Working with an engineering team

Earlier this week I spoke at a Write the Docs meetup in San Francisco. The topic was “Working with Engineers”. Kael Oisinson, a support engineer at Atlassian, gave a talk too. It was great meeting him and all the Write the Docs SF folks.

This was my first ever Write the Docs meetup. What a warm, enthusiastic group of people! There were 50 to 60 attendees (see the meetup description and attendee list). Most were technical writers, with a scattering of software engineers and support engineers.

Kael Oisinson, a support engineer at Atlassian, gave an engaging speech about the life of a support engineer who discovers the value of creating documentation as a way of scaling access to information. It was really good to hear a point of view that’s related to, but not exactly the same as, a technical writer’s. We should do that more often.

My presentation is available on SlideShare: Working with an Engineering Team. Here’s an outline of what we discussed:

Sit with the team
Grok teamwork and audience
Play with the team
Adopt the team’s methodologies
Get to know the tools
Gather and share information

The group was lively and fun, with plenty of interaction and questions. Thanks to Tom Johnson, Laura Stewart, and the Write the Docs SF organisers, for a great evening.