Knowledge Management
2023, Dutchie Unified Help Center – Our company had five Zendesk Guide help centers (one for each brand), working in concert with support and IT, I planned and built out a customer portal where product administrators can access technical support and documentation for Dutchie’s entire product line.
2022, Wikimedia Developer Portal – Starting in 2020, the Developer Advocacy team worked on an organizational strategy to surface key technical documents to volunteers and developers. We sought to understand the challenges of finding and maintaining docs, identify key docs, and investigate ways to improve workflows around documentation. One outcome was to build a central and single entry point (“developer portal”) for Wikimedia developers.
Technical Writing
2020, Update and improve PAWS documentation – Planned and managed an effort to organize and improve the technical documentation for Wikimedia’s hosted Jupyter Notebooks service, PAWS. The documentation was audited, centralized, and improved for accuracy. The collection includes both on Wiki documentation and the creation of a number of Jupyter notebooks to help guide users with the service: Get started with PAWS, Using Pywikibot with PAWS
2018 – 2019, Update and improve Toolforge and Cloud VPS Technical Documentation – A multiphase project to update and improve documentation related to the Toolforge and Cloud VPS services at Wikimedia.
Technical Editing
2019 – 2022, The Wikimedia Technical Blog – project managed the Wikimedia Technical Blog from conception to launch. Defined editorial guidelines. Administer and edit blog posts. You can follow the editorial process on the Wikimedia Technical Blog Posts Phabricator board.
Collaborative copyediting
Writing is often a team effort. Sarah works with individuals and teams to help them write and edit copy and ensure a cohesive style and voice.
2018, Design Style Guide – Wikimedia Design team members created original copy. Sarah revised and copyedited to create a cohesive style and voice.
2018, Wikimedia Research Team Research team created original copy. Sarah revised and copyedited to create a cohesive style and voice.
2019, Characterizing Wikimedia Reader Behavior Worked with author to make copy more accessible and to readable for the intended audience.
Technical Storytelling
Wikimedia and Outreachy: Technical internships are bridging the free and open source inclusion gap
Wikimedia Czech Republic hosts hackathon to improve Wikimedia’s software
Partnerships make it possible: Behind our role in Google Code-in 2018
Presentations, Workshops, and Webinars
Fall 2019, Documenting Wikimedia Technical Projects a technical talk that to share information about the field of technical writing, ways to gain skills and contribute through open source projects, and updates about ongoing Wikimedia projects.
Fall 2019, Wikimedia Outreach Programs for Technical Contributors, This talk and facilitated workshop covers the essential outreach programs (Outreachy, Google Summer of Code, Google Code-in, and Season of Docs) that Wikimedia participates in each year.
Spring 2021, Portland Write the Docs, Beyond metrics: Using maturity models to develop a docs strategy
Spring 2021, MediaWiki Hackathon 2021, Technical Documentation Q&A
Technical Events and Speakers Series
Speaker Series
2019 – Ongoing, Organize and host a monthly Technical Talks series for members of the Wikimedia and open source software community to present their work and learnings with each other.
Spring 2021, Moderator, Audrey Tang in Conversation with Toby Negrin
MediaWiki Developer Summit
An annual meeting of community developers to discuss MediaWiki and other technologies supporting the Wikimedia Movement.
Winter 2016, MediaWiki Developer Summit 2016 — Organizing Team
Winter 2017, MediaWiki Developer Summit 2017 — Organizing Team
Winter 2018, MediaWiki Developer Summit 2018 — Organizing Team
WikiCite Movement
WikiCite is an initiative to create a bibliographic database based on Wikidata. Several tools and strategies exist to make WikiCite happen. The goals of WikiCite include improvement of citations in Wikimedia projects and an open, collaborative repository of bibliographic data for innovative applications.
Spring 2016, WikiCite Berlin 2016 — Organizing Team
Spring 2017, WikiCite Vienna 2017 — Organizing Team | WikiCite Vienna 2017 Report to Funder (co-author)
Fall 2018, WikiCite Berkeley 2018 — Organizing Team | WikiCite Berkeley 2018 Report to Funder (co-author)
WikiConference North America
Fall 2019, Wikiconference North America — Panelist Wikimedia Outreach programs for technical contributors, Workshop facilitator Understanding the technical challenges of small wikis in North America
Mentorship and Outreach
Spring 2018, partnered with graduate student technical writers to evaluate open source technical documentation and provide recommendations for improvement: Writing for Social and Online Communities, In collaboration with Boise State University,
Spring 2018, Outreachy Round 17– (Mentoring) Outreachy provides internships to work in free and open source software (FOSS). 2018’s intern worked to improve documentation of the MediaWiki action API.
Spring 2018, Write the Docs Portland — Writing day Plan and participated in a full day write-a-thon with the primary aim of introducing professional technical writers to open source documentation projects.
Spring 2018, Techtonica Career Week — Technical Writer Career talk Presentation to program participants about careers in technical writing and communication.
Summer 2018, Hosted an Open Documentation for Open Organizations to bring together individuals who are interested in free and open source software to discuss community best practices for technical documentation. Slides
Spring 2019, Write the Docs Portland — Writing day Planned and participated in a full day write-a-thon with the primary aim of introducing professional technical writers to open source documentation projects.
Summer/Fall 2019, Google Season of the Docs — (Mentoring) Work with program intern to improve resources for volunteer technical writers on Wikimedia technical projects.
Summer/Fall 2020, Google Season of the Docs — (Mentoring) Work with program intern to improve resources for volunteer technical writers on Wikimedia technical projects.
Spring 2021, Techtonica Career Week — Technical Writer Career talk Presentation to program participants about careers in technical writing and communication.
Spring 2021, Outreachy Round 22–(Mentoring) – Learn more about this experience from the participant.
Fall 2021, Outreachy Round 23 — (Mentoring)
Research and Strategy
Maturity Model for MediaWiki Documentation – An organizational model for improving Wikimedia’s technical documentation.
Improving API Technical documentation – User Research – Part of the MediaWiki Action API improvement project
Scholarship
Conference on College Composition & Communication
2005, San Francisco, Paper (PDF): Opening Pathways of Expression: Creating Access to Writing through the Integration of Composition and Creative Writing Pedagogies
2006, Chicago, Panel: Bringing Down the Wall of Tradition (PDF): Building Coalitions of Learning Through the Collaboration of Composition and Creative Writing
Memberships
Society for Technical Communication – Member
Wikimedia Friends of the Docs – A special interest group formed to discuss and implement improvements to documentation and volunteer/community participation in technical writing across Wikimedia projects.
Sarah R. Rodlund | Technical Writer 