Full Transcript for S8E2 Content Is The Strategy with Lindsey Rix

presentation was about was kind of encouraging. 00:04:34.959 --> 00:04:39.680 I don't know that we can say no AI and it's not here. 00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:41.439 Or I feel like it's any tool. 00:04:41.439 --> 00:04:44.160 Like I thought we've used a lot of different tools over the years. 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:46.560 This one just happens to be particularly transformative. 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:54.399 So it did benefit that in my career, I've always been willing to try whatever tool was given to us. 00:04:54.399 --> 00:04:59.040 So hopefully that gives you the background on like what pushed me into it. 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:08.079 And the best part about it was just I also haven't had a chance to network with some more people on, you know, on LinkedIn and through work just by sharing our story. 00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:14.800 And we were in a meeting, and I thought this is my best time to invite her, and she would be accountable and say yes. 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:16.639 So I put her in the hot seat there. 00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:18.160 My apologies for that. 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:23.360 But this was right after she had done the presentation and she gave us her another walkthrough about it. 00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:25.920 And that's when I said, Lindsey, would you please? 00:05:25.920 --> 00:05:28.639 But it took me some courage to ask you. 00:05:29.278 --> 00:05:30.480 Wasn't that a good moment though? 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:33.360 Because I would have said yes previously, right? 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:38.240 But there's always this moment where you're like, Can I, should I, would I? 00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:38.639 Yeah. 00:05:38.639 --> 00:05:41.838 And there's always people intimidating us. 00:05:41.838 --> 00:05:43.360 Like, I'm aware of that. 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:51.360 Like sometimes uh the way my brain works, people tell me, like, I can do some things quicker, but then you start to realize everybody has different strengths. 00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:55.199 And for someone like me, I still get intimidated by other people. 00:05:55.199 --> 00:06:01.838 Like, I always remember reading Tom Johnson's API documentation, and I was like, oh my lord, like I have a lot of thinking to do. 00:06:01.838 --> 00:06:02.879 I wish I had more time. 00:06:02.879 --> 00:06:04.079 I really want to dig into this. 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:06.079 And it's like, I never feel like we have enough time. 00:06:06.079 --> 00:06:14.639 And now I laugh because like I see like when you lean into some of the things that become available, like AI, I'm like, oh, cool. 00:06:14.639 --> 00:06:17.600 Now I can do a little bit more of what he can do. 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:19.199 But everybody has that person, Zohra. 00:06:19.199 --> 00:06:36.319 So I'm glad you finally asked because it models a lot of things that I've done in my career was not always waiting to ask permission, it is going ahead and trying something or asking or doing it, because a lot of times people can't always picture or understand what you want to do. 00:06:36.319 --> 00:06:42.399 And only when you just try it or give them an example, then they see the potential more. 00:06:42.399 --> 00:06:45.439 So maybe that moment was good for both of us. 00:06:45.439 --> 00:06:50.959 You saw the presentation and thought, I've got a topic, you know, we can talk about, you know. 00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:52.480 Absolutely. You're right. 00:06:52.480 --> 00:06:55.519 I think the universe kind of brought that moment together for us, which is great. 00:06:55.519 --> 00:06:58.560 But I mean, I think in your intro, you kind of gave us that insight. 00:06:58.560 --> 00:07:08.240 I want to kind of dive into your presentation because I want to capitalize on what you you didn't just say content strategy, you said content is the strategy. 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:16.879 I want you to kind of give us a little bit of background about your presentation and why you came up with that title, because that title was very intriguing to me. 00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:17.920 Why not content strategy? 00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:19.360 Why is content is the strategy? 00:07:20.079 --> 00:07:23.680 Honestly, it started with when Joe Welinske reached out. 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:31.600 I said, Well, I'd be happy to, but you know, and here are the things that have been really what we've been working on and thinking on for the last year. 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:36.000 And he was very open and supportive of like, what do you want to talk about? 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:40.480 And I went back to my team and I said, Well, how do I choose what to make the talk about? 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:47.519 And my our wonderful coworker, Ellyn Hassell, said, Is there a way you can bring it together and find that thread? 00:07:47.519 --> 00:07:54.800 And so it was an example of when I used AI, like I gave it all the things we've been thinking about and like how would I frame it? 00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:56.399 And it evolved from there. 00:07:56.399 --> 00:08:02.639 But what it did show is there's a lot of lessons about what we do and what we deliver. 00:08:02.639 --> 00:08:05.199 And how do I shift that mindset? 00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:10.000 How do we show writers how to be indispensable in the AI era? 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:10.959 What do you bring? 00:08:10.959 --> 00:08:34.080 You know, so one pillar of it was the things that we have naturally become experts at over the years through education, through experience, being that person who understands language, who develops standards, the way we write instructions, all those, you know, understanding in our audience, those when I looked at comparing that to like, well, and we had early success with AI. 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:35.759 And I'm like, well, why did we have that? 00:08:35.759 --> 00:08:41.360 And a lot of it turns out is a lot of things we do well align very much with prompt engineering. 00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:46.960 And I think we were having early success because we

were prompting better. 00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:54.158 Like we came with that natural way to kind of ask questions, and we naturally know how to take a problem and go step by step. 00:08:54.158 --> 00:08:55.678 It's the same thing we tell our customers. 00:08:55.678 --> 00:08:58.399 And like, are there ways we can transfer that? 00:08:58.399 --> 00:09:10.399 And then also learning like our understanding of language and the nuances and you know, there's more semantic, like with UI techs. It's not you could just pick different words, but understanding the semantic meaning of one word or another. 00:09:10.399 --> 00:09:22.798 And then also what was also inspiring was um I knew a lot of people weren't getting initially success, but what I found what was most impressive to me is we had spent a lot of years working on our strategy. 00:09:22.798 --> 00:09:30.480 And that's things like vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, our style, like what our consistency, right? 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:38.720 And that paired with the same, we had very strong patterns and most of our help, you know, like what we generate, our release notes, our error messages. 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:44.080 And when we fed the AI that our results were immediately better. 00:09:44.080 --> 00:09:48.960 And it really was, you know, it just kind of like it built one thing out of an after another. 00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:51.360 That's really part of what brought that presentation. 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:53.678 And it's like we didn't learn overnight. 00:09:53.678 --> 00:09:56.960 And there was a group of us that really encouraged each other. 00:09:56.960 --> 00:09:58.240 I mean, you were one of them, Zohra. 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:11.038 I really I listened to your project with Liz, and you had a keyword around orchestration, or I would be watching how engineers did it, and I would think to myself, well, what does that look like with our role? 00:10:11.038 --> 00:10:27.840 And really what it brought to every time I brought it back is I thought about, well, what are we doing and how would we try it? And I do feel like we have a lot of encouragement and grace at Blackbaud to try things, to learn, to they want us to use the tools, especially on our team. 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:39.360 Like we have such strong leadership to say, bring your best self, but also be willing to experiment, be willing to say, this is how we think it could improve. 00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:42.558 And there's just so many avenues people can apply themselves. 00:10:42.558 --> 00:10:44.879 So that's what I was really bringing to the presentation. 00:10:44.879 --> 00:10:48.879 And I wanted to show too, it built, it didn't happen overnight. 00:10:48.879 --> 00:10:51.840 Like we built some custom agents and Copilot. 00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:54.000 That's what we had access to first. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:00.558 And at the time I saw developers talking about skills, and I was like, I don't like how would we use that? 00:11:00.558 --> 00:11:08.798 It felt like every week a new term or a new methodology or a new workflow would be like, oh, that's really cool. 00:11:08.798 --> 00:11:09.759 How would I use that? 00:11:09.759 --> 00:11:12.320 Now, some are more obvious than others, you know that, right? 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:24.558 I don't know how you felt about the pace, but a lot for me is the willingness to try things and what happened in that presentation always tied back to is it something that would be helpful for my role? 00:11:24.558 --> 00:11:26.558 Now I think, you know, that's early on. 00:11:26.558 --> 00:11:29.038 Early on, it's like improving our existing processes. 00:11:29.038 --> 00:11:34.879 I think you would also probably say we're now undercovering like new processes or new ways of working. 00:11:34.879 --> 00:11:37.918 And it's scary and intimidating and nerve-wracking. 00:11:37.918 --> 00:11:46.000 And the only way I know through, like when I'm anxious or nervous or I don't feel like I know something, the only way I know through is just try it. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:47.278 Because you always have the opportunity. 00:11:47.278 --> 00:11:59.278 I guess I think one of my favorite things about Git, and I tell that to our team, is like, just go create your branch, go try the thing, and if it does not work, just delete it and no one ever knows. 00:11:59.278 --> 00:12:18.399 Like, I love that we have tools that like help us secretly experiment without customers or peers even knowing, you know, you have to give your that yourself that permission to fail, to not be intimidated with something because the more you try, the more new processes that we are discovering. 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:23.278 So this actually brings me to the tools that I've been wanting to talk about. 00:12:23.278 --> 00:12:32.158 You've always been at the forefront of just diving in and using the developer tools or developer adjacent tools, right? 00:12:32.158 --> 00:12:40.080 Lindsey, what would you have some take on how somebody in that role or in that position should approach experimentation? 00:12:41.519 --> 00:12:42.320 I have a couple ideas. 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:49.278 Like I think there's always opportunities to try to affordably try things outside your work. 00:12:49.278 --> 00:13:01.120 I laugh because I might be of the older crowd, I don't know of your audience, but I was that person in the 90s modifying my MySpace page, you know, or like wanting to play any HTML. 00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:03.918 I think I was a tinker, born tinker, right? 00:13:03.918 --> 00:13:06.879 So yeah, I did maybe have a propensity towards it. 00:13:06.879 --> 00:13:18.879 But along the ways, like I got my master's at Clemson, and in that professional communication program, one of the early things that inspired me in there was like they said, we're not gonna teach you the tool. 00:13:18.879 --> 00:13:23.200 We're gonna give you a project and then you're gonna have to figure out how to do it with a tool.

00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:37.278 And it was kind of a sink or swim crash course, but it was a really good philosophy because it is it really shifted my mindset around don't try to just use the tool, think of what you want to get out of it and see if you can do it. 00:13:37.278 --> 00:13:40.480 And that really kind of helped me through the years. 00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:49.519 So today looks like I didn't initially Blackbaud initially didn't even have Claude, but I wanted to do more agentic coding. 00:13:49.519 --> 00:13:54.798 And I didn't have necessarily early ideas for what I wanted to do that with our work, right? 00:13:54.798 --> 00:13:59.360 Like I always try to start with what I want to achieve and not just, hey, I want to try a tool. 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:11.600 So what that looked like, I just started, I signed up for like one of the lower licenses for Claude Code, and I started building personal apps for myself, and that gave me permission to try. 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:34.879 Like, I don't think I was good initially at some of my prompting, but what allowed me to do was just iterate and learn about like don't give it too many things at once, like layer on the requirements, have the vision of what you want it to look like, or give examples, or didn't even realize I was stumbling upon best practices, like giving a screenshot when you're like, no, you still have it wrong, like please fix it. 00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:36.320 That happened through the years. 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:43.200 So if you don't have access to those tools that you have at work, you can try to find ways to do some of these things outside of work. 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:48.480 My key thing there is start more with what you try want to try to accomplish with GitHub. 00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:58.158 If you wanted to build out, say you wanted more experience building out a personal website, a brand for your portfolio, you could learn about GitHub pages. 00:14:58.158 --> 00:15:05.360 And if you have that goal in mind of what you want to accomplish, it gives you more motivation of like how to learn how to use the tool. 00:15:05.360 --> 00:15:07.440 And not every training is going to be useful. 00:15:07.440 --> 00:15:12.480 You know, I listened a whole bunch through work and all of a sudden I might get like five ideas of things. 00:15:12.480 --> 00:15:16.320 Like I was like, oh, commands, oh, you know, plugins for skills. 00:15:16.320 --> 00:15:18.158 And I was like, okay, let me write that down. 00:15:18.158 --> 00:15:30.879 It was an interesting part I wanted to include in that conference talk is when you're thinking about things you want to learn or try, often you just need to start writing down the ideas or the things you want to do, but don't say, I have to do it right now. 00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:36.960 Just keep a list because you never know when like all of a sudden you're gonna have the idea that meets the tool. 00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:44.000 Like if earlier I learned about plugins, I've been like, cool, I don't I want to just create a plugin, but I'm like, well, what would I put in it? 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:51.600 But now on our team, we started developing so many skills, I can now say to myself, I'd really like to bundle all of our analytics skills into one. 00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:53.038 Like I now have more of a purpose. 00:15:53.038 --> 00:15:55.278 So that's how I think I would inspire people. 00:15:55.278 --> 00:16:00.240 And if you think you might have access at work, but you're nervous, like that's the other angle, right? 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:00.558 Right. 00:16:00.558 --> 00:16:10.080 Is um I would say the best thing to do is to obviously pay attention, like see, you can go to demos, you can see what people are posting in Slack. 00:16:10.080 --> 00:16:17.278 But my favorite thing over the years is just making friendships or just relationships with people at my work. 00:16:17.278 --> 00:16:22.558 So one of the things that early benefited from was having conversations and becoming friends with like my developers. 00:16:22.558 --> 00:16:30.080 And I was always so impressed and so grateful, they would often be willing to like show me how to do something. 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:34.558 And oftentimes, or they would show me things and I was like, I don't know what they're showing me. 00:16:34.558 --> 00:16:35.759 And they would show tricks. 00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:41.840 Like one time I had developers show me this trick of like all this magic stuff that you can do in Visual Studio Code. 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:43.678 And I was like, I'm never gonna find that again. 00:16:43.678 --> 00:16:44.960 That's magical, right? 00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:48.000 But yeah, I mean, and you start off sometimes just faking it. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:54.158 I don't know if you feel this way, but I remember the first person at Blackbaud to teach me get and he's like, do these commands. 00:16:54.158 --> 00:16:59.200 I did those for the longest time, and I was like, I don't know what they mean until I made a mistake. 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:05.118 And then all of a sudden, I didn't want to be the person that was like, holy crap, like, what did I just do? 00:17:05.118 --> 00:17:06.960 So went to Google, you know. 00:17:06.960 --> 00:17:14.798 I think that's a lot of it too, is taking the initiative to like seek out the answers, and that's part of curiosity is that problem solving, right? 00:17:14.798 --> 00:17:17.519 Is like, this is the error I got, how do I fix it? 00:17:17.519 --> 00:17:23.440 And then eventually it led to me be realizing I probably should learn what some of these commands are and what am I what I'm doing. 00:17:23.440 --> 00:17:31.200 And that's I think the way I approach a lot of these tools, just chip away at it, like and also be willing to stop using the tools if they don't bring you value. 00:17:31.920 --> 00:17:34.480 Yeah, it's not to say that you wouldn't have these nuggets before. 00:17:35.358 --> 00:17:39.200

I have always been like a painter's palette, I'm all over the place, Zohra. 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:40.720 There's always things I'm trying to do. 00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:41.358 I don't think so. 00:17:41.358 --> 00:17:44.880 I not not not right now, you are coming together, yeah. 00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:51.358 Now, but like through my career, I'd be like, I'd dabble in this and dabble in that, and I'd sign up for every like side project. 00:17:51.358 --> 00:17:53.838 I didn't know where it was all heading. 00:17:53.838 --> 00:17:56.160 And I always tell people that too. 00:17:56.160 --> 00:18:02.558 If you have the opportunity to say yes and you don't know why it would bring you value, just try it and then you'll store it. 00:18:02.558 --> 00:18:06.318 And then someday you're gonna be like, Oh, remember when you did that random thing? 00:18:06.318 --> 00:18:08.400 Like now that knowledge is valuable. 00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:10.960 So I do try to store those things away. 00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:13.838 Yeah, people worry a lot about that. 00:18:13.838 --> 00:18:16.078 They worry, like, how would I use this tool? 00:18:16.078 --> 00:18:18.798 Or how do I get it to do X, Y, and Z? 00:18:18.798 --> 00:18:23.519 And I always just try to encourage people to come back to like, what problem are you trying to solve? 00:18:23.519 --> 00:18:25.118 What would you like to be able to do? 00:18:25.118 --> 00:18:31.920 And if you have that strongly vision your head, it is so much easier to be like, okay, I'm gonna find how to do that piece. 00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:48.000 It comes together more naturally if you have a strong vision, especially like the more that you get to know what we do in technical writing, the more confident I feel about like all the things I've learned and done with content and content strategy. 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:51.759 I feel like I keep pulling those tools out and just transform them, you know. 00:18:51.759 --> 00:18:53.278 So I'm trying for you, Zohra. 00:18:53.278 --> 00:18:56.480 I'm trying to think about I can do this better, right? 00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:02.240 but then it's like pivoting, you know. 00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:11.440 Yeah, I want us to dive into some of the skills that we have developed to automate our workflows. 00:19:11.440 --> 00:19:15.920 And you have been at the forefront of those, of many of those. 00:19:16.558 --> 00:19:19.859 I like thinking of problems, or pain points, or— 00:19:19.859 --> 00:19:20.359 Exactly. 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:21.960 Tedious tasks, right? 00:19:22.078 --> 00:19:23.838 Yes. What problem can I solve? 00:19:23.838 --> 00:19:29.838 So you know, some of the earlier skills that you developed, once you discovered, oh, what is a skill and what can I do with it? 00:19:29.838 --> 00:19:34.240 How did you go about approaching that problem and solving it? 00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:38.960 Yeah, and it really was the way that I got a lot of team members to try it too. 00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:42.400 I was like, here's a little user, this is how you do it too. 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:48.720 So one of the funny ones I laughed at myself is I think we all feel like we don't have enough time, right? 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:53.200 And I never used to be the person that's like, oh, I'm too good for this task, right? 00:19:53.200 --> 00:20:02.640 Like I used to love the boring work, and I still do if you put music on, but you know, back in the day, we would do things like condition a specific word over and over again manually. 00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:08.240 And I had a moment where I just felt like I didn't have, I had so many asks coming in. 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:13.838 And I had a moment where I was trying to get something, we all know this, trying to get a release note done, right? 00:20:13.838 --> 00:20:16.000 You know, that new feature done right in time. 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:19.759 And I didn't want to forget the variables for localization. 00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:28.720 And I was sitting there, it was past work hours, I was reading the topic, and I really thought to myself, I don't ever want to do this again, right? 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:30.000 So you have a moment. 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:32.318 So that's how it started for me. 00:20:32.318 --> 00:20:37.440 Now I've probably evolved to like how I build skills differently, but that was my moment. 00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:43.680 And so what I did and what I tell other people to do is you don't start by saying, I want a skill. 00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:48.640 What I did instead was use AI to kind of outline what I wanted to accomplish. 00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:58.960 And I really had to shift my mindset, like how I approached it is I think initially when we think of having conversations, you have like one line here or there, right? 00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:03.838 But what I've been learning was try to give it everything I want to accomplish, like all the requirements. 00:21:03.838 --> 00:21:05.038 Who's it for? 00:21:05.038 --> 00:21:06.160 How do I want it to work? 00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:06.720 Any samples. 00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:08.480 I have, you know, give it an example. 00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:14.000 In this case, I told it like where the variable file was, and I wanted to see if it could do it. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:17.598 So I usually start some of my skills, I start by just saying, can you do this? 00:21:17.598 --> 00:21:18.558 I say that in my head. 00:21:18.558 --> 00:21:23.759 And so then I outline it, we have a conversation, I get to the point, you know, go back and forth. 00:21:23.759 --> 00:21:27.118 A lot of times I start in plan mode, then I have it implement. 00:21:27.118 --> 00:21:31.920 And if it works the way I wanted it to, and of course I'm always surprised. 00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:34.400 I'm like, oh wow, look how amazing that was, right? 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:43.759 And I'm like, I really shouldn't be because how advanced it's gotten. But then I say, once you get it to solve your

problem together, at the end, ask it to turn it into a repeatable skill. 00:21:43.759 --> 00:21:49.680 Now every time we laugh because sometimes it's like it'll be very judgmental, be like, that is not a skill, that's a prompt. 00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:51.038 And we're like, I don't care. 00:21:51.038 --> 00:21:52.160 I just want it to be repeatable. 00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:57.440 But that's how we've gotten like we had someone that wanted it, did the same thing. 00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:00.160 We're like, oh, we don't want to manually clean up. 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.240 We were switching all of our proprietary MadCap cross references to hrefs. 00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:06.400 And they had a good idea. 00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:14.000 And it was like started with a conversation, and we wanted to be like, well, we don't want to manually look for everything and fix it. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:19.038 Now there still is some cleanup to do because we want to like embed those links in the sentence. 00:22:19.038 --> 00:22:23.598 But same thing with another coworker came to her in the middle of the night. 00:22:23.598 --> 00:22:32.640 Like, could we have AI evaluate our content and suggest new synonyms and then have it add it to our auto index and synonym file for us? 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:39.200 That was a really fun breakthrough because we were underutilizing them and we knew we wanted our search to be better. 00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:42.640 And that really just that's the spark for me. 00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:55.200 I know other you might think that I create a lot of skills, Zohra, but everything I do is usually like someone just talking to people or seeing them work, they spark my next idea. 00:22:55.200 --> 00:23:00.400 And I think that I learned that just from doing leading analytics on the team. 00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:02.400 There was uh another coworker, Justin Warren. 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:05.440 I have probably led it for most of my 20 years. 00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:09.358 And we felt very underprepared and unsure. 00:23:09.358 --> 00:23:12.240 There's so much to do with analytics and what we can do. 00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:16.480 And we just started back when we were in the office, we would just meet and talk about the data. 00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:19.598 And it just seems like we have these full circle moments. 00:23:19.598 --> 00:23:31.920 You know, I very much look forward to the conversations where we talk about AI or our jobs or our processes, because it's not always AI, it might be AI adjacent or similar tools. 00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:33.759 Like, how would we use them? 00:23:33.759 --> 00:23:36.880 And I just get inspiration from other people. 00:23:36.880 --> 00:23:38.558 I don't know if you feel that way. 00:23:38.558 --> 00:23:45.118 Like I said, you and uh Liz were doing orchestration work, and I thought, like, well, what tools do I have? 00:23:45.118 --> 00:23:47.519 I didn't have access to Copilot Studio at the time. 00:23:47.519 --> 00:23:50.480 But I thought to myself, what can we do well for now? 00:23:50.480 --> 00:24:04.558 And you also have to give yourself permission not to do it perfectly the first time, because I look back now, going, wow, I knew a lot more about creating an agent or a skill, and like I really could have done this a lot better the first time. 00:24:04.558 --> 00:24:10.240 But I probably would have never gotten started if I'd waited to know everything about what we were doing. 00:24:10.240 --> 00:24:13.920 I don't know if you feel that way, but I do answer your question. 00:24:13.920 --> 00:24:30.960 And to be clear, not everything's by choice, you know, like who you work for or you know, what you see happening in the field, sometimes you get pushed into things not by choice, and you're thinking, it can be a reckoning moment where you're like, I really enjoy the way I work. 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:43.358 And I think back to when I first started, I worked with some people, and I noticed that they had gotten really comfortable doing things the way they had always done them, and they were struggling. 00:24:43.358 --> 00:24:55.200 They were struggling to adapt when we wanted to switch from Adobe FrameMaker to MadCap Flare, and that was a struggle, or we wanted to expand what we were doing so that we were more multi-purposeful, and that was a struggle. 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:59.358 And I just really thought to myself, like, your examples can come from both good and bad places. 00:24:59.358 --> 00:25:04.480 And I thought to myself, like, there's gonna always be smarter people joining our team. 00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:07.440 And the one thing I can do is just learn from them. 00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:16.558 There's always like I love, like I love that I always have this philosophy that we each bring our strengths, and there's something I can learn from each person, you know, what people bring on the team. 00:25:16.558 --> 00:25:22.558 Like you have a great learning mindset and you love sharing it, and you love just talking about the field. 00:25:22.558 --> 00:25:24.798 I don't know that I could always say the same. 00:25:24.798 --> 00:25:28.798 Like when I'm at work, I am locked in, Zohra, and I really enjoy it. 00:25:28.798 --> 00:25:32.640 But the moment work is done, I am not thinking about tech comm, right? 00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:36.318 Like I'm like, I have hobbies and I have things I want to do and I want to travel. 00:25:36.318 --> 00:25:39.920 And I need people like you to stay enthusiastic. 00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:43.759 Like you're like, oh, I like what they're doing, right? 00:25:43.759 --> 00:25:46.400 Or wow, they learn some new cool thing. 00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:53.358 And I still like we've had people on the team that are so good at Python and scripting, and I'm like, I still don't know what I'm doing with that. 00:25:53.358 --> 00:26:00.720 But they give me kind of a path forward of no, eventually I figure I will probably age out, right?

00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:02.240 We'll all age out. 00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:10.240 But at that point, I want to grow into like a mentoring, teacher, teaching, managing role when I know it's the right time. 00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:16.798 But for now, I don't know about you, it's been kind of stressful and chaotic, but still engaging. 00:26:16.798 --> 00:26:21.519 As long as you have that mindset, you can easily put yourself in either bucket, right? 00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:24.640 You can say, I know what I know, and I don't want to know anything else. 00:26:24.640 --> 00:26:25.358 I don't know. 00:26:25.358 --> 00:26:34.960 I just never feel like, even though I've become that position at Blackbaud, you know, as one of the lead tech writers, I don't want to take that mindset and be like, I know everything. 00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:36.318 Like, I feel like the opposite. 00:26:36.318 --> 00:26:40.880 The more I learn, the more I know I need there's more to do, there's more to learn. 00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:44.558 And I think that helps is realizing everyone has something to teach you. 00:26:45.039 --> 00:26:50.718 The episode is sponsored by LavaCon, the content strategy conference taking place this October in Charlotte, North Carolina. 00:26:50.718 --> 00:26:57.531 With more than 70 sessions and workshops featuring speakers from companies like Salesforce, TikTok, T-Mobile, and Amazon. 00:26:57.531 --> 00:27:05.481 LavaCon brings together content strategists, documentation leaders, and content professionals to share practical ideas you can apply right away. 00:27:05.481 --> 00:27:12.621 And yes, it's known as the Fun Conference, too, with networking events, therapy dogs, comfort llamas, storytelling, and karaoke. 00:27:12.621 --> 00:27:16.920 Use discount code ITC26 to save $200 on registration. 00:27:17.079 --> 00:27:19.799 Lindsey, you've been so candid with this conversation. 00:27:19.799 --> 00:27:22.679 So I think honest and transparent. 00:27:23.380 --> 00:27:24.500 I want to acknowledge one thing. 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:26.472 You talk about mentoring later. 00:27:26.472 --> 00:27:32.055 I think with what you're doing right now, just sharing your knowledge, you are mentoring people. 00:27:32.055 --> 00:27:32.374 Yeah. 00:27:33.170 --> 00:27:37.474 Well, it is funny too, because I've had a lot of people that are like, oh, I mean, you said it. 00:27:37.474 --> 00:27:38.751 You're like, how do you know so much? 00:27:38.751 --> 00:27:39.548 Or how do you know? 00:27:39.548 --> 00:27:47.281 And I was like, I failed so many times, and people don't realize like when you fail, you have to figure it out, right? 00:27:47.281 --> 00:27:48.717 Like git is a good example. 00:27:48.717 --> 00:27:51.268 There's so much to learn, and like it's so powerful. 00:27:51.268 --> 00:27:54.376 And people are like, How do you know all these git commands? 00:27:54.376 --> 00:28:04.423 And I'm like, Well, I probably have broke everything or did the wrong thing or working out of

the wrong branch, or I need to just get rid of all of it and restore. 00:28:04.423 --> 00:28:08.647 And like the way I learn is like you gotta break things, you gotta fail. 00:28:08.647 --> 00:28:17.576 And I know a lot of times we don't always give, especially in these high-pressure software environments, you don't always have the time you feel like to fail. 00:28:17.576 --> 00:28:19.729 But you don't have to share your failures. 00:28:19.729 --> 00:28:22.917 I don't mind sharing it because it's part of my learning process. 00:28:22.917 --> 00:28:29.454 Like, I think I don't want people to think I'm a pedestal and didn't and made no mistakes and it was easy for me. 00:28:29.454 --> 00:28:31.686 Like, I think that's a big part of it too. 00:28:31.686 --> 00:28:42.132 And I don't maybe it's a different way of looking at it, but we've really gotten a chance to incorporate people from different companies at Blackbaud and bring new people in. 00:28:42.132 --> 00:28:47.553 And gosh, it's been just so refreshing to hear how other people work or how you know, or things they've tried. 00:28:47.553 --> 00:28:49.865 And that's what I think brings people together. 00:28:49.865 --> 00:28:55.525 I am not a very like extroverted, showy person. 00:28:55.525 --> 00:29:03.178 So, but you you were always so gregarious and put yourself out there, and so you're just you're brave in a way that I'm not usually brave. 00:29:03.178 --> 00:29:03.737 Oh gosh. 00:29:03.737 --> 00:29:07.483 Yeah, I got asked a question once and I think they misinterpreted it. 00:29:07.483 --> 00:29:16.252 They're asking, like, I had done an exercise, and I don't think I did as well as I could, but they asked me, like, if I could go back and do it again, what would I do differently? 00:29:16.252 --> 00:29:19.281 And my answer is I wouldn't go back. 00:29:19.281 --> 00:29:28.451 Like, it is more important for me to learn from what I did before and incorporate those lessons or what I didn't do well. 00:29:28.451 --> 00:29:32.117 It's like there's no way we can ever revisit all our mistakes, right? 00:29:32.117 --> 00:29:35.386 But what we can do is say, what would I do better next time? 00:29:35.386 --> 00:29:43.518 And I think that's the point that I missed because I want to show people, especially in our team, that are kind of like they're overwhelmed as I don't want to think I'm not overwhelmed. 00:29:43.518 --> 00:29:51.011 I want people to know that every week there's something new that I'm like, oh boy, like I just feel that pressure and not having enough time. 00:29:51.011 --> 00:29:58.507 And I want them to know that I feel it too, because they might feel the same way and just understand that like we can't go fix the, it can't go change the past. 00:29:58.507 --> 00:30:00.896 Like it would be nice, but maybe not. 00:30:00.896 --> 00:30:08.869 Like maybe it's better that we collect these experiences and this knowledge and this effort, and we try to just do better the next time. 00:30:08.869 --> 00:30:11.740 Like, what would I do next time when I approach this situation? 00:30:11.740 --> 00:30:15.406 I I think that's the way like common sense gets developed. 00:30:15.406 --> 00:30:29.118 It's like I'm just building this, you know, lifelong experiences and I still do really dumb things, or I don't, I'm not maybe always like I try to be empathetic enough or understand people's positions. 00:30:29.118 --> 00:30:32.388 I think one of my early managers helped with that. 00:30:32.388 --> 00:30:37.651 He retired from Black Blood, but what he talked about was trying to look at for what each person's strengths are. 00:30:37.651 --> 00:30:40.680 Because we would always you always get in the habit of like, well, comparing yourself. 00:30:40.680 --> 00:30:41.717 Am I doing enough? 00:30:41.717 --> 00:30:42.751 Am I at that level? 00:30:42.751 --> 00:30:46.181 And I was very uh like achievement oriented. 00:30:46.181 --> 00:30:48.013 I wanted to really earn those promotions. 00:30:48.013 --> 00:30:51.124 And comparison is a thief, right? 00:30:51.124 --> 00:30:57.021 And so what I needed to do instead was learn like what good for me may not be good for them. 00:30:57.021 --> 00:30:58.298 Maybe they bring other strengths. 00:30:58.298 --> 00:31:08.821 And that's really like just a maturation I had to bring to it is just understanding it's not fair in the way you think, you know, like especially if you're like, well, they're a senior and I'm a senior. 00:31:08.821 --> 00:31:17.272 Like, are we doing like, no, you have to figure out what they're doing or bringing, and you also don't even know what their burden or what their work is. 00:31:17.272 --> 00:31:19.184 You don't may not know everything they're doing. 00:31:19.184 --> 00:31:23.411 And I've that's one of the things I've really been trying to work on, especially the mentoring. 00:31:23.411 --> 00:31:30.507 I never knew if I wanted to go into people management, but I do love the coaching and the mentoring. 00:31:30.507 --> 00:31:35.211 And I know everybody wants to keep me as an individual contributor, but I just like both. 00:31:35.211 --> 00:31:37.123 That's where I think the natural shift. 00:31:37.522 --> 00:32:06.221 I hope someday that when I move to a manager position, it could be more of like that mentorship and that growth mindset versus like I'm I'm gonna be selfish and to say that I want you as a manager, as the lead principal, yeah, technical writer, because you bring such amazing, I guess, advances to like you said, you know, you're picking up from ideas that others have shared and and actually going and trying to problem solve that. 00:32:06.221 --> 00:32:11.483 But yes, either way, if you had to become a people manager, I think you would have my vote there as well. 00:32:11.483 --> 00:32:17.462 But I I I'm selfishly going to recommend that you stay the individual contributor because because you are a thought leader. 00:32:18.420 --> 00:32:29.104 I might grow a

little like group of power people who someday people will surpass me and just as tell me, and I'll know that that's the right time. 00:32:29.104 --> 00:32:30.458 Like I will have grown. 00:32:31.336 --> 00:32:35.241 This is a very stereotypical question, and I know we don't have the answer to that. 00:32:35.241 --> 00:32:41.700 But you've been part of this journey over the last few years, and I'm sure you did not anticipate that you would be here today. 00:32:41.819 --> 00:32:51.979 But what's one prediction that you think about AI and technical today, but will be obvious, but will feel obvious in five years? 00:32:52.778 --> 00:32:53.819 I really did think about this. 00:32:53.819 --> 00:32:57.979 You shared that in advance because I really had a chance to think about it. 00:32:57.979 --> 00:33:11.259 And what I really came up with is I think often we think more about how AI will replace what we do, because it can write and we can all be more like, okay, but I'll provide style docs. 00:33:11.259 --> 00:33:15.660 And like we're thinking of ways that it replaces portions of our role or makes our life easier. 00:33:15.660 --> 00:33:35.499 But my bold prediction is if we position our skills, our expertise, our, you know, especially with things like language and communication, I could very much see our role expanding that we'd be able to do much more than we do today, because so much to me of what is strong AI is language. 00:33:35.499 --> 00:33:52.459 You know, you see companies like Anthropic hiring, you know, the people who are creating Claude hiring language and communication experts because I mean, I think we all know there's so much fascination and semantic meaning, and there's so many nuances with our language and how we communicate it. 00:33:52.459 --> 00:33:58.939 And it might be like slang or jargon, and it can have content that sounds perfectly well. 00:33:58.939 --> 00:34:03.900 But I think what becomes interesting is like I think our rule becomes more than a writer. 00:34:03.900 --> 00:34:16.940 I think we take our language skills and we are able to do more, whether it's architecting AI skills or orchestration, or there's a lot we can do with prompt engineering. 00:34:16.940 --> 00:34:24.059 I don't feel like we say enough about how our language and communication skills are a benefit. 00:34:24.059 --> 00:34:28.619 So if I had a prediction, and I don't know what that title will look like. 00:34:28.619 --> 00:34:38.940 I think we've we we know that titles change, but that's my bold prediction is that you could probably find yourself more useful today than you thought you did, especially if we lean into the problem solving. 00:34:38.940 --> 00:34:45.259 Like those are two areas, like one of your questions I was I was thinking about was what are the things people can work on? 00:34:45.259 --> 00:34:49.099 And it's really like the critical thinking and problem solving. 00:34:49.099 --> 00:35:01.019 Because if you like we were talking about all these problems we're trying to solve, is such a differentiator that I think those are like the gateway to like how we expand our skills, like what we're able to do. 00:35:01.019 --> 00:35:03.659 And it does bleed our role in different ways. 00:35:03.659 --> 00:35:12.139 Like, especially I've always, I don't know if you feel this way, it's always been such a benefit that we get to work with so many people across the company in a role. 00:35:12.139 --> 00:35:24.460 You know, obviously customers, they're our forefront, but we work with engineers and product managers and customer success or your support team and marketing, and you just feel like you start collecting information. 00:35:24.460 --> 00:35:37.259 And I think a big part of that is like being able to do really great research and understand having that vision and saying, you know, I actually can do these things that you didn't think I could do because I have this skill set. 00:35:37.259 --> 00:35:42.378 I just think it's a matter of how do we explain all the things that we can do. 00:35:42.378 --> 00:35:49.739 And one of the only ways I know to do it, as you know, is build an example, show that we can do something you didn't think we could do. 00:35:49.739 --> 00:35:51.259 So that's my bold prediction. 00:35:51.259 --> 00:35:59.338 I think because like even I think I told you, I was like, I think we all have that fear, like, will AI replace us? 00:35:59.338 --> 00:36:05.659 And it might replace the version of ourselves that we were two years ago before this kind of landed, right? 00:36:05.659 --> 00:36:07.338 Before this tool became accessible. 00:36:07.338 --> 00:36:10.298 And there will always be money restrictions. 00:36:10.298 --> 00:36:18.778 It can be very expensive, but it might replace that version of myself five years ago, but I might become, I think our role can become, you know, expanded. 00:36:18.778 --> 00:36:21.099 I don't know, do you feel that way at all? 00:36:21.099 --> 00:36:29.818 Like it often, I think we often talk about too much about like, I don't want it to do this, or I don't want it to, I'm worried this part of your role. 00:36:29.818 --> 00:36:33.259 And it might, but I do feel like we are capable of more. 00:36:33.980 --> 00:36:42.460 As you were talking about, I think the the one thing that stood out for me in everything as you were speaking was the version that you were a couple of years ago. 00:36:42.460 --> 00:36:47.500 That version is gonna be replaced, and it has already been replaced, in fact. 00:36:47.500 --> 00:36:48.219 Yeah, yeah. 00:36:48.699 --> 00:37:01.818 Right? Oh my gosh, in some ways I don't mind how I think you and I uh you and I talk about like how things have changed, and I don't think I'll miss the person who the way I used to have to collect information, you know. 00:37:01.818 --> 00:37:09.898 Like I don't mind how I enjoy in conversations with developers, but you know, I don't know, do you ever feel like you're like there's their time

is as valuable as mine? 00:37:09.898 --> 00:37:16.940 I don't want to use too much to like gather information and I want to make sure I'm reviewing the UI and everything I can do. 00:37:16.940 --> 00:37:21.980 And I may not always be comfortable kind of understanding how the code is talking to each other. 00:37:21.980 --> 00:37:27.818 And I enjoy now that my first draft can be collected from the source code. 00:37:27.818 --> 00:37:37.818 I think that's probably the skill I'm most excited about is when we're setting up MCP, having all of our different systems talk to. 00:37:38.139 --> 00:37:42.699 I'm starting to see the Lindsey that I see at work, get it all connected, right? 00:37:43.099 --> 00:37:48.619 And I like, and it obviously depends on all the pieces being, you know, doing its part in place. 00:37:48.619 --> 00:37:51.500 But with AI, I noticed all these pieces are getting a little better. 00:37:51.500 --> 00:38:00.378 Yeah, but it's like, oh, they put some really great outcome or background information and the user story or the feature, like in that ticket about why we're doing the work. 00:38:00.378 --> 00:38:01.818 Cool, grab that, right? 00:38:01.818 --> 00:38:16.059 And then, and this is all within like whether I was using GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code or using Claude and their connectors, and then I go out and I go, hey, here's the pull request, or here's the the source code repo. 00:38:16.059 --> 00:38:17.980 Tell me what changed. 00:38:17.980 --> 00:38:21.338 And honestly, it's like such a relief. 00:38:21.338 --> 00:38:30.219 Like my first relief with AI was thinking, wow, I feel like the content is good, but I don't want to have to use someone else's time to make sure my grammar and punctuation are correct. 00:38:30.219 --> 00:38:32.298 Like we've always had really strong reviewers on the team. 00:38:32.298 --> 00:38:33.898 I'm like, but they're busy too. 00:38:33.898 --> 00:38:40.219 So it started with something minor there was like, wouldn't it be nice if I actually wrote a proper sentence or like grammar? 00:38:40.219 --> 00:38:45.818 I didn't, you know, because I feel like I write more with intuition from all my years of English classes. 00:38:45.818 --> 00:38:49.980 Not always, I mean, we have some people in our team that like they know all the rules. 00:38:49.980 --> 00:38:52.539 They can name them, they can like identify them. 00:38:52.539 --> 00:38:53.418 They're like, boom. 00:38:53.418 --> 00:38:56.059 And I'm like, mmm, that is not my strength. 00:38:56.059 --> 00:38:58.619 Like, you have to recognize what not your strength, right? 00:38:58.619 --> 00:39:01.739 So that was like my first like, ooh, wouldn't it be nice? 00:39:01.739 --> 00:39:13.980 And then now the part I'm most excited about is saying, I can give my dev team, like my product manager and engineers, a first draft that is based on what the source code tells me it's doing. 00:39:13.980 --> 00:39:17.019 Now it still misses a few things or interprets it incorrectly. 00:39:17.019 --> 00:39:19.019 That's where like I come in. 00:39:19.019 --> 00:39:21.099 But man, is it a time saver? 00:39:21.099 --> 00:39:25.739 Especially as you know, I don't always feel confident with like documenting API changes. 00:39:25.739 --> 00:39:29.659 I can look at their PR request and be like, what did we do now with this endpoint? 00:39:29.659 --> 00:39:31.338 And what does this endpoint do? 00:39:31.338 --> 00:39:47.739 And now that could take, and we were making, you know, we're having developers help us with the first draft, and then you gotta, you know, they're busy and you're trying to interpret what they meant, and you're like, that doesn't sound like what we should say, and you're trying to, but now the first thing is have it review that pull request and do the first draft. 00:39:47.739 --> 00:39:52.059 And I'm like, yeah, like those connections feel the confidence, right? 00:39:52.059 --> 00:40:04.139 I think yeah, you just it feels just like we can keep up with the pace because we know that everybody else is being challenged as well with the pace, and they're not gonna stop development for us, you know. 00:40:04.139 --> 00:40:07.739 They're not gonna, you know, if anything, they're being asked to speed things up. 00:40:07.739 --> 00:40:16.298 You know, I know at our company they're asking them to do less manual coding and more agentic coding and you know, developing those specs, those requirements. 00:40:16.298 --> 00:40:18.940 So, how do we fit in there? 00:40:18.940 --> 00:40:20.298 How can we bring that pace? 00:40:20.298 --> 00:40:29.338 And honestly, it's just like, oh wow, I well, I don't know if you feel that way, like, but using like trying to test everything in the UI, you're like, did I conditionally get everything correct? 00:40:29.338 --> 00:40:30.460 Did I do all the scenarios? 00:40:30.460 --> 00:40:36.378 And there's a relief in knowing I have a better starting place, like it really can audit. 00:40:36.378 --> 00:40:40.778 I mean, I started just cloning the repo, right? 00:40:40.778 --> 00:40:45.099 Being like, and then go around in the chat and being like, tell me what you're what you like, just tell me everything. 00:40:45.099 --> 00:40:49.980 And then I'd have to sort through and figure out, like, oh yeah, that's like not something we tell a customer. 00:40:49.980 --> 00:40:57.019 But now, like getting, you know, I'm that's the next phase I want to do is figure out how to make MCP more accessible to the team. 00:40:57.019 --> 00:41:02.539 And it's gonna be a challenge because I feel like the greater these tools get, they can be fussy. 00:41:02.539 --> 00:41:03.980 Have you felt like they're fussy? 00:41:03.980 --> 00:41:04.699 Well, absolutely. 00:41:04.699 --> 00:41:13.659 Yeah, I think I wasted at least an hour today when Claude all of a sudden stopped using my Azure MCP that was working and it didn't tell me why it stopped working. 00:41:13.659 --> 00:41:15.500 And I had to

change all the config again. 00:41:15.500 --> 00:41:17.898 And you're like, How am I gonna teach resiliency? 00:41:17.898 --> 00:41:24.940 That's like my next conflict, my next dilemma is like I do think about some things I feel like are easier to teach our team members. 00:41:24.940 --> 00:41:28.059 Resiliency is hard to teach, you know. 00:41:28.059 --> 00:41:33.980 But it feels like you need that with these tools because once you it can feel resilient and you get it working again. 00:41:33.980 --> 00:41:56.139 Wow, the payoff is nice when you can get these things to each other. So if you don't, then maybe this is an opportunity to bring that to your executives and ask for that access because it can enable you and Yeah, I had I had someone ask me that and they're like, Well, I don't have like we are very lucky to have access to the source code, like the reader. 00:41:56.139 --> 00:41:58.460 And they're like, How do I ask for it? 00:41:58.460 --> 00:42:01.179 And I'm like, Well, part of it is is your company pro AI? 00:42:01.179 --> 00:42:09.418 And if they want you using it, then one of the first things you can just ask for is can we find a way for me to have read-only access? 00:42:09.418 --> 00:42:21.898 I very much respect safety nets, and you're not trying to make you know changes, but a lot of what we do just requires pulling the information from the different sources and then acting on it in our content. 00:42:21.898 --> 00:42:33.579 And that maybe is one of the first ways to have that talk is like working with either an engineer and engineering managers or like who's in charge of it and saying, are there ways we can work it out so I just have read-only access? 00:42:33.579 --> 00:42:37.338 Because look what I'd be able to do to keep up with the pace of engineering. 00:42:37.338 --> 00:42:40.619 And it's not going to solve every time, but there might be other options. 00:42:40.619 --> 00:42:54.139 You know, maybe you could have I've had developers like with our some of our code create uh markdown content that like you know keeps it's something for themselves, but it's also in the code that says this is everything it's doing. 00:42:54.139 --> 00:42:57.980 Well, what if there's a way for them to generate these in a place you do have accessible? 00:42:57.980 --> 00:43:01.898 It's just kind of like every problem is like, well, is there another way to do it? 00:43:01.898 --> 00:43:05.500 In a way that it's not an obstruction or taking a lot of time. 00:43:05.500 --> 00:43:09.739 It's trying to find those ways to be like, listen, I would like to be able to do this. 00:43:09.739 --> 00:43:18.699 And so, yeah, sometimes you do need permission, and you know, like we are very lucky that we are given access to these tools, but the the it's lucky, but it's also like, well, now show me what you can do. 00:43:18.699 --> 00:43:19.898 You know, you have access. 00:43:19.898 --> 00:43:22.059 What are all the things you can do? 00:43:22.059 --> 00:43:24.940 And so it's a blessing and it's a burden. 00:43:24.940 --> 00:43:27.500 Because it can be a burden, that's what we're doing. 00:43:27.500 --> 00:43:37.739 Yeah, maybe you initially can't do something with the source code, but maybe if you showed other ways you're using MCP, like what you could accomplish, what information do you have access to at your work? 00:43:37.739 --> 00:43:39.500 Is there something you could show them? 00:43:39.500 --> 00:43:41.099 Be like, here's what I've done here. 00:43:41.099 --> 00:43:47.980 I would like to do, you know, like can you I do often have success showing a proof of concept, not just an idea. 00:43:47.980 --> 00:43:50.460 A lot of people are very easy to shut down ideas. 00:43:50.460 --> 00:43:52.619 I would set up an MCP connection. 00:43:52.619 --> 00:43:54.539 What does MCP stand for? 00:43:54.539 --> 00:43:56.139 Model Context Protocol. 00:43:56.139 --> 00:43:57.019 Thank you. 00:43:57.019 --> 00:44:00.778 I believe, I think Anthropic came up with the model. 00:44:00.778 --> 00:44:07.019 So like I believe that they were the ones to say we need a standard for how we communicate between systems. 00:44:07.019 --> 00:44:17.980 To me, it's like uh just a different variety of an API because you're making these calls and getting, you know, passing information back and forth is just a different protocol for the information. 00:44:17.980 --> 00:44:18.539 Thanks for explaining that. 00:44:18.539 --> 00:44:34.219 It still uses tokens, it still uses tokens equal, like you know, portions of words and money, but I bounce between almost every AI chat tool that we have, whether it's Microsoft Copilot or GitHub Copilot, Claude, I'll even on my phone do Gemini. 00:44:34.219 --> 00:44:37.500 I don't know something, I ask it. 00:44:37.500 --> 00:44:39.179 So I'd recommend people do that. 00:44:39.179 --> 00:44:42.059 You can ask it to also tell it to you for your role. 00:44:42.059 --> 00:44:44.460 I mean, that's how I learned a lot of these things. 00:44:44.460 --> 00:44:51.579 I was like, like I wanted to know how we might use tools, you know, like there's like different things I was learning in training. 00:44:51.579 --> 00:44:54.619 How we use commands, like give me an example how I would do it. 00:44:54.619 --> 00:44:56.940 And I didn't like all the examples, but it might spark something. 00:44:56.940 --> 00:45:04.619 And the other thing you can do is like if you have something, like we just turned, we were in Visual Studio Code and we initially used GitHub Copilot. 00:45:04.619 --> 00:45:06.460 Now we can turn Claude on there. 00:45:06.460 --> 00:45:08.539 Same thing with uh the Claude desktop. 00:45:08.539 --> 00:45:15.259 You can ask it to create the config for you, or like whatever you're trying to do, be like, it does not hurt to ask. 00:45:15.259 --> 00:45:17.418 Be like, can you do this for me? 00:45:17.418 --> 00:45:19.818 I mean, it could troubleshoot you things too. 00:45:19.818 --> 00:45:27.980

You just have to think about like we were having an issue with a Microsoft product, so you might want to go use Microsoft Copilot to say, how do I fix this? 00:45:27.980 --> 00:45:29.898 Like it was clearly some kind of Windows issue. 00:45:29.898 --> 00:45:35.980 And I'm like, well, this Microsoft Copilot is trained on Microsoft's documentation. 00:45:35.980 --> 00:45:37.500 Maybe they can help us. 00:45:37.500 --> 00:45:40.940 And I think we went through like, don't give up if it first doesn't work. 00:45:40.940 --> 00:45:41.980 That's part of it. 00:45:41.980 --> 00:45:43.500 I will just keep trying. 00:45:43.500 --> 00:45:45.818 And we were laughing about that in a meeting today. 00:45:45.818 --> 00:45:52.059 We're like, you know, sometimes the first suggestion it tells you how to do something, you're like, wow, that is way too complicated. 00:45:52.059 --> 00:45:54.139 Like, I don't feel comfortable doing that. 00:45:54.139 --> 00:45:57.019 So you just go back and say, are there any other ways? 00:45:57.019 --> 00:45:59.099 Like, I don't know how to do that. 00:45:59.099 --> 00:46:05.659 Like, or if it doesn't sound like something like security-wise, like you're like, yeah, I don't think that's the best. 00:46:05.659 --> 00:46:07.818 Like, just try to see if there's another way to do it. 00:46:07.818 --> 00:46:13.418 And every now and then you're like, it gives you an easy way, and you're like, why didn't you suggest that in the first place? 00:46:13.418 --> 00:46:15.500 Like, oh my gosh, that's so much easier. 00:46:15.500 --> 00:46:25.179 Like, I fussed a long time with Azure, and it just came down to Just running az—it was az login in the terminal—and I was all of a sudden authenticated. 00:46:25.179 --> 00:46:30.619 I was like, oh my gosh, that was so much easier than however you were authenticating before with tokens and whatnot. 00:46:30.619 --> 00:46:31.898 I was like, oh please. 00:46:32.539 --> 00:46:33.418 Yeah, that's so true. 00:46:33.418 --> 00:46:39.898 And, you know, use these tools to your advantage, Lindsey, and they're not going to judge which is the beauty. A robot cannot judge. 00:46:40.219 --> 00:46:42.699 I mean, it might judge you, but that's just fake stuff that they programmed. 00:46:43.739 --> 00:46:48.539 So as we wrap this up, do you have any thoughts that you want to share that you may not have? 00:46:49.259 --> 00:46:56.059 There was one thing that I thought about that influenced my career based on one of the questions you uh previously have asked me. 00:46:56.059 --> 00:47:00.139 And it was—what is it?—from Daniel Pink's Drive. 00:47:00.139 --> 00:47:05.338 Early Blackbaud over the years has picked different philosophies to engage or talking about employees. 00:47:05.338 --> 00:47:18.460 And I was like, out of all the things, one thing really stuck me with you is his, which is a fully engaged person once you meet all their basic needs and financial needs, needs autonomy, mastery, and purpose. 00:47:18.460 --> 00:47:23.579 And so those things stuck with me because obviously I have the purpose. 00:47:23.579 --> 00:47:35.898 A lot of it has to do, it is the customers, like they make it so easy because what we do, like helping nonprofits, anything we help them, I feel like the impact compounds, but it's always been the people I work with. 00:47:35.898 --> 00:47:40.460 Like they help give me purpose and excitement, and I just enjoy working with them. 00:47:40.460 --> 00:47:49.099 But the other thing that drives me is like, yeah, I want to feel like I have autonomy to make decisions and do my best work. 00:47:49.099 --> 00:47:54.619 And then that mastery piece, and a lot of mastery, it constantly shifts. 00:47:54.619 --> 00:47:58.940 So it pushes me, like that was part of what happened a year ago. 00:47:58.940 --> 00:48:09.579 That shift was like I went from feeling like I had mastered, you know, a lot of portions of my work, and then all of a sudden you find out I'm being reset like everyone else, and that's okay. 00:48:09.579 --> 00:48:21.579 But what's driving me to try things is like I just want to feel like I, you know, not like we can have control, but you want to feel like you're proud and you understand what you do and how to do it. 00:48:21.579 --> 00:48:23.179 And I think that drives me. 00:48:23.179 --> 00:48:28.940 So you might have to find for me, it was autonomy, mastery, and purpose, but you might have to find your thing. 00:48:28.940 --> 00:48:36.139 And those are the people too that I think have done well, you know, that I've worked with is those people that figure out those things, you know. 00:48:36.139 --> 00:48:43.898 And I think some people they worry about I've I've worked with people that worry that they might think differently than me, and it, you know, like they may not be right. 00:48:43.898 --> 00:49:00.298 And I said, and and every time I try to say, that's actually when you talked about diversity, the diversity of thought and background and and everything you bring really makes what we do more valuable, and like you learn is that that's what I get out of it. 00:49:00.298 --> 00:49:03.259 So that's probably why I'm still in technical writing. 00:49:03.259 --> 00:49:05.179 It was not sold to me this way. 00:49:05.179 --> 00:49:06.940 I thought it was gonna be really boring. 00:49:06.940 --> 00:49:09.338 I thought we were just gonna be writing user guides. 00:49:09.338 --> 00:49:11.898 It has never been that, like it was at first. 00:49:11.898 --> 00:49:20.778 I will say, Zohra, I think I fell asleep in one of my first days because they gave me like a 500-page user guide and told me to read every page and edit it. 00:49:20.778 --> 00:49:23.418 I thought I'm not gonna make it, like, I can't do that. 00:49:23.418 --> 00:49:24.378 You know, like so. 00:49:24.378 --> 00:49:29.099 I mean, you're in a quiet office, it's cool, and you're like, oh, I can't do this. 00:49:29.099 --> 00:49:37.019 But it's been the most surprising thing is

that change, that always that desire to so yeah, I I want to do half a million other things. 00:49:37.019 --> 00:49:45.739 I think like you, I would be really good being independently wealthy reading all day and hanging out with cats and dogs and all that and traveling. 00:49:45.739 --> 00:49:52.378 But it's like, yeah, I still need to work and give back and have purpose and probably pay my bills. 00:49:52.378 --> 00:49:55.418 So it's like, well, what can I do well at? 00:49:55.418 --> 00:50:00.219 Because I think that's the hardest decision when you're at earlier in your career, you're like, is this really what I do? 00:50:00.219 --> 00:50:02.139 And it's like, well, you could really pick anything, right? 00:50:02.139 --> 00:50:03.338 I don't know if you felt that way. 00:50:03.338 --> 00:50:11.338 I felt like I could have gone into dozens of different fields, but you gotta pick one, something something that pays for the lifestyle you want to have, right? 00:50:11.338 --> 00:50:21.579 And you just have to figure out for me, it was autonomy, mastery, and purpose for but for someone else, what it gets you through the day, and variety gets me through the day. 00:50:21.579 --> 00:50:22.778 I don't know that's true for everyone. 00:50:22.778 --> 00:50:23.338 I don't know. 00:50:23.338 --> 00:50:25.739 Are you that way or do you prefer consistency? 00:50:25.739 --> 00:50:27.338 Probably the same thing. 00:50:27.338 --> 00:50:47.898 I don't think part of I mean my part of what I stayed was for the people, but also I have learned too, you have to find the workplace that matches the kind of enthusiasm we bring to the role because I do often hear from peers in the field, and I I think to myself, like I saw, I don't remember who did the poll on LinkedIn. 00:50:47.898 --> 00:50:50.219 They're like, what's your most frequent tool that you use? 00:50:50.219 --> 00:50:54.699 And people were still saying Microsoft Word, Zohra, and I thought, I absolutely cannot. 00:50:54.699 --> 00:50:59.338 I don't think I could work in a place where like my primary tools word. 00:50:59.338 --> 00:51:03.418 And it just goes to show you, but that might be for someone else, right? 00:51:03.418 --> 00:51:03.818 Yes. 00:51:03.818 --> 00:51:07.099 But you have to find if you're unhappy, and it's hard. 00:51:07.099 --> 00:51:16.539 The it's not a great time to find different jobs, but if you're open, try to find a place that matches the kind of energy you bring and does the work that you enjoy. 00:51:16.539 --> 00:51:23.579 So, you know, we're the kind of work that our company does makes it easier because you know, what we're doing. 00:51:23.579 --> 00:51:29.980 And you have to find, I mean, I've heard people talk about the stress of other industries, and I think some people could thrive, like healthcare. 00:51:29.980 --> 00:51:36.219 Remember someone saying, you know, how very specific and technical, and you have to be 100% accurate. 00:51:36.219 --> 00:51:40.059 And I thought to myself, I don't think I'm the person to thrive in that environment. 00:51:40.059 --> 00:51:46.139 But I know there's other people that are so detailed and technical, and they thrive on that. 00:51:46.139 --> 00:51:50.460 So really, and that was always one of them, I used to love giving talks to college students. 00:51:50.460 --> 00:51:56.460 And I was trying to tell them what is great about this field is you can find technical writing in a variety of companies. 00:51:56.460 --> 00:52:07.659 And it's easier if you find a company that does the kind of work you like, you know, like for me, it's obviously I enjoy software and I enjoy the kind of customers we have. 00:52:07.659 --> 00:52:20.858 But for others, healthcare, like if you love science and medicine, but you're like, oh, I don't want to spend the money to become a doctor, and I'm really good at communicating, that might be your avenue, you know, like trying to figure out where we fit. 00:52:20.858 --> 00:52:21.898 Where we fit. 00:52:21.898 --> 00:52:29.418 Yeah, and just yeah, and giving, you know, I feel like I told you, I feel lucky that I didn't have to switch jobs a bunch. 00:52:29.418 --> 00:52:34.139 I looked every now and then just to see if there was something that struck my fancy. 00:52:34.139 --> 00:52:36.298 We all go through that's the other thing. 00:52:36.298 --> 00:52:41.099 I think everybody thinks that once you're a high performer, you're a high performer, right, Zohra? 00:52:41.099 --> 00:52:44.778 But everybody has roller coasters in a calendar year. 00:52:44.778 --> 00:52:52.139 You get low motivation or you're just drained, and you have to give yourself permission to kind of have lows and highs. 00:52:52.139 --> 00:52:55.579 And I think you'll see that cycle in your career as well. 00:52:55.579 --> 00:52:58.460 Because sometimes you're thinking, I really want a new challenge. 00:52:58.460 --> 00:52:59.980 I want to see what that's out there. 00:52:59.980 --> 00:53:01.898 And sometimes it is the right move. 00:53:01.898 --> 00:53:06.378 And other times you're thinking, I don't know, the one I've got is pretty great. 00:53:06.378 --> 00:53:08.298 Obviously, I feel that way so far. 00:53:08.298 --> 00:53:10.219 I don't know what the next 10 years will bring. 00:53:10.219 --> 00:53:19.898 I think there's some colleagues we have in the field that probably thought they were bringing that to their company, and their company decided they didn't want them and they're kind of like forced to change. 00:53:19.898 --> 00:53:25.818 And I hope for each one of them they find that next company that feels the same way they do. 00:53:25.818 --> 00:53:42.778 And it might take some trying, but I do want people newer to the field that are thinking about it is if your situation's not great, or you know, I've had some not so great managers before Black Bot, and it's like, well, don't put up with it, you know, if you can, you know, it's it's much easier to get a new job while you have one,

right? 00:53:42.778 --> 00:53:53.898 So, but know what you're worth and what if you want a company to match your energy, your your team to manage your energy, if you don't think it's the right fit, you have to give yourself permission to like be open to that, right? 00:53:53.898 --> 00:54:00.699 Yeah, I think I have enjoyed, I hope you have too, enjoyed the flexibility we have. 00:54:00.699 --> 00:54:08.219 Like I have my to-do list and my projects, and as long as I'm getting done, I get them done in the order that I I want to get them done. 00:54:08.219 --> 00:54:08.619 Absolutely. 00:54:08.619 --> 00:54:09.259 Yeah. 00:54:09.259 --> 00:54:12.858 And I yeah, and I think everybody needs to find what works for you, right? 00:54:12.858 --> 00:54:16.940 I mean, how have you felt about if you've been at Blackbaud six of your 20 years? 00:54:16.940 --> 00:54:20.139 Has there been one particular thing you enjoy about? 00:54:20.139 --> 00:54:28.858 I had different like jobs and a little bit, you know, before Blackbaud, but I've only been a full-time technical writer here. 00:54:28.858 --> 00:54:31.898 But you still bring those things, those lessons, right? 00:54:31.898 --> 00:54:42.778 And I feel like we should brag about Denise Kadilak a little bit because I can't talk about my career without having someone like her model for someone like me. 00:54:42.778 --> 00:54:52.699 She was always so impressive and still is, and just the way that she approaches work and you know, the way that she has been so technical. 00:54:52.699 --> 00:54:58.059 And, you know, she I remember her trying to explain DITA to us and how we might use it. 00:54:58.059 --> 00:55:07.898 And I was like, I don't know, like, but the fact that you know, like she just had that, you know, modeled that curiosity and so intelligent, absolutely so positive. 00:55:07.898 --> 00:55:18.139 And when she got the opportunity to lead our team, I don't know, it just it was like we could have been nervous about the future when you have change, but I couldn't, I don't know about you. 00:55:18.139 --> 00:55:23.980 I just can't count myself luckier because every time I'm like, oh, I gonna meet with Denise, how's it gonna go? 00:55:23.980 --> 00:55:26.378 And she's just so positive and encouraging. 00:55:26.378 --> 00:55:30.460 And you think to yourself, wow, like I don't know what next year is gonna bring. 00:55:30.460 --> 00:55:41.099 But if you have people in your corner or people inspire you, people who model the behavior, like that's why I never initially thought I would switch from an individual contributor to managing people. 00:55:41.099 --> 00:55:49.980 But seeing what she's done, I'm like, there's so much inspiration there because now she compounds everything she's done by how she leads us. 00:55:49.980 --> 00:55:50.378 Right. 00:55:50.378 --> 00:55:51.579 Gosh, what a blessing. 00:55:51.579 --> 00:55:54.619 And that's what I I don't know. 00:55:54.619 --> 00:55:56.539 I can't gush enough about our team. 00:55:56.539 --> 00:56:07.099 Like, and there's times that you just you can't bring 100% of yourself. But I have such a group of people, some of them I have worked with for the whole 20 years. 00:56:07.099 --> 00:56:09.099 I don't think everybody gets that. 00:56:09.099 --> 00:56:14.539 But even the people who come and go, most of them have left such a good impact on me. 00:56:14.539 --> 00:56:19.980 Like, we just lost someone that like someone else out some other else snatched her away. 00:56:20.619 --> 00:56:26.378 I just learned so much from her time with our who you're talking about, and I am heartbroken about that, honestly. 00:56:27.259 --> 00:56:28.940 But you you realize what do they say? 00:56:28.940 --> 00:56:35.659 There's a theory that there's like a train, and people come into your life and they're with you on that train for those stops, and then they leave. 00:56:35.659 --> 00:56:41.579 And there's always a reason, but I try to focus instead on being lucky and like what I learned in that time. 00:56:41.579 --> 00:56:44.858 And I think sometimes we focus, you know. 00:56:44.858 --> 00:56:56.940 Yes, I try to focus my lessons and my learnings on the work and becoming more valuable and more experienced and understanding how to do things, but I think it always, I don't know about you, so it always comes back to the people. 00:56:57.338 --> 00:56:58.378 Like it does, absolutely. 00:56:58.378 --> 00:57:07.818 I think it's always the people because the person that you're talking about, for me, it's almost like a personal loss because I've learned so much from her. 00:57:07.818 --> 00:57:09.898 And this is my way of saying thanks. 00:57:09.898 --> 00:57:12.619 I wish I could name her, but I'm sure she would not approve of it. 00:57:12.619 --> 00:57:14.940 She wouldn't, yeah, she would hate it. 00:57:14.940 --> 00:57:32.298 But I'm definitely going to tell her privately to hopefully listen to this episode because because the impact that she's left on us on our team is tremendous, and it's it is always the people, and that's what has made me stay at this company because it's the people and the positive culture that we have. 00:57:33.179 --> 00:57:45.418 A lot can happen within your greater company, things you like or don't like, and it it's always this cycle, but our little bubble, our little team our little team, our little tribe has really looked out for each other, and that's that is what I value. 00:57:45.418 --> 00:57:51.579 Like the person that just I'm so proud and excited for her next opportunity, of course. 00:57:51.579 --> 00:57:54.699 But I don't think they always know what an impact they have. 00:57:54.699 --> 00:58:01.739 And sometimes you don't realize you, you know, I did try to say something before she left, but you just realize like you want to be able to share. 00:58:01.739 --> 00:58:07.179 And it's that's how I feel about like I haven't got a chance to work closely with every single person in our team.

00:58:07.179 --> 00:58:18.778 Not yet, you know, you things ebb and flow, but that's I think maybe like you said, there's so much you can learn from other people if you, you know, open yourself up to it and see how they do things. 00:58:18.778 --> 00:58:26.139 And this person, when they joined the team, they just I don't know, it's just so fun to they thought so different for me, right? 00:58:26.139 --> 00:58:30.858 And I could say that true for everyone, but this person in particular is like, I was just fascinated. 00:58:30.858 --> 00:58:39.579 Maybe that helps like some of my background and my undergrad with psychology, but oh gosh, I think I'm just fascinated by people. 00:58:39.579 --> 00:58:50.619 So yeah, anything that keeps it interesting and like people like that that come and go, you're like, oh, I'm so I instead try to reframe it from the loss to what I gain. 00:58:50.619 --> 00:58:56.460 Like, how lucky am I to have learned whatever that is from that person while I got to work with them? 00:58:56.460 --> 00:59:01.659 And personalities can clash with other, you know, with different people on the team. 00:59:01.659 --> 00:59:06.219 But it if you can try to figure out like what are you meant to learn from them? 00:59:06.219 --> 00:59:08.219 And sometimes it's like what not to do. 00:59:08.219 --> 00:59:11.659 I've had people like that in my life, including family members. 00:59:11.659 --> 00:59:16.460 You're like, oh, I don't that seems scary, or I don't like that, right? 00:59:16.460 --> 00:59:20.219 So you can learn both, you know, what not to do and what to do. 00:59:20.219 --> 00:59:31.980 But gosh, maybe that's the best part about being a technical writer is even though I'm an introvert and I love going off and tinkering in my brain, I almost love just being an observer and just learning or listening. 00:59:31.980 --> 00:59:38.539 And because I don't think we often retrospect on our careers and what we're learning and what excites us. 00:59:38.539 --> 00:59:51.818 And you know, if anybody wants to like chat more, Zohra, you know, I love connecting on LinkedIn or however you want to reach, you know, if you you know see me at a conference, I think I'll have to do more of them. 00:59:51.818 --> 00:59:53.179 Um I think you should. 00:59:53.179 --> 00:59:54.298 Keep going. 00:59:54.298 --> 00:59:56.059 I'm rooting for you. 00:59:56.059 --> 00:59:59.818 Thank you for the encouragement and thank you for inviting me on your podcast. 00:59:59.818 --> 01:00:07.418 I really enjoyed kind of thinking about like what we're doing and I don't know, trying to be encouraging when things can feel very discouraging. 01:00:07.418 --> 01:00:19.099 Like I think we often hear, especially in our field, we're like we might hear some more of like we of course we want to share like the fears and the negative things, but it's like, well, how do we get through it? 01:00:19.099 --> 01:00:23.980 And I don't want to just sit and be afraid and wait for the change to happen. 01:00:23.980 --> 01:00:26.378 I at least want to be prepared. 01:00:26.378 --> 01:00:33.019 Like, and if for some reason it's not at my current company, I want to be prepared for wherever it takes me next. 01:00:33.019 --> 01:00:39.259 And I just I thought, heck, out of anything, I'll just make more connections with people where we'll talk, you know. 01:00:40.059 --> 01:00:42.219 All of the above, you know, there isn't right or wrong. 01:00:42.858 --> 01:00:50.699 Yeah. I had a little caffeine to make sure my synapses were firing, but really, I think I'm excited, even though neither of us are spring chickens. 01:00:50.699 --> 01:00:53.099 Uh, I'm excited to see what you do next. 01:00:53.099 --> 01:01:01.099 Like, that's like part of this whole experiment, too, is like you you and I talked, and this is how I think it I'm like, okay, what is Zohra gonna do next? 01:01:01.099 --> 01:01:03.898 Or what is someone else gonna do next? 01:01:03.898 --> 01:01:06.940 Yes, and thank you, Zohra, for making that invitation. 01:01:06.940 --> 01:01:11.418 Maybe in another five years we'll regroup about whatever amazing things. 01:01:11.418 --> 01:01:13.659 Yeah, there's always some adventure. 01:01:13.659 --> 01:01:20.539 There's gonna be highs and lows, but I look forward to where we go next and I appreciate uh the chance to talk to you about it. 01:01:21.099 --> 01:01:21.418 Thanks, Lindsey.