Even after years of experience designing, developing, implementing, and leading content strategy and operations projects for multinational enterprises, governmental agencies, startups, and individuals, she is still wildly curious about new technology. There’s always a way to do things better, faster, smarter. Melanie earned a reputation for her passion-filled approach to building global teams that deliver beyond their capacity, deepen their professional mastery, and thrive in an environment of high expectations and tight deadlines. She now guides clients of her own concierge-level content strategy and operations consultancy, Dragonfly Diva Docs, LLC.

Tech Stack Lift-and-Shift: A Tag-Team Approach to Success with Limited Resources

Co-presented with: Isabella Adornato

Your small documentation team needs to adopt or replace a Component Content Delivery Platform (CCMS) or Content Delivery Platform (CDP)? Working against the clock for an absolute (or arbitrary!) launch deadline while holding the line on your regular product doc releases? This case study shows how one organization successfully met an unanticipated need to replace their CDP while completing a planned replacement of their CCMS and continuing to meet their release obligations by embedding the tool vendor and a consultant in their small documentation team.

In this workshop, attendees will learn to:

• Review and revise your content value proposition for your organization and customers
• Create a content competence council that enables you to play to your strengths
• Design, develop, and deliver your technology implementation on time and to great effect
• Streamline and document content operations processes underpinned by your new tools
• Communicate your progress and celebrate your successes
• Build before and after metrics to strengthen your credibility for future projects

Train Generative AI Bots to Rock Your Docs (How I Learned to Stop Falling Behind and Love the Bot)

“How will I ever find enough to keep these hordes of writers occupied?” asked no Technical Documentation Manager ever.

“How am I supposed to do more with less, and keep doing it well (enough)?!” is our familiar refrain.

It’s certainly not a new question, but there are definitely some new answers! Like the advent of word processors and Desktop Publishing in the 80s, HTML-based help authoring tools and DITA/XML structured authoring in the 90s, cell phones and social media platforms in the 00s, and responsive design and headless CMS in the 10s, we’re leaning into Artificial Intelligence to work smarter rather than harder in the 20s.

In this workshop, attendees will learn:

Nope, we won’t talk about how to use generative AI to write more efficiently or elegantly. Instead, we’ll look at how to augment existing technical writing LLMs with data models for specific niche writing tasks that are time-consuming but low-return. With pertinent prompts, you’ll be able to hand over mundane writing tasks to new team members–Earl Error Messages, Aaron API References, and Rhonda Release Notes–and free up your few real writers to focus on the expertise machines can’t emulate.