About me #

This page summarizes the interests and philosophies that I apply to writing and my work in general.

📝 My approach to writing #

I aim for my writing to be as inclusive and understandable as possible. To that end, I typically adhere to the following principles and practices:

My style guide of choice is Microsoft Manual of Style. On this website, I enforce the Microsoft style and the preceding principles with Vale and its plugin for alex.

🧠 My approach to knowledge management #

When I approach a problem related to knowledge management (KM), I like to examine it from 4 points of view. Click the boxes below to learn more about each.

Information architecture ↕

Information architecture (IA) is a discipline focused on finding the best ways to guide users to the assets they need. It’s a multi-faceted domain that bears many similarities to user experience (UX) design.

Among the topics encompassed by IA are:

Organizational structures and schemas
Controlled vocabularies and tagging systems
Navigation and labeling
Search systems

I apply the concepts of IA to my work on documentation knowledge bases and corporate intranets, whether I’m building something from nothing or tidying up someone else’s mess.

Approaching KM problems from an IA perspective helps me consider:

How to organize information
How to label or title resources in a way that best describes the content
How to use navigation systems to guide users to information
How to optimize the content for any applicable search systems
If a tagging system could improve the findability of information

My IA reference of choice is Information Architecture, 4th Edition also known as the O’Reilly “polar bear book.” For a high-level introduction, I recommend How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert, cheekily referenced earlier.

Content strategy ↕

Content strategy is another multi-faceted discipline with applications in a broad range of industries and contexts. Digital.gov defines it as “planning, creating, delivering, and governing content that meets the needs of its users and achieves an organization’s goals.”

In my work, I apply the principles of content strategy when developing standards and style guides for the content of knowledge bases and similar resources.

Approaching KM problems from a content strategy perspective helps me consider how the low-level content of a knowledge resource can best serve the intended user.

Example: Adhering to the standards of writing for the web can serve knowledge base users by providing them with scannable, readable, and digestible content.

Processes ↕

Processes

Approaching knowledge management from a process perspective prompts me to think about when I or a user need to create, update, or deprecate knowledge. In some ways, it overlaps with content strategy in that it asks when one might need to plan/create/deliver/govern knowledge.

I have experience collaborating with program managers and other leaders to define KM processes for large, distributed organizations.

Enablement ↕

Enablement

I use “enablement” as an umbrella term for practices and deliverables that help users adopt the resources, processes, and governance I create.

Considering enablement when designing a knowledge management solution helps me maintain focus on end users' present needs and abilities. For example, if I develop a tagging system for a corporate intranet, but find that it requires a full two-day workshop for users to understand, I might conclude that the system isn’t matching users' present abilities and needs to change.

Templates are a key enablement mechanism in any environment where users create information themselves, for example a wiki or corporate intranet. By establishing templates and getting users to adopt them, a knowledge manager can “instantiate” certain standards or conventions by default in every piece of user-created content.