I just got back from the WritersUA technical writing conference yesterday in Long Beach, California. As I expected, I attended many really interesting sessions.
Here’s one great idea. Sarah Maddox, an Australian technical writer, works at Atlassian, the company that develops JIRA (bug and issue tracking software) and Confluence (web-based corporate wiki software). She and her team created wiki documentation that combines traditional technical documentation, social media, and links to related blog posts. Here’s a screen capture:
This screen capture shows a sample of Atlassian’s wiki documentation, which includes a Twitter stream at the bottom of the page.
If users tweet on a given topic, they’re rewarded by given an online badge that they can add to their own blogs or social sites.
Sarah and her colleagues at Atlassian have pulled off a rare feat—content that marries technical documentation, social media, and even viral marketing. Because users who decide to tweet are offered an online badge, others might see the badge on another site and then tweet as well, which could lead to more and more users contributing to the dialog via Twitter.
This project won the most innovative idea at the WritersUA “peer showcase.” I think it’s a great idea and well deserved.
I have worked as a
Hallo Robert
Thanks so much for blogging about my presentation at WritersUA. What a great conference it was! So many great people and so many ideas to chew over until next time. 🙂
Cheers
Sarah
Hallo Robert
Me again. Are you planning to blog about your WritersUA presentation on web analytics? I missed it at the conference, because they had 5 sessions happening in each time slot. I’d love to read all about it. 🙂
Cheers
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Sure, I’d aim to write a summary about my presentation in the next week or two.
It may be a great tool that accelerates the process of creating documents by the means of instant co-operation with SMEs. I’d love to try it.
I must say that you attended a wonderful session 🙂
If we were to consider popularity of Twitter and how fast it works, merging is a great idea. I feel that this will lead to convergence of help akin to convergence of technology. There are some organizations which block access to networking sites. There it could be an issue.
I’ve been brainstorming ways to implement our wiki-based documentation with social media, and this is a great idea. Would love to hear more.
Hi Adam,
I’m sure Sarah Maddox, the writer who created the documentation, could give you some additional suggestions on how to implement it. Her blog: http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/
Hi Robert — I like the idea. Would you mind if I referenced your blog in a tweet? Neil Perlin
That does sound like a great idea. What was the result? Did it reduce support costs? Or was that not the goal?
I couldn’t tell from the slides (posted on the ffeathers site).
Hi Neil,
No problem. Go ahead and reference my blog.
Thanks for asking.
Hi Kevin,
Sarah didn’t mention if support calls dropped. I’d follow up with her via her web site.
Thanks for your post.