Introducing the fabulous SUMO Content Manager

After months of hunting, we’re very excited to announce that we’ve found our new Support Content Manager. Starting this week, Michael Verdi joins the SUMO team full time and will primarily focus on improving our support documentation to make it easier to understand, more consistent, and more engaging.

As co-author of the book Secrets of Videoblogging and the creator of the Freevlog tutorials, Michael has a lot of experience with writing software documentation that is easy to understand for “normal people” (with that, I mean people who, unlike me, don’t spend 12+ hours per day in front of a computer). He also has a passion for videos and screencasts, which will be very useful in our efforts to make our help documentation engaging and friendly for the millions of Firefox users out there. His unique skillset will be critical in establishing writing style guidelines and best practices together with our amazing volunteer community of support content writers on SUMO.

Michael Verdi, former nuclear submarine mechanical operator.

Aside from writing books, running video blogs, training for a triathlon, and doing robot talk shows — you know, the normal stuff — Michael has also been working as a mechanical operator on a nuclear submarine, been a member of a theater company for nearly 20 years, taught graphic design in a high school, and run a media program for teens. We haven’t yet figured out how we can best use all of his work experience, but there’s certainly no shortage of “been there! done that!” here. Michael also tells me that he’s been married for almost 19 years and that they have two daughters, Dylan, 16 and Lauren, 13. And yes, this is apparently all possible in just one lifetime.

If you want to get in touch with Michael, go visit one of his blogs, or send him a message: he is michaelverdi on irc.mozilla.org (#sumo) and michaelverdi on Twitter. Also, check out his own blog post about his new job: I’m joining the support team at Mozilla.

Welcome to the team, Michael!