Some Notes on My Interview with Adobe

Recently, I was interviewed by RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe. I met RJ over Twitter and have communicated with him about a variety of topics, including Adobe Community Help, which is the subject of the interview. You can read the full interview here:

Interview with Peggy Harvey - The Future of Documentation: Adobe Community Help

RJ conducted the interview using Adobe Buzzword through Acrobat.com, a collaboration tool that allowed us to edit the same document without having to send files back and forth through e-mail. Since we're in different time zones we took turns editing the document, notifying each other through Twitter's direct messaging when the document was ready for the other person to respond. In this way we completed the interview over a few weeks without any disruptions to our regular schedules.

I really enjoyed doing the interview and thinking more about how user assistance is changing in the 21st century. As I finish up my master's program and get ready to re-enter the workforce as a technical communicator, I'll be looking for opportunities where I can contribute toward the type of collaboration Adobe encourages, merging user-generated content with official product documentation to create a more unified user experience.

UPDATE: If you'd like to learn more about how companies incorporate user-generated content you can read my original paper, Enabling User Interactivity with Documentation, now shared on Acrobat.com.