S3E6: Embrace Discomfort and Challenge the Status Quo for Advocacy and Visibility with Swapnil Ogale

Inside Tech Comm with Zohra Mutabanna

In this tete-a-tete, Swapnil Ogale shares with us the evolution of technical communication in Australia, especially since the pandemic. Until recently, there was little to no awareness of technical communication at many companies. Swapnil took it upon himself to become the voice of the field, create awareness, and advocate for its adoption and impact on business.
Some interesting questions that we dove into:

• What is the technical communication landscape look like in Australia?
• What is a technical writer advocate?
• How did Swapnil perform his own tech comm retrospective to elevate his role and make it visible?
• What is the Amazon narrative, and how can someone use this narrative before starting a project?
• What are some strategies to raise the profile of a tech writer at a company and beyond?

These are the links I refer to in the episode:

• The Not So Boring Tech Writer where I chanced upon Swapnil's interview
• Amazon narrative
• Template for the tech comm retrospective

If you are looking for openings, Redocly has opportunities. Click here for doc roles.

Guest Bio
Swapnil has over 16 years of technical documentation experience across a range of industries in Australia and globally.
He currently works as a Technical Writer in the Solutions Engineering team at AWS Australia. Prior to this, he was a Technical Writer Advocate at Redocly, pursuing his passion for writing, along with advocating for the docs-as-code approach for product content.
He initiated the Write the Docs community in Australia in 2016 and has been organizing local meetups and the annual national conference.
While he is not traveling, stuck reading any book he can lay his hands on, or trying out new food, he presents at technical meetups and conferences about various things around technical writing.
Audio Engineer - RJ Basilio