In this solo episode, I share my latest content updates progress and reflect on my takeaways from Mat Patterson’s interview (S3:E42). I also share how my content in the Support KB has evolved over time and reflect on treating emails and other content forms as an invitation into someone’s space.

—

Due to some medical things in the last month, I haven’t made significant progress on the article editor updates, but I have been keeping up with new releases. The Okta SCIM integration I mentioned in episode 41 was officially approved and released by Okta. 🎉We also released updates to our glossary term importer and URL checker tool, so I updated docs on those. And I finished part one of my productive procrastination task, replacing all hard-coded references to our HTML templates with references to a single code file for each.

I reflect on my interview with Mat Patterson. I love the central idea behind his business, More Human Content, that if you're a small company, you shouldn't act like a large company in the language you use. Keep the rough edges and the playfulness as long as you can. I believe this is great advice both for small and medium businesses but also for tech writers ourselves, both in the documentation we write and the way we present our services. One of the surprising takeaways for me from this episode was recognizing how much my own sense of appropriate content and voice in the Support Knowledge Base has evolved over time. In the early years, I avoided best practice or prescriptive guidance. But as I got to know our customer base better, I learned that this was guidance they really wanted from us, and so I’ve gradually incorporated more of it, just as Mat’s own newsletter writing experience evolved.

My other lingering takeaway from this conversation was Mat’s idea that when someone receives your newsletter, they’re inviting you into their inbox, very much like inviting you into their home. I love the idea of treating some forms of content and interactions like an invitation or like you’re a guest in someone’s space. I don’t write our newsletters anymore, but it has me thinking about at least reviewing some of my longform content–like best practice guidelines–to make sure it feels I'm properly respecting my readers and treating the topics and their attention with dignity and respect.

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

—

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback: