Publications, Podcasts, & Videos
Adventures in Tech (formerly, Content Strategy Adventures)
Hannah's Medium publication exploring the intersection of technical writing, content strategy, and UX content design and how they fit into software product development.
Articles
The Importance of Inclusive Language in Learning and Training Content
Thought leadership piece for Inkling.
Keep it Simple to Communicate with Clarity
Upsize Minnesota, June 2007
DITA: Know What You're Getting Into
Tech Comm Manager, February 2012
Are you ready for DITA? Although it's not a new topic, it's one that companies should consider each time they evaluate their documentation strategy.
Proving Worth: What Technical Communication Managers Must Do to Prove the Value of Their Deliverables
Tech Comm Manager, May 2007
Enhancing the Perceived Value of Your Communication Department in Hard Times
Intercom Magazine, July 2009
Giving and Receiving Feedback
Tech Comm Manager, September 2006
Technical Communicator Blog
An older blog (circa 2016) exploring mid-career topics in technical writing.
Conference Talks
2021 Lavacon Content Strategy Conference
Technical communicators are uniquely-positioned user journey experts. You’re probably already doing UX, marketing, product management, and more in your current job. Learn which duties align with which roles to find common ground with others in those roles. Learn how you can be more marketable (or even pivot your career) by understanding which transferable skills you have and which you need to build.
In this session attendees learned:
How the work they do as technical communicators transfers to UX, marketing, product management and more
What each of these disciplines is, how they think, and how to learn more about them
What skills they have and can build to improve their work, bridge the gaps between these roles, and pivot their careers, if desired, to one of these areas
Nail the Job Search with a Stellar Resume
Apr 9, 2021
Talk given to a cohort at Conversa.ai on how to make an impactful resume.
2020 Lavacon Content Strategy Conference
As a technical writer and content strategist who has started doc departments at startups twice (and made some big mistakes!), I've learned what writers can do to be successful and what not to do. First, before you start the job, clarify your role. Then, build your credibility by becoming a product expert, building relationships, understanding the culture, and producing quality work. Second, you'll need to consider business and user needs, existing content, releases, and future plans to create high quality, scalable processes, and publications. Finally, I identify potential challenges and pitfalls that can occur and how to handle them.
By the end of this talk, attendees will:
Understand the unique challenges of starting doc departments in startups and small companies.
Understand pitfalls to avoid when starting a doc department (based on my experience) and strategies to deal with common challenges.
Have a list of Actionable strategies for success they can use to start a content strategy department at a startup or small company.
Starting a Content Strategy Department: Lessons Learned
Inkling Illuminate Conference: Multiple
October 2023
Presented several talks on content and content strategy for Inkling annual customer conference, Illuminate.
How to create forms with Inkling
How we reorganized content at Abercrombie & Fitch
Microlearning content creation with Orange Theory Fitness
Content Strategy Insights Podcast Interview
Hannah Kirk: Connecting Technical Writing and Content Strategy – Episode 70
Hannah Kirk has great ideas about how technical writing and content strategy can support each other.
She’s not a typical tech writer. She loves and appreciates technical documentation and enjoys practicing it. But she has always been more interested in strategy. And she has always spent a lot of time thinking about how content is organized.
Hannah and I talked about:
#BlackLivesMatter
her background in enterprise technical writing
her transition to identifying as a content strategist
the history of technical writing
the benefits of component-ized content, especially compared to old-fashioned documents and publications
the shift in the role of tech writers form being publication formatters to folks more focused on writing
topic-based authoring and DITA and Flare and Oxygen and similar tools
how she’s not a “typical” technical writer
the four times she has been the sole technical writer/content strategist in an organization
a confusing juncture in her career when she went to Silicon Valley and found that they weren’t at the cutting edge of technical documentation 🙂
tools for technical writers – from Microsoft Word, to Framemaker, XMetal, Oxygen, Markdown, DITA, DocBook, and more
the benefits of Markdown in tech-savvy organizations like startups
the importance for technical writers of having a few more technical skills than other content strategists
how she engages engineers and other sometimes-hard-to-engage folks in conversation
her message to the content strategy profession: Don’t overlook technical writers as an ally in your work, and likewise her desire to learn from content strategists
Content Content Podcast Interview
Fluffy experience with Hannah Kirk – Content Content podcast
Hannah Kirk (@pinkhairedCS), the Pink-haired Content Strategist, talks to Ed Marsh about conference experiences, how academia compares to Silicon Valley, how kids interact with technology, and reminds Ed how old he is.
Mentioned during this episode: