Crowd sourcing content is a concept that seems foreign to traditional technical communication. But it is becoming increasingly common for everyone from developers to product managers to contribute content. What happens when you open the doors to your documentation and let non-technical writers craft content? Do standards go out the window? It turns out that you can build excellent documentation via crowd sourcing. But there are some rules for the road. Learn how engineering a culture of content champions, both inside and outside your organization, can help create a wealth of valuable documentation for your users.

1. BECKY TODD | SR. DEV EXPERIENCE WRITER | ATLASSIAN | @BECKATODD
Engineering Content
Champions

2. Technical writer?
Technical editor?
IDENTITY CRISIS

3. Editing involves creative
skills, human relations, and a
precise set of methods.
Wikipedia

4. High value
Solves specific problems,
highlights gaps
Hidden
Not discoverable, unscalable,
limits self-help
Content in the wild

5. Curate content,
even though their
main role is not
technical writing
CONTENT CHAMPIONS

6. CONTENT CHAMPIONS
• Support engineers
• Developers
• Product managers
• Product designers
• Community members

7. Crowdsourcing

8. Community of equal peers
working toward a common
outcome… with no one
participant benefiting more
than any other.
Leverages the marginal
interest of a group of people
to complete a task that
otherwise could not be
economically completed.
CROWDSOURCING OPEN SOURCING
http://www.computerworlduk.com/it-business/crowdsource-is-not-open-source-3569582/

9. Crowdsourcing content
A content development approach that
relies on occasional authors volunteering
content

10. Unlocks knowledge
Leverages insight from experts in different roles,
both inside and outside the organization
Minimizes bottlenecks
More authors means fewer roadblocks to
publishing quickly
Solves specific issues
Addresses edge cases or specific use cases not
typically documented
Advantages of
crowdsourcing

11. Unlocks knowledge
Leverages insight from experts in different roles,
both inside and outside the organization
Minimizes bottlenecks
More authors means fewer roadblocks to
publishing quickly
Solves specific issues
Addresses edge cases or specific use cases not
typically documented
Advantages of
crowdsourcing

12. Unlocks knowledge
Leverages insight from experts in different roles,
both inside and outside the organization
Minimizes bottlenecks
More authors means fewer roadblocks to
publishing quickly
Solves specific issues
Addresses edge cases or specific use cases not
typically documented
Advantages of
crowdsourcing

13. Distributes responsibility
Ownership becomes less clear and can lead to
confusion about roles
Poorly written
Content is more difficult to understand, poorly
formatted, etc.
Quantity is not quality
Too much content can actually be detrimental to
the user experience
Challenges of
crowdsourcing

14. Distributes responsibility
Ownership becomes less clear and can lead to
confusion about roles
Poorly written
Content is more difficult to understand, poorly
formatted, etc.
Quantity is not quality
Too much content can actually be detrimental to
the user experience
Challenges of
crowdsourcing

15. Distributes responsibility
Ownership becomes less clear and can lead to
confusion about roles
Poorly written
Content is more difficult to understand, poorly
formatted, etc.
Quantity is not quality
Too much content can actually be detrimental to
the user experience
Challenges of
crowdsourcing

16. 90% of the people on any community
project remain quiet lurkers; 9%
contribute moderately, and 1%
contribute actively.
Tom Johnson, I’d Rather Be Writing

18. Lay a foundation

19. CONTENT MANAGEMENT
• Communicate clear goals and outcomes
• Create well-defined and simple processes
• Get buy in from teams, stakeholders
• Ensure editorial oversight happens

20. Writing toolkit
Instructions
How to setup and publish
content, step-by-step
Style guides
Brand, voice, and usage
guidelines
Best practices
When to write, writing
checklists, templates

21. contribute mergeapprove publish
authorreviewerapprover
DEV
TW
PO
Simple workflow

22. Content management
Training
In-person training sessions
and self-help resources
Planning
Content strategy sessions,
release and feature planning
Feedback
Comment-based review and
copy editing

23. Putting it all together

24. Reinforce the
role of content in
the process
DOCS-FIRST CULTURE

25. “Good documentation
shows respect.
DANIELE PROCIDA, CONTENT MANAGER, DJANGO

27. Brief case study

28. Support engineers built a KB from
scratch and launched it in a little
under a quarter.
CROWDSOURCED KNOWLEDGE BASE

29. High number of support
cases and no shared
knowledge
PROBLEM

30. Build knowledge base and
integrate it with product help
SOLUTION

31. Plan
Defined requirements, information architecture,
templates, and content processes
Train
Developed team-specific training materials
adapted from the writing toolkit
Build
Crowdsourced the content creation

32. 1
2
3
Continued growth
300 + articles published. The team has good and bad quarters but continues to have
a steady flow of up-to-date articles.
Workflow and tooling updates
The team identified additional use cases and has migrated content to a new tool
that better supports their workflow.
Cross-departmental collaboration
The knowledge base maintenance process has led to a need for strong cross-
department collaboration between Engineering and Support.
15 MONTHS LATER: SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES

33. Empower your
champions, and
reward their
successes
IN CLOSING

34. Questions

35. Thank you!
BECKY TODD | SR. DEV EXPERIENCE WRITER | ATLASSIAN | @BECKATODD

36. • "Documentation Guide." Write the Docs (2017) http://www.writethedocs.org/guide/
• Editing definition, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing
• Johnson, Tom. “Crowdsourcing docs with docs-as-code tools--same result as with wikis?” I’d Rather Be
Writing (8 March2017). http://idratherbewriting.com/2017/03/08/crowdsourcing-docs-with-github-docs-
as-code-tools-same-as-wikis/
• Phipps, Simon. “Crowdsource Is Not Open Source.” Computerworld UK. (30 November 2010). http://
www.computerworlduk.com/it-business/crowdsource-is-not-open-source-3569582/
• Procida, Daniele. Documentation-driven development–lessons learned from the Django Project. (PyCon
2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQSR1UpUdFQ&feature=youtu.be
• Software license definitions, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license
REFERENCES

37. • Django documentation (2017) https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/internals/contributing/writing-
documentation/
• Rackspace Developer Docs (2017) https://developer.rackspace.com/docs/private-cloud/rpc/v14/rpc-
swift/
EXAMPLES