[SF] Building a Culture of Collaboration (Twitch HQ)

Building a Culture of Collaboration
presented/led by Freda Salatino

It's hard to get people to work together.

In business as in life, people will work together if someone else organizes it, but they still think of it as performing their own narrow role as a cog in the larger machine. If their effort is time-boxed by a sprint they have little incentive to step outside their box to work with a different specialty to aid some nebulous "greater good" unless the corporate culture encourages it.

Nowhere is this more true than in technical writing, where the old model of passive technical writer, toiling alone and crying over late reviews, is currently being replaced by something just as inaccurate: the coding documenter: a programmer who embeds doc with the code.

Neither of these models has ever produced good documentation.

Both models ignore the fact that writing good documentation that tells users what they need to know to succeed, is really a collaboration. It requires input from a product advocate, a builder, and a customer advocate. (Read: a Product Manager, a Technical Writer, and the Developer.)

In Documentation-As-Collaboration, many hands, many specialties, combine to build the finished product. Each contributor is crucial, and ALL must work in coordination. True collaboration is not a tug-of-war; it's a barn-raising.

How do you overcome old stereotypes of what doc and technical writing is, and create a culture where Product Management, Technical Writers, and Developers ALL think that doc is their job? There are as many answers as there are business cultures.

Freda Salatino will describe her 30+ year pursuit of documentation-as-collaboration as a hardware writer, software writer, and writing manager in Silicon Valley. She will then open the discussion to the audience.

Because even this presentation is a collaboration.

PRESENTER: Freda Salatino

Freda Salatino has been a technical communicator for over 30 years. She has avoided specializing in a particular type of content or audience, preferring to remain content-agnostic.

Her technical experience includes projects in data science, web/multimedia applications, SQL/relational databases, network communications, and tech ops. Her management experience includes stints at Borland, XSoft, Informix, E.piphany, and Oracle – where she was one of the founding members of Oracle’s Documentation Architecture Review Board.

Related career digressions run the gamut from teaching at the UC-Berkeley Extension's technical writing program to editing scientific journal articles to writing advertising copy on New York’s Madison Avenue.

She is currently Lead Technical Writer at Renovo Motors.

AGENDA:

Dinner, Networking, and Announcements: 6:00 - 7:00
Presentation: 7:00 - 8:00
Networking and Socializing: 8:00 - 8:30

FOOD & DRINK:

Will be provided. Vegetarian and gluten-free options will be available.

VENUE DETAILS:

• The event will be held on the 2nd floor of the building in the all-purpose room. The event will be recorded. The area is wheelchair-accessible.

• Please provide your real first and last names in your profile or by messaging the organizer. Twitch security has asked us for the attendee list. If we have you listed in advance, you'll get in faster.

• Building Access - Building access is controlled on the first floor, by building security. Please bring ID. There will be a Twitch employee there to sign you in.

• Public Transit - Easy! Twitch is closest to Montgomery BART/MUNI station, and CalTrain is a short bus ride.

• Car Parking - There are several local garages.

TWITCH IS HIRING! https://jobs.lever.co/twitch

CODE OF CONDUCT:

We're an inclusive, caring group. Please take a moment to read the Write the Docs Code of Conduct: http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/.