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