year trying to make it as a fiction writer, went back for a philosophy degree, considered academia, and then — almost by accident — realized that technical writing was the thing that made all of it make sense. Now Senior Manager of Technical Writing at Arctic Wolf, Jeff has spent years doing some of the most complex content work in the industry: documenting third-party security integrations he has no direct access to, managing a full DITA migration while keeping up with release cycles, and pulling off a content carve-out from a corporate acquisition with translated content in three languages and a hard deadline. In this episode, Jeff and Patrick talk about what it really means to do great documentation work, and why the hardest parts rarely show up in a job description. They cover: - Why the security space takes documentation seriously in ways other industries don't - What happened when a product rename turned "a" into "an" across thousands of content files - How AI helped a small team execute a DITA-to-DITA migration without outside help - The checkbox doc that nobody wanted to write — and that way more people read than expected - Why technical writing is less like writing and more like investigative journalism Plus: Patrick discovers mid-conversation that Jeff was the person who fixed the BlackBerry email signature problem that drove him personally crazy for a year.

すべて見る（25）

番組について

Welcome to Behind the Docs — the podcast that spotlights the people who make technical content come to life. Whether you're a seasoned tech writer, content strategist, or just curious about the brains behind the docs you rely on every day, this show is for you. Each episode features real conversations with the folks who build help sites, craft user guides, and keep the content engine running behind the scenes. No jargon, just smart, engaging stories about the work, the wins, and the humans making it happen.

情報

  • クリエイター
    Heretto
  • 配信期間
    25年 - 26年
  • エピソード
    25
  • 制限指定
    不適切な内容を含まない
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Heretto
  • 番組のWebサイト
    Behind the Docs

その他のおすすめ