Social Media, Social Networking, and Social Relevance in Tech Comm
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The document discusses how social media, social networking, and social relevance can help technical communicators meet their goals. It provides examples of how Anne Gentle has used these tools to improve OpenStack documentation through conversation, community building, and iterative improvements. Gentle advocates for listening to users, responding helpfully, and harnessing social tools to increase engagement, collaboration and impact.
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Social Media, Social Networking, and Social Relevance in Tech Comm
- 1. Social Media, Social Networking, and Social Relevance in Tech Comm Anne Gentle anne.gentle@rackspace.com Society for Technical Communication Houston March 2013
- 3. OpenStack – Open Source Cloud Computing Rackspace – Fanatical Support in all we do
- 4. Not always a technical writer Wanting to make an impact ▪ 72% of companies use social technologies ▪ Writers are user advocates ▪ Need a plan and execution
- 5. Never before have we had tools for media, networking, and relevance that help us meet our goals How do we harness the power of the social web for documentation?
- 7. Self-Service, Prorated Supercomputing Fun! http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorated-super-computing-fun/ Your mission: “make all the public domain (New York Times) articles from 1851–1922 available free of charge” but “each article is actually composed of numerous smaller TIFF images” Your solution: To the cloud! Rented resources: “churned through all 11 million articles in just under 24 hours using 100 EC2 instances, and generated another 1.5TB of data to store in S3”
- 8. Open Source Cloud Computing for all organizations Community-built with a global collaboration of developers and cloud deployers with open development Apache2 licensed code Open design process with an in-person meeting every six months
- 9. Increase OpenStack adoption by driving usage and deployments – I was the first point of contact for AT&T’s cloud entry. Provide OpenStack support with docs and comments. In fact, docs.openstack.org gets about 10,000 unique visitors a week. Be strategic, collaborative, and open with documentation. (That’s the BHAG!) I’ve bet my career on this approach. Provide truth and trust. Hard as you might think with fast-moving code. Achieve business objectives for multiple companies in the OpenStack ecosystem.
- 10. docs.openstack.org/install for deployers docs.openstack.org/run for cloud administrators and architects docs.openstack.org/ops for cloud operators api.openstack.org for REST API developers docs.openstack.org/developer for Python developers
- 11. Social media Sharing content, feedback loops, discussions, and destinations Social networking Gather information by interacting with your audience and users Social relevance Collaboration, resource sharing, sharing goals
- 14. Close the loop Track doc bugs that are reported in the comments Flickr: myklroventine
- 15. Personas Commenters Readers Moderators Administrators
- 16. Why not mobile first or mobile only? Consider immersive experiences Consider when and where you search – from your phone? Responsive web design examples: http://mediaqueri.es/
- 17. Comment in their language Build communities locally Think: is English the “source” or another language?
- 18. Many comments at once to gain further understanding Pointing out typos or small errors in code Want specific examples and specific help Request for a particular feature Flickr: theilr
- 20. BE HELPFUL, SHARE LISTEN, MONITOR
- 21. INFORM RESPOND
- 22. Listen where users are; select channels Mine data gold Daily/weekly blog searches Career- and job-related searches Get to know community content members Anne Gentle
- 24. Think like an acquisition editor Everyone’s a writer (but not all of them have a coach) Files as the basis are key to treading docs like code Flickr: gruntzooki
- 25. Originally had three month release cycles Design Summit in- person meeting April and October Now six month release cycles with milestone releases Flickr: plenty
- 26. Devs write for devs Admins write for admins This is a complete turnaround for me Some people can only review (and it’s not worthwhile to convince them to write) Flickr: kholkute
- 27. • 66% Site visitors stay instead of leaving • 100 Doc patches and reviews a month • 10,000 unique visitors a week • 6 months before commenters answered each other Flickr: dno1967b
- 30. • Logged doc bug in afternoon, came in to a fix the next day • Glossary out of “nowhere” from a wiki page starting point • Translation workflow in six months
- 32. Hey! Release date! Doh. Release date.
- 34. Acquisition editor Web stats analyst Writing coach Project manager Bug tracker/triager Editor Advocate Writer
- 35. Media: Encourage conversation Networking: Listen and learn Relevance: Build a team and community Iterate repeatedly
- 37. Anne Gentle www.justwriteclick.com anne.gentle@rackspace.com @annegentle www.facebook.com/ conversationandcommunity www.linkedin.com/in/ annegentle Flickr: candelabrumelabrumdanse
Editor's Notes
- Cover slide- when I look back at the last five to eight years of experimenting and finding the future of tech comm, these are the two themes that emerged for me.I’m Anne Gentle and I work at Rackspace, the open cloud company.
- I believe in it so much I’m willing to work in open source, have faith that the community will eventually deliver exactly what we need, and persevere through uncertainty and doubt. This work is so exciting right now because there is a shift and we are working through it, with it, around it.
- I am a content stacker at Rackspace, here’s where I think we’re going
- So where are we today? This is computer scientist Barbie. When Mattel surveyed thousands of little girls asking what careers they are interested in, they said computer scientist – and also journalist! Guess what, that is what we are heading towards today. While news delivery and sourcing is changing, actual professional journalism is still in demand. The same goes for professional technical writing – we report on the indepth stories behind the technology to help everyone understand what they need to know. I believe we can be heroes of the technology world by working with social web techniques.
- collaboration, instant communication, project tracking, and data gathering
- I have ideas because I’ve been working on this OpenStack project for 2 years now. Here’s some background.
- http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorated-super-computing-fun/They found a mistake in the first run through so they just ran it again.
- Next: what are our goals with the documentation?
- So let’s start tying together community and documentation
- there are challenges to using these tools – social media amplifies errors and heightens drama in communities while also enabling more voices and sites.AmplificationDramaToo many channelsToo much datamap represents the number of unique authors in each Usenet newsgroup who appeared in the current year, 2003.Making it work anyway.I’m going to walk through three areas: Sharing information and collecting feedback via social media techniquesGathering information from social networksMaking it relevant and collaborating closely with users, advocates, customers
- Comments and workflowCommenting toolsMobile considerationsTranslation considerationsCategories of comments
- Incorporate comment moderation and responses into your workflow. Use comments to create doc bugs (if they are bugs).Treat docs as code- manage content like an asset.
- Embedding into output – where? How does each persona accomplish their goals?Identity and connection to existing sites?Spam protectionExpiration - How do releases work? Bulk operations for moderators?Notifications (and for whom)Analytics
- Instagram only went for mobile platforms, not even the web.Twitter made an API that third party apps use.Niche – Instagram and Pinterest have specific features
- Comments are the start of community, so you may need to build a community around the discussions
- ■ Typo or minor edit suggestions: Log a documentation bug reportand tell the commenter about the report.■ Conceptual questions: These are questions like, “Why does itwork this way?” Give the commenter the additional informationhe or she needs. Then, if you think the question is of generalinterest, log a documentation bug report suggesting a revision.■ Troubleshooting or help requests: If you can, provide help directlyin the comments. If not, direct the commenter to anotherplace to receive help, perhaps support. Take ownership and followthrough to make sure the problem is resolved.■ Feature requests: Let the user know the current status if this isa feature that is in the works or has been rejected. If the featuredoesn’t yet exist, let the user know that. If there is another systemwhere the user can request the feature, either redirect the commentthere or let the user know about that system.
- Listen in, be conversationalMine the data goldResearch existing channels
- Interact but don’t get fired: know the policiesRackspace policy: be helpful
- Technical writers are good at reporting their findings about users (Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff agrees). Write a monthly email summarizing what you see on the social web after listening for a while.If you see a troublesome spot based on feedback, fix it, or report it to someone who can.
- This is where LinkedIn comes inI also advocate for a Community Content Audit – who are your members, what are their motivations? Who is blogging? Why?
- I think of social relevance as the final frontier: creating documentation with the community. Collaboration, resource sharing, shared goalsIt’s like having a giant docs team with just as much cat herding – the only way to manage is to treat docs like code: adopt developer-like workflows and version control
- Publishers want OpenStack content. I feel like I’m in a fight to be an acquisitions editor some days. Everyone wants an OpenStack book, or blog entries about OpenStack to publish on their site. I was surprised at this.
- Originally had doc sprint during design summit, moved it to earlier dateExpectation – to hold these regularly, reality, releases dictated when to hold themTiming has changed again to six month releases with milestone releases in between. Doc sprints need a rethink.
- Eric Holscher – read the docs - said at Pycon, Devs need to write for other devs – strongly believe what ReadTheDocs.org guy preaches now. This is a 180 degree turn for me.
- OpenStack-doc-core reviews and decisions to publish docs to the live production site100 doc bugsOver 500 options in Compute now, nearly 300 in Object Storage* While Rackspace has the highest number of code contributors, it has the lowest number of writer contributors.Badge wearersAT&T IBMNebulaNiciraNimbis ServicesNuageRackspaceRedHatGrad StudentsUniversity of MelbourneUniversity of Tokyo
- TryStack and DevStack – working environments for writersWADL to API ReferenceTry it out for APIBug triagingSpreadsheets of gaps in docsEntire outlinesGoogle Doc SprintExtensions are challenging – API docs are challenging
- Curated search engine plus search analyticsWorking on loyalty, bounce rateProof of the PDF popularity
- Next slide: blank slide
- So, how can you take these ideas and put them into practice?Everyone’s a writer, so we need to tap the power of conversation and community to add value. To be better at any job, you can use social technologies to seek info. In your job, you are helping others be better at their job by giving them info matched to what they seek. Find ways to provide value with strategic social technologies.