Vita

Since 1991, I've worked in the technology domain in various roles and for a variety of companies, bridging the gap between people and tech. My specialty is technical documentation; I am an expert in structured authoring (DITA). I have been deeply involved in migrations from unstructured content to DITA; from requirements gathering, to vetting commercial CCMS vendors, to training of the technical writer community. I am also skilled in the essential aspects of content quality and content auditing programs; from defining what constitutes the content quality standards, to documenting the standards, guidelines, and best practices, to instituting a content auditing program. Throughout my career, I have presented over a dozen sessions at multiple industry conferences, from WinWriters in the late 1990s/early 2000s (subsequently renamed to WritersUA), to CIDM's annual Best Practices conference, to the more recent annual ConVEx conference (CIDM's flagship conference). One of my recent presentations was at ConVEx 2022 (the first conference after the pandemic); I presented a session called "Content Efficacy: Quality begins upstream." In May 2023, I presented a migration strategy session at the IXIASOFT user conference in Munich. My career began in operations and IT support roles, where I discovered my passion for technology that helps people. I transitioned to technical support engineering at Verity, Inc., where I realized the critical importance of effective technical documentation. This led me to pursue technical writing at Mentor Graphics, where I spent over 20 years developing expertise in technical content development, usability testing, and team leadership. At Mentor Graphics, I co-founded the Usability Lab for the annual User2User conference, managed technical publications teams, and led the organization-wide evolution from unstructured to DITA structured content development. I developed and delivered training for 80+ technical writers and presented at industry conferences on topics ranging from information typing to DITA adoption strategies. Since 2018, I've led specialty teams focused on information architecture, content quality, and technical content ecosystem management. I've assisted with managing the rollout of enterprise-wide CCMS implementations, trained hundreds of users, developed comprehensive style guides and best practices, and established frameworks for content quality by design. Currently, I lead the Technical Content Ecosystem team at Siemens Digitial Industries Software, supporting a diverse authoring community with standards, training, and strategic guidance. My team is also pioneering research on AI applications in technical documentation.

Social Media

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-leritz-higgins-1bb6654/