Aaron Thayer

Lifelong Oregonian usually in bed by 9pm.

Education

2014-2015
MSc, Professional and Technical Writing; Portland State University (PDX)
2004-2008
BA, Journalism (Minor: History); University of Oregon (Eugene, OR)

Experience

Lead Information Developer, Smarsh:

Cross-functional resource supporting four different products in our organization. I routinely author task-based articles, release notes, changelogs, videos, and more. From KBs to gifs, APIs to narrated videos, I’ve done it all. As a lead member of the Information Development team, I also help guide documentation planning for Smarsh, provide mentoring to junior team members, and offer strategic insight for various initiatives to ensure high-quality end-user documentation. I also co-administrate our Confluence Server for client-facing docs.

Technical Writer, Smarsh:

In my first role at Smarsh, I created content for both our client-facing and employee-only KBs. I and a colleague developed a taxonomy for categorization of content by product line, reducing internal confusion and improving the client experience for finding relevant content. I authored mostly in HTML to control the output formatting to a pre-Lightning Salesforce community.

Technical Content Manager, Zoom+Care:

As a part of the Product group, I was responsible for creating and managing a variety of MarComm content for public-facing use, including our website, blog, lead generation emails, product releases, UX copy for new features, and more.

Contract Filing Specialist, Zoom+Care Personal Health Insurance:

I managed the creation, planning, writing, reviewing and editing of all ZOOM+Care Health Insurance (health plan) technical documentation and member-related communication content (i.e.: EOBs, renewal notifications, member update emails, etc.). I also worked closely with the Compliance, Operations, Membership, Sales and MX/UX teams, among others, to ensure health plan product consistency from concept to operationalization, as well as compliance with applicable state and federal regulations.

Co-Founder and Managing Editor, Silicon Sasquatch:

As the site’s Managing Editor, I keep the lights on. My responsibilities include managing staff needs, pitching concepts, budgeting stories and organizing our content catalog while working in a fast-paced and competitive genre of journalism.

Skills

Tool Expertise

  • Applications and frameworks: Confluence, MadCap Flare, Adobe FrameMaker, Oxygen XML Editor, Jira, SnagIt, Camtasia, Trello, Lucidchart, Smartsheet, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio Code, GitHub, Gainsight, WalkMe, Audacity, PowerBI, Coveo, Scrum, Agile, APIs.
  • Content Management Systems: SharePoint, WordPress, Squarespace, Salesforce, Webflow
  • Style guides: Associated Press Style, Chicago Manual of Style, Microsoft Style Guide

Collaboration

  • Scrum/Agile collaborator: Nearly a decade of Scrum experience; Editor with 15 years of experience guiding drafts to publication; Managerial experience taught me to resolve conflicts and encourage collaboration.

Programming Languages

  • HTML: The language I’ve used the most since creating webcomics on Angelfire pages in the early 2000s. Not a particularly flashy language anymore, but I can create a website from scratch even if it’s not pretty.

  • Markdown: I know enough to post blogs using Jekyll and Ruby. I also author most content for personal and professional projects in Markdown. I often have to convert that content to plain text, but I prefer the syntax.

  • Docs-as-Code: I won’t pretend I’ve mastered Ruby and gems, or Jekyll and YAML, but I’ve read enough blogs and tutorials to create this personal site using GitHub Pages and both macOS terminal and Windows PowerShell. I comprehend, and professionally long for, an environment to implement or at least maintain a “DAC” toolchain. I want Netlify; I want Hugo; I want developers to make doc pull requests. I want to merge those pulls into the master repo while I watch a linter check syntax against the Microsoft Style Guide. I want to dabble in several programming languages to be just a little bit dangerous.

  • Knowledge of Markdown, CSS, XML/DITA, JQL/CQL, JSON, YAML, Git, Python