Knowledgebase Ninjas

Gowri Ramkumar of Document360 finds and interviews the brightest minds in the SaaS documentation space.

Meet Suzanne Rubinstein: Mapping the Way Through Technical Writing

In this episode of Knowledge Base Ninjas, Suzanne Rubinstein, a technical writer at TruLogix Software, shares her unconventional journey into technical writing and the mindset that has shaped her career. Suzanne discusses her transition from government, tourism, and education into technical writing, driven by her curiosity about technology and her ability to explain complex concepts. She explains why curiosity is essential for technical writers, who constantly learn new products, industries, tools, and processes. The conversation explores the importance of learning by doing. Suzanne shares why she prefers to reproduce a process herself before documenting it, rather than relying solely on subject matter experts. She also discusses burnout, the value of experience, and why understanding your audience is essential to creating useful documentation. Thank you for tuning in!   In the meantime, if you're ready to explore Document360, a knowledge base platform that can help your customers and teams get instant answers, we’d love to invite you to try it first-hand.  Simply use this link - https://bit.ly/4ktBnZZ to start your free trial.

10-01
10:52

Writing Clearly in the Age of AI: Lessons from Stripe’s Ryan Young

In this episode of the Knowledge Base Ninjas podcast, host Gowri Ramkumar speaks with Ryan Young, Staff Technical Writer at Stripe, about the fundamentals of technical writing and how they continue to matter in an evolving technology landscape. Ryan shares his journey into technical writing and explains why clarity, conciseness, and understanding the reader remain essential, regardless of the tools writers use. He also discusses writing for different stages of the user journey, using progressive disclosure, and refining documentation based on real user feedback. The conversation also touches on AI and LLMs. Ryan believes these tools have powerful use cases, but writers should not outsource their thinking to them. For him, writing is part of the thinking process itself. Human judgment therefore remains essential to producing clear and useful documentation. Thank you for tuning in!   In the meantime, if you're ready to explore Document360, a knowledge base platform that can help your customers and teams get instant answers, we’d love to invite you to try it first-hand.  Simply use this link - https://bit.ly/4ktBnZZ to start your free trial.

09-09
16:19

Your User Is Already Angry: A Chat with James Beach

In this episode of the Knowledge Base Ninjas podcast, Gowri Ramkumar speaks with James Beach about how he approaches technical writing from a reader's perspective. James builds a persona for the target user before writing a single word, often testing the product himself through their eyes. Documentation, for him, is written for someone who's already frustrated and just wants a quick answer. He explains how storytelling and narrative thinking quietly shape the way he structures troubleshooting guides and walkthroughs. Getting something wrong is treated as discovery, not failure, and that mindset shapes how his teams grow. James also walks through how he'd approach documenting a completely unfamiliar product for users he's never met, by building a persona and picking a specific use case he can personally relate to.Thank you for tuning in!   In the meantime, if you're ready to explore Document360, a knowledge base platform that can help your customers and teams get instant answers, we’d love to invite you to try it first-hand.  Simply use this link - https://bit.ly/4ktBnZZ to start your free trial.

08-27
16:48

Why Human-Written Docs Are the Best AI-Optimized Docs - Gareth Brinn

In this episode of Knowledge Base Ninjas, host Gowri speaks with Gareth Brinn, Documentation Manager at Gravitee, about what changes in a documentation team when AI enters the workflow. Gareth says that AI is an optimisation tool, not a replacement. He reframes manual documentation as manual context building: understanding user journeys, talking to solutions engineers and support teams, and structuring information so agents can use it. Human-generated content, he argues, is AI-optimised content — if docs read well to an AI, it's because someone did the manual work to get them there. He explains why the "one agent to rule them all" idea fails, and why he builds chunked, node-based workflows with a human backup at every break point. On making docs AI-readable, his advice is that the craft hasn't changed: plain language, topic-based writing, self-contained pages — and now self-contained paragraphs. He also covers governing decentralised content production, why quality beats speed in AI workflows, and his rapid-fire picks for technical writers. Thank you for tuning in!   In the meantime, if you're ready to explore Document360, a knowledge base platform that can help your customers and teams get instant answers, we’d love to invite you to try it first-hand.  Simply use this link - https://bit.ly/4ktBnZZ to start your free trial.

08-19
28:09

Why Humans Shouldn't Write First Drafts - Prince Eze Onyeanuna

In this episode of the Knowledge Base Ninjas podcast, Gowri Ramkumar speaks with Prince Eze Onyeanuna about how AI is reshaping technical writing. Prince shares why he believes humans should no longer write first drafts, and why the idea and judgment must always stay human. He explains how AI can close a long-standing gap in documentation, keeping docs in sync with fast-moving products. Content now needs to be structured for AI agents and LLMs, not just human readers. Prince reflects on how writers are becoming engineers, building systems rather than just producing content. He shares how AI adoption looks across Africa, from Lagos to the open source community. He talks about why writers must not lose their taste or voice, even while working closely with AI. Prince ends with a personal note on staying irreplaceable by choosing difficulty over ease. Thank you for tuning in!   In the meantime, if you're ready to explore Document360, a knowledge base platform that can help your customers and teams get instant answers, we’d love to invite you to try it first-hand.  Simply use this link - https://bit.ly/4ktBnZZ to start your free trial.

08-11
29:50

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