Stop Chasing SMEs: Build Better Collaboration and Better Docs

Technical writers know the struggle. You schedule meetings, send multiple follow-up messages, wait days for reviews, and often receive fragmented or incomplete information.

As deadlines approach, documentation quality suffers, not because subject matter experts (SMEs) don’t want to help, but because the collaboration process itself isn’t designed to support efficient knowledge sharing.

Modern documentation teams can no longer afford workflows that depend on constant chasing, repeated clarification, and last-minute reviews.

As products evolve faster and release cycles become shorter, technical writers need sustainable ways to collaborate with SMEs without creating friction for either side.

This webinar explores how to replace reactive information gathering with structured, repeatable collaboration practices that help technical writers build stronger partnerships, gather higher-quality information, and produce better documentation with less effort.

Join us as Annie Zempel shares practical strategies drawn from real-world documentation teams, demonstrating how intentional collaboration frameworks can improve productivity, strengthen trust with SMEs, and create documentation processes that scale as organizations grow.

What You’ll Learn

From Extraction to Partnership

Learn how to move beyond transactional interviews and build long-term, trust-based relationships with SMEs that encourage continuous knowledge sharing.

From Unstructured Input to Guided Contribution

Discover techniques for asking better questions, preparing more productive interviews, and creating contribution frameworks that make it easier for SMEs to provide complete and accurate information.

From Bottlenecks to Flow

Understand how to embed documentation into existing product and engineering workflows so collaboration happens naturally instead of becoming a last-minute task.

Practical Collaboration Strategies

Explore real-world approaches that reduce review cycles, minimize repeated follow-ups, and improve documentation quality without increasing workload for SMEs.

About the Speaker

Annie Zempel is the Vice President of Technical Communications at Graylog, where she leads teams responsible for creating and managing content for a global user base of security practitioners. With over 15 years of experience in technical communications, she has worked across technical documentation, knowledge base strategy, and e-learning development. She began her career as a technical writer supporting cybersecurity teams within the Department of Defense and has since built and led content teams, developed internal and external knowledge systems, and driven scalable content strategies that improve both user experience and organizational effectiveness.