Welcome

Karen Rempel New York Technical Writer Marketing Writer Editor Senior Documentation Specialist
Technical Writer and Marketing Writer Karen Rempel

Hi, I’m Karen Rempel, a New York-based documentation specialist, specializing in technical writing, marketing collateral, and content management. Do you need help with a tough writing challenge? Let me help you by:

  • documenting your product or process so that your customers have quick success.
  • developing new internal or external web content and product collateral.
  • creating standard operating procedures to capture knowledge and guide your staff to perform their jobs faster and better.
  • working with your development team to design products that are easy to understand and use.
  • taking on a writing job that your in-house writers simply don’t have time for because your business is humming along and staff workload is already at full capacity.

This is my website for showcasing my technical and marketing writing experience and helping you get to know me a little. Tell me how I can help you with your top technical writing pain points; call me at 347.362.5677 or send an email to kyr@karenrempel.com.

Technical Writer and Marketing Writer with Experience and Extraordinary Ability

I have a passion for helping my clients bridge the gap between people, processes, and technology. I specialize in taking on tough technical project challenges and turning over an easy-to-update system for you to maintain. I create the documentation you need to help your people and business succeed.

I’ve served my professional community, the Society for Technical Communication, as both Chapter President and International Competition Judging Manager. I’ve won writing awards at both the national and international levels, and have been recognized for my extraordinary ability in technical writing.

Whether your project is big or small, I’d love to discuss how I can help you solve your documentation challenges. Call me at  347.362.5677 or send an email to kyr@karenrempel.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Recommendations

“Karen is an excellent technical writer and has a great ability to take a high-level approach and translate it to tangible, detailed steps. Her work ethic and quick ability to understand and document requirements is fantastic. She also has a keen eye for the usability of the target system and a strong understanding of what the business needs.”

Christopher Fay, SVP Product, Wells Fargo, New York City

“Karen is an excellent technical writer, with the process-oriented mind of a business analyst and the creative drive of a product designer. It was incredible how Karen took large and complex documents and converted them into lovely pieces that are easily searchable in a modern UI.

She is also an excellent team leader, maximizing the strengths of her team and guiding her members to improve their skills and optimize the quality of their output.”

Te Bai, Product Manager, Bloomberg L.P., New York City

“Karen was a genuine asset to our process as a start up organization. Her expertise, professionalism and vast wealth of knowledge proved invaluable as we determined and implemented critical procedures for our teams. Her ability to learn quickly and integrate that knowledge into accurate and critical documentation has been a tremendous value add to our business. In addition to her technical skills, Karen brings a professional yet genuinely friendly demeanor to the group, I would work with her again without question.”

Sally Myers, Chief Risk Officer, Private Bank

“Karen has worked on a Delivery Standardization Handbook for Sysco Canada and has provided outstanding technical writing services. Her ability to provide technical direction on the project was superb; she was further able to quickly integrate as a team member on the project and was able to quickly gain trust with the project committee. We are extremely satisfied with her work and contribution and will look to engaging her service for future projects.”

Jon Tuttle, Vice President, BakeMark

For more reviews of my work, please see Recommendations.

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Technical Writer Resume and Interview Tips

Writer's mindI was recently interviewed on the podcast 10-Minute Tech Comm to share insights I’ve gained through screening and interviewing dozens of technical writers during the past six years leading technical writing teams in New York.

Whether you are hiring or want to be hired, here are the top takeaways:

Resume Tips

  1. Submit an impeccable resume. No typos! Make sure all company names, tools, and technologies are capitalized correctly. Is it JavaScript or Javascript?
  2. Use parallel construction. Don’t begin four bullet points with a verb and one with a noun. This type of mistake reveals either carelessness or lack of knowledge of sound technical writing practices.
  3. Keep your verb tense consistent. Use present tense for your current role and past tense for all other roles. Don’t switch tense mid-sentence, please!

If your resume contains mistakes in any of these areas, no matter how great your experience may appear, you’re not the right person for the job.

Interview Tips

  1. Answer questions succinctly and address the question directly.
  2. If you don’t have experience using a particular tool, admit it! Then, if possible, describe experience with a similar tool, or provide an example of learning a new tool quickly.
  3. Research your interviewer and create connection through mentioning something about the interviewer’s interests or experience.

You’re being evaluated not just on your skills but on what it will be like to work with you. Be pleasant, courteous, and show your natural warmth and humor.

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript for more tips and advice.

The X-Factor in User Experience (UX) – New York UX Writer Sprinkles the Fun Flakes in the Fishbowl

This app design is pretty clear, telling the user the valid types of ID and calling for an action (to select). But it would be more clear to say “tap” than “select” since this is a phone app.

When I began looking at my writing experience from a UX perspective for a potential contract at Google, I realized that user experience permeates everything I do. It is the foundation of technical writing.

Technical writers are always asking questions about the user experience:

  • What does the user need to know?
  • What is the best way to provide the information?
  • What level of reading skills do they have?
  • What is their pre-existing experience with the subject matter?
  • How can we best accommodate different skill and experience levels?
  • How do I seamlessly provide the required info, making it findable and making sure it answers all their questions?
What is wrong with this design? What if you want to pay your Macy’s credit card statement. Would you choose “Pay Another Entity,” “Pay a Bill,” or “Pay a Business or Person”? Confusing! Frustrating! The user will likely have to try a few options before they can succeed at their desired task.

The X-factor in user experience design is one more question:

  • How do we make sure the user’s experience is positive and even  delightful?

In my opinion, the technical writer is always the user’s advocate. We have the logical mind to think through every step the user needs to do to perform a task, and on any well-functioning software, app, or web design team, the technical writer is part of the initial design process, collaborating with other experts to find the best way to help the user succeed.

Sprinkling the Fun Flakes

If empathy, logic, and flow are missing, the user is not going to have a good experience, period. If the user can’t figure out what to do, if the app leads to a dead end, if there are no clear indicators of how to find an expected function—the user will feel frustrated and won’t have a positive experience. If the wording is unclear—or worse, badly written or offensive, as in the case of the website of one “UX design expert” I recently viewed—your product is dead in the water.

So cute words, fun graphics, and pleasing haptics are useless unless there is a solid design foundation and clean, clear language.

Technical writers have been helping provide that solid foundation for decades: creating task-focused text that is clear, concise, and useful.

We are the ideal professionals to add the X-factor and sprinkle the fun flakes into the fishbowl:

  • Compelling, effective language, backed by user research.
  • Great copy and tone of voice, conveying the brand and connecting personally to the user.
  • Rewards for accomplishing the tasks. We all like a treat!

Nuff said.

 

New York Technical Writer Talks Video Storytelling

I recently took a course on video storytelling at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Bob Sacha was an awesome teacher—smart, interesting, and instructive.

Sacha showed entertaining and inspiring examples of videos that have been shot on smartphones, including Hollywood blockbuster films such as Steven Soderbergh’s “High Flying Bird” and “Unsane.” Soderbergh used innovative techniques such as being pushed in a wheelchair instead of using a dolly.

6 Key Principles of Effective Video Storytelling

  • Choose an opening shot that is going to hook your viewer
  • Use a lot of close-ups and extreme close-ups to capture detail and evoke interest
  • Switch camera angles frequently to keep it interesting
  • Bring it on home with the closing shot—a reward for the viewer, with an image to remember that finishes the story
  • Use sound to help establish the mood
  • Evoke emotions in the viewer—we remember how we feel more than what we see or hear

Here’s an example of what I learned. Technical writing “how to” made into art! IMHO! 😉

Going to California” is a reference to a Led Zeppelin song lyric: “Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let ’em tell you that they’re all the same.” Each pair of students in the class made unique airplanes and unique videos!

Variations on a Theme – Adapting to Your Target Platform

Next I took the principles of great video storytelling and created 3 versions of a video:

Square for Instagram

This one is under 1 minute (timed for an Instagram feed), and square to display well in Instagram.

Short YouTube Version Captures Highlights

This is the length for my Another New York Love Affair art project, where each video is usually under two minutes. It captures the feel of the event, with behind-the-scenes warm-up and a flash on the audience at the beginning.

Full Length

This is the full length of the song. It’s my singing debut, and my Mom might want to see the whole thing!

Operating Procedures Helped New Bank to Open in NYC

CIO Linda Orlando, me, and CEO Judith Erwin on Orange Day at Grasshopper Bank
Former CIO Linda Orlando, technical writing consultant Karen Rempel, and CEO Judith Erwin celebrating Orange Day at Grasshopper Bank, May 2018 (working towards getting the bank ready for the official opening, which occurred in May 2019)

It was a day of celebration yesterday, as Grasshopper Bank completed its journey from conception to implementation. Grasshopper Bank is the first new bank to open in New York City since the housing crisis of 2008. The “C-Suite” team is led by CEO Judith Erwin, and some of the top women in the banking industry are the lights guiding this financial institution. The dynamic team, composed of industry heavyweights who have over 200 years of combined experience in commercial banking and financial services, raised close to $100 million in order to obtain OCC* approval. The bank will focus on New York’s “innovation economy,” with corporate, venture capital, and start-up clients.

I played a crucial role in helping the new bank obtain approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and make it to the starting line. I developed over 50 required standard operating procedures, working with various roles across the bank to determine procedures that would guide staff to perform all daily operations tasks in compliance with federal banking regulations. I brought my expertise in T24 to the task, and helped develop and document software requirements as well as procedures. My role included business analysis and training as well as technical writing, and I helped the team learn end-to-end processes for all daily and monthly procedures, from taking a deposit and boarding a loan to generating a financial statement.

I worked closely with the Chief Risk Officer, Sally Myers, to develop the required procedures to provide oversight from a risk mitigation and compliance perspective. I worked with CFO Sangeeta Kishore to ensure that the Operations team provided all required data and reports to her desk in a timely manner.

It was an exhilarating challenge and a great deal of fun, working with a fantastic team of people in an extremely dynamic, fast-paced environment. My daily compadres were the Operations team, under COO Gary Blumenthal,  and it was a real pleasure to work with this group to ensure they would be able to perform all required tasks on day one.

We focused on the user experience (UX) to ensure that staff and customers will love using the bank’s internal and external banking tools, developed for mobile and the web. The team of T24 consultants under Nikki Nelson were amazing to work with, and they were instrumental in bringing the bank to the point of opening the doors yesterday.

I wish the wonderful folks at Grasshopper Bank every success as they open their doors for business. Mazel tov!

*The OCC is an independent bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury that was established by the National Currency Act of 1863 and serves to charter, regulate, and supervise all national banks and thrift institutions and the federally licensed branches and agencies of foreign banks in the United States.

New York, NY Technical Writer Looks at High Rises in the West Village

Karen Rempel New York NYC Technical Writer article for WestView NewsI recently toured one of the newest high rises that’s taking shape along the Hudson River in the West Village of New York City. 160 Leroy Street has a unique curvy design by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, making this star the most glamorous on the block. I wrote an article about the West Village’s new neighbor for the WestView News.

As neighbors go, 160 Leroy is more like Sophia Loren than Ralph Kramden, with the two private-elevatored penthouses selling this year for $51 million (7,750 square feet, with a rooftop pool) and $31.5 million (4,849 square feet, with a rooftop oasis), and a modest 9th floor one-bedroom (1,096 square feet, with double exposures) listed at $3.2 million. I concluded that this neighbor is going to be viewed 100 years from now as one of the most exciting architectural examples of our era.

New York, NY Technical Writer Publishes Tribute to Thomas Meehan in WestView News

Tom and his wife, Carolyn, having fun at a party in Fairfield, Connecticut during rehearsals for Ain’t Broadway Grand, which opened on Broadway in 1993. Photo by Merwin Goldsmith.

I was honored to write a tribute  to Thomas Meehan for the WestView News. He is the only librettist who had three Tony Award-winning musicals run for over 2,000 performances each on Broadway: Annie, The Producers, and Hairspray. He was so highly regarded that the marquees of Broadway theaters were dimmed for one minute in Tom’s memory on August 30th at 7:45 p.m.

The WestView News is published by and for the residents of the West Village of Manhattan; it is a monthly paper with a circulation of 20,000. This is my first piece in a New York publication, and I am thrilled to add this to my list of publication credits, and to be able to celebrate Tom’s life with his family, friends, and neighbors. He will be missed and remembered with love and admiration.