Mee Docs Ltd

In May 2018, I became self-employed as a contract technical author. I needed to set up a company quickly as I was starting a short-term contract in Media City, Manchester.

Experience / Knowledge / Skills

Working remotely, based in/near Manchester area, or further afield. (please note, I don’t drive!)

Skills are:
. Documentation: Creation, Proofreading and Fixing. Single files or in bulk on CVS/SVN repositories.
. Office 365 support.
. Main Office apps of Word, Excel, PowerPoint – all three to macro level if required.
. Basic SharePoint (mostly web front end creation)
. Confluence (handling multiple spaces and bulk conversion of OneNote notebooks)
. Running a TWiki / MediaWiki based Knowledge base, but then converting it to SharePoint.
. General upkeep of Knowledge bases using multiple tools.
. RoboHelp HTML helptext
. DOS, all flavours of Windows and basic Linux command-line.
. Documented / worked with IaaS and PaaS systems.
. UX design via Axure for internet sites.
. WordPress – basic site admin etc. I use WP to power three of my own websites.
. See one, do one, teach one (I can’t escape my old helpdesk mantra, even if that was 20+ years ago)

If you want a ‘technical’ technical author, then get in touch.

I would prefer Ltd Co contracts, but will consider Inside IR35 if the contract is long enough.

Contract Work Done (& Doing)

This page, and any sub-pages that follow, will follow my career progress as best as I can. Due to some of the work I do, I won’t be able (sometimes) to go into any detail other than a basic location / job role.

Position / Date	Overview
Technical Author / Auden / May 2018	A 3.5 week contract to help bring a range of documents up to date. They were mostly Word-based documents, along with a few Visio diagrams. Also updated a few pages on Confluence.
Technical Author / June 2018 - March 2021	Sole technical author for a government institution. (On-going until March 2021. Contract wasn't renewed due to COVID-19 rules and lack of work I could do from home.) This role involved a wide-range of skills including: updating/creating Word documents, updating/programming macros for Excel (inc. development of a Code Library for others to use) and updating a large selection of Confluence spaces and pages. This was using the non-cloud variant of Confluence. During the COVID period I was working from home and helped to convert a series of OneNote notebooks into Confluence pages using the cloud version of Confluence. The last task I was asked to do was to help extract content from the main SharePoint site and place it into a new sub-site then expand the content. I was also asked to write a guide on how to add / edit new pages and their content. The guide was placed on a Teams Wiki as well as made available in PDF form.

Position / Date

Overview

Technical Author / Auden / May 2018

A 3.5 week contract to help bring a range of documents up to date. They were mostly Word-based documents, along with a few Visio diagrams. Also updated a few pages on Confluence.

Technical Author / June 2018 - March 2021

Sole technical author for a government institution. (On-going until March 2021. Contract wasn't renewed due to COVID-19 rules and lack of work I could do from home.)

This role involved a wide-range of skills including: updating/creating Word documents, updating/programming macros for Excel (inc. development of a Code Library for others to use) and updating a large selection of Confluence spaces and pages. This was using the non-cloud variant of Confluence.

During the COVID period I was working from home and helped to convert a series of OneNote notebooks into Confluence pages using the cloud version of Confluence.

The last task I was asked to do was to help extract content from the main SharePoint site and place it into a new sub-site then expand the content. I was also asked to write a guide on how to add / edit new pages and their content. The guide was placed on a Teams Wiki as well as made available in PDF form.

Pro-Bono work undertaken

Pro Bono work undertaken

I've been helping out others for years (and years), but since I launched Mee Docs Ltd, I've decided to keep a record going.

Who for	Description of work undertaken
"Fish & Chip" website (Can't remember name!)	Suggested a few changes to the creator of the website and ended up reviewing every single page and suggesting fixes.
Atari Legend	Reviewing all of the interviews / reviews on the website as and when asked.
Appvertise	Reviewing all of the text within the app and accompanying website.
ISTC website	Converting articles from older issues of The Communicator magazine from PDF into WordPress pages.
Breakin' The Borders (All three volumes)	Proofreading of the translated text (originally written in German, machine translated via DeepL) for the English versions of all three books. https://www.microzeit.com/anthology/
Woad Farm	I was staying here as part of my long-term contract, so I ended up being their unofficial Android app support as well as helping them with their own website queries - initially through the now defunct Web Eden and then moving their site into a WordPress one using SiteGrounds.
TCUK Metro 2020 website	Helping more with the tech support for WordPress than actual text editing etc.
Crackers - The Gold Rush (Volume 1)	Working on the English translated text (the initial pass was via DeepL) for Marco Breddin's latest opus. https://www.microzeit.com/atari-store-1/crackers-the-gold-rush-1/
Atari Legend	A seemingly never-ending flow of work. From editing interviews done in French, then part-translated and reviewing the English versions through to filling in details about the thousands of games that are hosted on the website's database backend. A side project is extracting all scrolltexts (where possible) from the CD (compacted disks) aka "menus" that the various cracking / packing groups did back in the late 80s to the early 90s. My old but basic 68000 skills are in use once more - along with WinHex (hex editor) to extract the text.