Behind the Docs

About Behind the Docs

Welcome to Behind the Docs — the podcast that spotlights the people who make technical content come to life. Whether you're a seasoned tech writer, content strategist, or just curious about the brains behind the docs you rely on every day, this show is for you. Each episode features real conversations with the folks who build help sites, craft user guides, and keep the content engine running behind the scenes. No jargon, just smart, engaging stories about the work, the wins, and the humans making it happen.

Publisher

Heretto

Category

business · education · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Sept 2025

Latest episode

15 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

26 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Sept 2026

   Taxonomy, AI Agents, and the New Gutenberg Moment with Mark Pepper

   Ren sits down with Mark Pepper — information architect, knowledge engineer, and founder of Crimson Sage Softworks — to talk about a career that started in journalism and music before landing in structured authoring and taxonomy work. Mark shares how he built a full content operations framework (audits, channel modeling, taxonomy, metadata, reuse, governance) from 25+ years of consulting, and how he's now turning that framework into AI agents — starting with a content audit agent built as a Claude skill. The conversation moves from practical pitfalls in content management to a bigger idea: that content practices haven't changed much since 19th-century newspapers, they've just gotten new tools. In this episode: Mark's winding path from musician to soldier to journalist to tech writer to independent information architect Why journalism skills — research and interviewing — transfer directly into tech writing and SME interviews The content ecosystem framework Mark built: content audits, channel modeling, taxonomy design, metadata, reuse models, workflows, and content standards, all under a governance umbrella The two most common pitfalls companies hit: "buy a tool and it solves everything," and cherry-picking which parts of the framework to implement How Mark is building AI agents for tedious framework steps, starting with a content audit agent (built by feeding his own process documentation into Claude and asking it to generate a skill) The "new Gutenberg" analogy: how the writer → editor → layout → publisher workflow of old-school publishing maps onto structured content today, with a detour through the messy desktop-publishing era in between Why standardization (DITA, DocBook, S1000D, and now AI tools like Claude, OpenAI, Gemini) tends to emerge in any maturing field Designing content around user relevance, not just reuse — including an early example of device-aware, dynamically assembled help content Rapid-fire: what makes documentation great, what good docs look like in practice, best career advice, and the hill Mark will die on (write for the user, not the writer) Resources & links: Mark Pepper on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-pepper-a55a131/) Crimson Sage Softworks (https://crimsonsagesoftworks.com/)

2. 

   1 Sept 2026

   Write the F****** Manual with CT Smith

   WTFM is out today! 📚 Today’s episode of Behind the Docs is a special one because it lands on the official release day of CT Smith’s first book, WTFM: A Practical Guide for Standing Up Docs at a Startup (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF1P7N9P). In this episode of Behind the Docs, Ren Taylor talks with technical writer and documentation leader CT Smith about her path into technical writing, the thinking behind her new book, and what it really takes to build documentation that works. CT wrote WFTM for people who find themselves responsible for documentation before they’re ready—or able—to hire a dedicated technical writer. The book focuses on making smart decisions early so teams can avoid creating documentation problems that become harder to solve as the company grows. The conversation covers CT’s path into tech writing, the value her philosophy background brings to her work, and why she believes documentation should be treated as a specialized craft. Ren and CT also discuss working effectively with marketing, using AI in documentation workflows, and where humans still need to stay firmly in the loop. In this episode How CT went from studying philosophy and working at Waffle House to becoming a technical writer How to build relevant experience when you don’t have a traditional technical writing background Why CT wrote WTFM and who she wrote it for The importance of setting up documentation well before a company needs a dedicated docs team Why documentation and marketing teams should work together, and where their goals differ How CT uses AI to automate parts of her documentation workflow Why AI should support, rather than replace, human judgment and empathy The characteristics CT looks for in genuinely good documentation How to make the business case for technical writing Why CT believes technical writers are important, and why the profession may be headed for a renaissance About the book WTFM is available September 1 in EPUB, paperback, and online. CT has also created an interactive calculator and additional resources to accompany the book, which you can find on her website! Guest: CT Smith (www.linkedin.com/in/ctsmithdocs) CT's website: https://docsgoblin.com/ The Global English Style Guide: https://books.google.vu/books?id=r0AiqqRBPF0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Host: Ren Taylor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/therentaylor/)

3. 

   25 Aug 2026

   Building Bridges Between Teams with Rahul Garg

   A different kind of guest this episode: Ren talks with Rahul Garg, a project management professional who's spent his career in telecom and fintech coordinating between developers, testers, quality teams, and senior stakeholders. Rahul isn't a technical writer, but his approach to communication, audience-tailoring, and building a team newsletter has striking overlap with what technical writers do every day. Rahul breaks down why he sees himself as "the bridge" between isolated stakeholder groups, how ambiguous words like "done" or "highlight" can derail a project if teams aren't aligned on meaning, and how he turned a messy, jargon-heavy team newsletter into a concise, consistent communication tool that became a single source of truth for his project. In this episode Rahul's background in telecom and fintech project management, and how his role evolved from "managing work" to helping people understand what they're doing and why Why he calls himself a bridge between stakeholders working in isolation, and how he tailors content differently for developers, testers, quality teams, and senior leadership The importance of defining shared vocabulary on a project (what does "done" actually mean?) before work even starts Building a communication plan for distributed, cross-timezone teams, and using handoff notes to bridge gaps when no meeting time overlaps How Rahul launched a team newsletter, why the first version flopped (too long, too jargon-heavy, almost nobody read it), and the structure he landed on: quick wins, risks, delivery updates, blockers, and recognition Why consistency and recognition matter so much in a recurring newsletter, and how it created two-sided value — visibility for the team and a documented record protecting against "I wasn't aware" moments later Streamlining how he collects input from contributors so the newsletter doesn't become an unmanageable dump of blockers and non-highlights Where project management and technical writing overlap and diverge: technical writers own the "how," project managers own the "what and why" — and where friction between the two roles can show up His hill to die on: organizations massively underestimate the cost of poor communication, and transparency has declined since the pre-COVID era

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.