Takeaways from LavaCon 2019

I had a blast at my first LavaCon content strategy conference this week in Portland, Oregon. I wasn't sure what to expect, but was blown away by the utility and relevance of the presentations, the new offerings of the exhibitors, and the friendliness of the people. (The conference food was incredible, too.)

As a documentation writer, I went to improve my understanding of the content strategy and technical writing fields. I learned a lot about how to improve my own day-to-day writing, but also how to work toward a better system for everyone involved with documentation. I'd like to share some of the recurring themes I noticed from the talks I attended and the conversations I had.

Everything's about the user experience.

It's not a new idea, but empathy for your users should drive every word you write - and empathy involves letting go of your own conceptions. Your users don't care about how far in advance your content is planned, how organized it is, or how well you worked in your cross-functional team. That's all you. What they care about is: Can I find what I'm looking for? Do I understand what you're telling me? Can I get back to work now?

Keep one unified voice, but change your tone.

Attending Susan Blue and Jasmine Probst's talk on the content strategy approach at Facebook was an eye-opener for me because of their separation and definition of voice and tone (and the post-conference workshop with Morgan Quinn emphasized the same thing).

You, personally, have one voice, but you'll talk to everyone you meet in every different situation in a unique tone. That tone is a derivative of your overall voice, based on the person you're speaking to and the situation you're speaking in.

Empathetic communication is all about understanding those three conditions and adjusting your tone appropriately. The same is true when you're writing for people who use your product! Being mindful of your overall voice and your tone in each situation can establish trust with the user and chart the right course as they go along.

Make it easy on your SMEs.

This was a recurring theme in my discussions with vendors and various presentations. It's critical to involve subject matter experts early and often in your content creation process. Getting all members of my team to frequently contribute, review, and correct what I'm writing is essential to its accuracy and relevance. Chip Gettinger of SDL gave a valuable talk about this: Each team member has different goals and approaches, and we have to meet each of them where they are. That means you need to centralize your review process.

The software you use to work with your SMEs can make or break your efficiency. People who aren't professional tech writers do not want to learn DITA or struggle through your CMS. At the same time, you don't want to deal with their messy Word docs or SharePoint comments. (I'm not calling out any of my colleagues, but...)

Setting up a collaborative review environment in a simple, web-based editor is the way to solve both problems. Chip talked about what this system should offer: configurability, metadata and history, easy access and navigation, and commenting that isn't overwhelming (for writers or for SMEs). I was impressed by the number of these solutions being promoted at LavaCon. In the end, your subject matter experts just want a Google Docs-type environment to read your writing and make comments. The less interface they need to learn, the better.

Reuse is the opposite of redundancy.

To be honest, I don't create reuse or conref content very often because it kind of scares me. The idea that any well-meaning writer could come in and change something that effects an unintended chain reaction is worrisome. And more, I'd prefer to think that none of the words I write need to be duplicated elsewhere.

But reuse is essential to ensuring a consistent voice in your documentation. Using the same description of a feature or a product each time it's introduced is a positive thing! Your users may not notice when they see the same words reused, but they will appreciate that you're giving them a consistent idea of what they're using.

Attending Regina Lynn Preciado's workshop on reuse helped me understand that I'm doing reuse and conref wrong. Rather than having piecemeal conrefs between topics, creating special library reuse topics for each product is the way to go. It saves time and effort, saves money on translation, and hopefully averts the risk of conref content inadvertently getting messed with.

Automate where appropriate.

AI is creeping into the content management space, from machine copy editing to personalized search. But it's crucial to be mindful of the boundaries. I appreciated Megan Gilhooly's emphasis on finding the line between helpful and creepy when you're using automation. We love getting automated text reminders from the dentist, but get creeped out when they text us on our birthday. That same line exists when you're designing a chatbot, a reminder system, or a search interface.

It's also important to understand that AI is there to help humans live and work better. Yoel Stribling quoted another strategist to say that AI should empower and scale human processes - not replace them. (As a side note, Yoel's talk about how to optimize your user feedback mechanism was amazing. He packed a full conceptual model and empirical studies into a cohesive plan of action we could all take home.)

I asked a question at the closing panel ("The Future of Content") about whether the rise of AI threatened the jobs of copy editors, reviewers, content managers, and maybe even technical writers themselves. It's something I do worry about. The responses from the panelists were thoughtful, in my opinion - they underlined the importance of humans in all aspects of communication. These tools cropping up are there to help us do our jobs better, but there must always be a human touch to the content we share with our users. That's something unique and special about the art of writing and speaking - it's one of the most truly human things we do.

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If I met you at LavaCon, thanks for your friendliness and your willingness to chat! There is still quite a lot for me to learn about our field, and I really appreciated everyone's willingness to explain things I wasn't familiar with. Looking forward to returning to a future conference!