The Culture of Writing Podcast

Tables are often essential in technical documentation but you need to know when and how to use them for users, accessibility, and for the AI agents consuming your content. Join Martha Morgan from Salesforce for actionable tips on making your tables work, and that you're using them correctly.

In technical writing, does clear writing, good grammar, and coherent structure matter if the audience is AI agents? Content Strategist from Salesforce, Lori Adams, asked. In fact, she and Gemini had a long and fascinating conversation about it. The answers, along with Lori's sharp analysis might surprise you.

Yuvi will ease your organization's anxiety if you're migrating from Git and GitHub from another version control system. He demonstrates the basic mechanics in under ten minutes.

Part of a special series that focuses on the important role of content designers in creating great product experiences. Learn how content designers from Salesforce use both qualitative and quantitative research to understand users and make content strategies. These episodes also highlight the importance of cross-functional collaboration and communication, demonstrating Content Design's strategic value through research and teamwork.

Part of a special series that focuses on the important role of content designers in creating great product experiences. Learn how content designers from Salesforce use both qualitative and quantitative research to understand users and make content strategies. These episodes also highlight the importance of cross-functional collaboration and communication, demonstrating Content Design's strategic value through research and teamwork.

Part of a special series that focuses on the important role of content designers in creating great product experiences. Learn how content designers from Salesforce use both qualitative and quantitative research to understand users and make content strategies. These episodes also highlight the importance of cross-functional collaboration and communication, demonstrating Content Design's strategic value through research and teamwork.

Think a typewriter is obsolete for creators? Samartha Vashishtha from Salesforce demonstrates how he harnesses typewriters, alongside Slack and AI, to refine, focus, and channel his creative drive.

Discover how Samartha Vashishtha with Salesforce slashed video script creation time by 70% using a curated blend of off-the-shelf AI tools. Samartha's techniques highlight that AI is about exploration, offering you similar time-saving potential.

Consistent writing helps both users and AI find answers. Martha Morgan from Salesforce shares 8 pro tips for formatting steps in your tasks and procedures.

Esperanza Rodriguez, from Salesforce, shares how she broadcasts time-saving innovations that the Salesforce Content Experience (CX) Team is making with AI.

Join Samartha Vashishtha, Director, Content Experience for Salesforce for a brisk (9 minute) summary of how he and his team used AI to tackle a new documentation project. First, they used AI to digest and summarize hundreds of pages of dense documentation that they were unfamiliar with. AI helped them find the WHY (why is this important to me, the user? Why should I care?). Last, they leveraged AI to quickly create concise, finished documentation that has since been published.

Plain writing makes your documentation far more effective–easier to understand, easier to localize, and easier for AI agents to digest so they can return more relevant answers. Learn simple, actionable tips from two experts in the field, and have some fun along the way.

Your readers are giving you a valuable gift: their time. Make sure your technical writing makes the most of it. Don't hesitate to leverage AI for assistance—clear and concise writing enables users to quickly find and understand the information they need.

Prepare to be amazed as technical architect Ian Varley shows how he uses AI to enhance his workflows, increasing efficiency and the quality of his work. Some of his discoveries are counterintuitive and surprising. But they’re easy—and you’ll have a lot of fun using them.

Successful technical documentation is clear, accurate, concise, helpful, and focused on real-world user goals. Almost as important is understanding what not to write. Think of it as opportunity cost. Time and effort spent writing unnecessary or duplicative content could be spent more productively on the many things we do need to document. Our 23-minute podcast discusses how you, the writer, should look at your requests and why you have the right and obligation to ask if you think the work may be unnecessary.

What does the future of technical documentation look like with AI? Could an AI talking to another AI perform complex cloud software integrations without admin assistance? Or provide solutions to multi-faceted technical challenges? How might this redefine the very meaning of work?

When you've got thousands of help articles, they can't all be up to date. How do you know which to focus on for revision and consolidation? Stephen Munoz and his team have an answer. His "self-help" group uses AI to analyze customer feedback and zero in on the content that helps customers resolve their issues most effectively.

And relates story-telling to technical documentation.

Jon Varese, Content Experience VP of Salesforce Industries and Revenue Cloud, discusses why it's important to craft writing based on people and what they need from our documentation. More information on the Dickens Project talked about in this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qoilrlmw4U&t=0s

Learn how the head of the Salesforce Content Experience video team views the progression of AI in video and in helping us become more efficient in making our end products, including video and technical documentation, better. It's a fascinating conversation with Charles Scheinblum that you won't want to miss. This is Part Four in a special series.

Join six writers and our head of video production as we investigate and experiment with using AI to improve existing (and new) technical content. Learn what succeeded and what didn’t—which can be just as informative. Spoiler: In the end, humans matter. A lot. This is Part Three in a special series. Featured in this episode are Cristina Pullen and Scarlet Peachy.

Join six writers and our head of video production as we investigate and experiment with using AI to improve existing (and new) technical content. Learn what succeeded and what didn’t—which can be just as informative. Spoiler: In the end, humans matter. A lot. This is Part Two in a special series. Featured in this episode are Kate Bowerman, Stephanie Shaw, and Emily Diffenderfer.

Join six writers and our head of video production on journey of discovery on using AI to improve existing (and new) technical content. Learn what succeeded and what didn’t—which can be just as informative. Spoiler: In the end, humans matter. A lot. (This is part one in a series of four special podcasts.)

You may think of accessibility as just another box to check on the road to product launch. But it has real impact on folks with visual, hearing, and other disabilities. Amy Wood, deaf since early childhood, and Nick Gray, who is visually impaired, share their experiences—and how our attention to accessibility helps them navigate not just Salesforce, but the world around us.

It's said that everyone needs an editor. Well, what if you had a bunch of editors? Join Christopher (C'pher) Myers as he reunited with his Salesforce Service Cloud to reflect on the process they created for collaborative editing. You'll learn some best practices, and see why these writers believe many heads are better than one when it comes to refining your content.

Effective titles and short descriptions make your content more useful and discoverable (SEO). Focus on real-world user goals and not abstract concepts, features, the UI (user interface), or internal jargon  provides your readers with the info they need when they need it. Join content and editorial strategists from Salesforce and pick up useful tips on how you can upscale the content you're producing for your users.

Learn how Greg Bennett, Director, User Interface / User Experience at Salesforce views AI as a 'booster rocket' for technical content creators. Greg talks passionately about the big picture -- the ways he thinks AI will help each of us in the tech content creation business. It's still early days and the AI scene evolves daily, if not hourly. Join us as we all learn and grow together.

As a tech writer, your audience is much larger and more important than you might think. Join three engaging writers from the Salesforce Content Experience (CX) team who came to tech writing from various sales and customer success roles and learn how your impact as a writer reaches far beyond the amazing customers who use your documentation daily.  As a tech writer, you are mission critical to sales and support and, in addition, you influence the buying decisions of prospects.