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Strategies for Successful Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviews

  • Presentation
  • Education and Professional Development
  • 03. April
  • 14:00 - 14:40 PM (CEST)
  • 12:00 - 12:40 PM (UTC) | 08:00 - 08:40 AM (EDT)
  • Find your local time here: Time Converter
  • finished
  • Nicky Bleiel

    Nicky Bleiel

    • Innovative Systems, Inc.

Contents

Interviewing subject matter experts (SMEs) is an important skill technical communicators need to master to do our jobs effectively. We can learn a great deal on our own about new features through research and testing, but sometimes that isn’t enough to get the answers we need. In this talk, we will discuss strategies you can use during all three stages of an interview – preparing, conducting, and following up. We will discuss how to use the principles of both journalism and technical communication for an efficient and productive interview — whether the interview is in person, virtual, or asynchronous.

Please come to the session with your challenges with interviewing subject matter experts, and I will do my best to provide useful strategies. We can also share solutions with each other. 

Takeaways

  • The 3 stages of an interview

  • Expanding your cohort of SMEs

  • Preparing questions – including the “magic” question

  • Virtual, asynchronous, and proactive interviewing

  • Resources for both technical communicators & SMEs 

Prior knowledge

Those who are currently working with SMEs or will be soon.

Speaker

Nicky Bleiel

Nicky Bleiel

  • Innovative Systems, Inc.
Biography

Nicky Bleiel is the Senior Information Developer & Content Strategist at Innovative Systems. She is a Fellow and Past President of the Society for Technical Communication with more than 20 years of experience writing and designing content for software products in a variety of industries. She is a popular speaker at many conferences, including the STC Summit, tcworld, WritersUA, CIDM, CPTSC, IEEE ProComm, and LavaCon; and has been published in STC’s Intercom, tcworld magazine, ISTC Communicator, and more. See nickybleiel.com for a list of her talks and articles.

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