jason dot stephens dot name

Technical writing with an eye for detail.

This is the site of Jason Stephens, a technical writer currently enjoying the delights of Brisbane, Australia.

June 2007 - Date
Technical Writer
Gensolve - Brisbane, Australia
A performance management solutions software house.I am solely responsible for all client-facing documentation, including:

  • Planning, researching and creating online help solutions
  • Writing installation and user guides from scratch, in consultation with developers and application users

October 2006 - Date
Technical Writer
Mincom - Brisbane, Australia
A leading global software solutions and services provider to asset-intensive industries.

  • Member of the technical writing team, responsible for product and training documentation.
  • Working in a distributed environment with the technical writing team in Denver, Colorado to update and streamline documentation processes and standards, to ensure consistency and high standards across different products and languages.

August 2005 - August 2006
Technical Writer
Interactive Technologies - Auckland, New Zealand
Travel solutions and services to Australasia's leading travel companies.

  • Member of the technical writing team, responsible for product, process, and release documentation.
  • Working with the business analysis team and one other technical writer to create the user guides for Serko Corporate version 1.5.

April 2004 - July 2005
Analyst/Developer
Chelmer - Auckland, New Zealand
The leaders in technology for the dealing room.

  • Member of the Ace product team responsible for development of Chelmer's core financial services product using Visual Basic, T-SQL, and Crystal Reports.


Jun 2002 - Jun 2003
Consultant working through CCS IT
CLS Bank - London, UK
CLS settles interbank foreign exchange transactions in real time.

  • Documentation of internal processes.
  • Working with a CLS client to define the standards for automated message exchange by email.
  • Maintenance of T-SQL Code.

March 2002 - June 2002
Analyst/Developer
CCS Integriti - Colchester, UK
IT consultancy - "The Microsoft Experts".

  • Interface design to allow surveyors to quickly enter large amounts of interrelated data about housing conditions into a database.
  • Distributed teamwork: For this project I worked in a team of five in Colchester, collaborating by phone with teams in London and Newcastle - Visual Sourcesafe and MS Project were used to keep development efforts synchronised.

May 2001 - March 2002
Consultant working through CCS IT
Rabobank - London, UK
Recognised as the world's safest bank.

  • Development, layout and presentation of MIS reports using Visual Basic, T-SQL and Crystal Reports.
  • Development of a securitisation application using Visual Basic, T-SQL, and VBA. In addition to working with the business analyst team responsible or the specifications of this project, extensive liason with the back office team, the securitisation team, and clients in the Netherlands was required.

December 2000 - May 2001
Consultant working through CCS IT
CLS Bank - London, UK
CLS settles interbank foreign exchange transactions in real time.

  • Development of the fax module of a foreign exchange settlement application using Visual Basic, T-SQL, Crystal Reports, the RightFax API, and VBA.
  • Enhancement and maintenance of bespoke banking applications using Visual Basic, T-SQL, VBA, and AutoMate.

December 1997 - December 2000
Thomas Miller - London, UK
Analyst/Developer
The world's largest insurer of third party liabilities for ocean-going ships.

  • Lead developer on a re-write of an excess-loss tracking system using RPG/400 and SQL/400.
  • Development of a document management system using Visual Basic, T-SQL, and Crystal Reports.
  • Development of a components database using Visual Basic, T-SQL, and Crystal Reports.

references are available on request.

Samples

Click here to download samples of my work, or for an MS Word or PDF version of my CV.

These samples are desensitised - that is, the layout, wording, format, fonts and markup are identical to the documents produced for the client, but all product, personal, procedure and company names have been replaced with generic names.


Software Tools

Tools I use for technical authoring:

  • Authorit to create single-source content which is published to intranet portals, online help applications, Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF formats
  • Microsoft Word, to create training manuals, and as a publishing target for Authorit
  • Microsoft Office automation products including macro scripting and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
  • Adobe Acrobat for creating and securing PDF documents, and as a publishing target from Authorit
  • Microsoft Visio to create diagrams and process flowcharts