Deirdré Straughan
I help technologies grow and thrive through a variety of marketing and community activities. Since 2010, I’ve been involved in cloud computing, promoting new technologies and building communities of developers and end users. My product experience spans consumer applications and devices, cloud services, and kernel features.
My toolkit includes technical writing and editing, websites, blogs, mailing lists, open source and user communities, online forums, events, video, social media, content marketing, inbound marketing, UI design, technical support, and PR.
I have lived in Asia, Europe, and the US. I speak multiple languages, and work well across cultures and geographies.
Professional Experience
Director of Open Source Community and Evangelism
Intel Corporation
Sydney 2022-2023
Retired from that job in Feb 2023.
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Management & Governance services
Amazon Web Services
San Jose and Sydney, 2020–2021
Product marketing, including messaging, marketing strategy, sales enablement and GTM, and public-facing content for all AWS observability services. Metrics and analytics to measure the outcome of marketing activities.
In 2020 managed product launches of three new observability services: AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry and Amazon Managed Services for Prometheus and Grafana.
Manage the AWS Management & Governance blog covering a very wide range of AWS services. Spearheaded process and staffing improvements and training that sharply reduced time in pipeline and increased author satisfaction.
Extra-curricular: Edited Systems Performance 2nd edition by Brendan Gregg, Addison-Wesley, 2020
Open Source Marketing, Amazon Web Services
San Jose, 2017-2020
Launched, managed, edited, built audience, and analyzed impact of the AWS Open Source blog.
Managed the @AWSOpen Twitter handle, building it from near zero to 15k followers, and contributed to other AWS social media accounts, including live social media coverage at AWS and third-party events. Tracked effectiveness of these activities (traffic, engagement, CTR).
AWS certified speaker at internal and external events.
Extra-curricular: Edited BPF Performance Tools by Brendan Gregg, Addison-Wesley, 2019
Head of Digital Channel, Cloud Product Marketing, Ericsson
San Jose, 2014-2017
Developed strategy and managed execution of a new digital platform for marketing, customer support, and other features for Ericsson cloud products and services. Pilot site ericsson.com/hyperscale launched in 2016 on Episerver (CMS) and Hubspot (inbound marketing tool).
Managed a team to create, produce, promote, and analyze results of web content, blogs, video, and social media.
Head of Educational Programs & Community Architect, Joyent
San Francisco,
For this cloud startup, managed education and training, driving significant revenue while helping customers and staff be successful with company products and core technologies. Worked with instructors/course designers to create courses on SmartOS internals, ZFS, DTrace, and Cloud Performance. All course administration and delivery.
Concurrently, launched a developer and user community around SmartOS. Facilitated internal and external community communications (website, blog, and wiki) and human factors in open source communities, designed, planned, and ran technical events. Worked with corporate and individual stakeholders to create and support an open source community. Encouraged and helped developers internal and external to participate in conferences, meetups, etc.
Extra-curricular: edited, marketed, and managed technical review of Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud (first edition) by Brendan Gregg, Prentice Hall, 2013.
Also did t-shirts. And a lot of other things.
Technical Content, Solaris Product Management
Oracle Corporation, Bay Area, 2010
Produced/managed production of technical content (video, white papers, web pages) about key technologies for Oracle Tech Net and Oracle Solaris Product pages. Participated in and filmed technical events such as Sun (Oracle) Tech Days.
Extra-curricular: Edited, managed technical review, and marketed the DTrace book (Gregg & Mauro), Prentice Hall, 2011
Community Strategist and Social Media Producer
Sun Microsystems, CO and CA, 2008-2010
Developed and executed strategies to encourage technology adoption, use, and community growth of OpenSolaris worldwide, and to improve communication between Sun engineers and external communities. Activities included user group workshops, technical events worldwide. Secretary to the OpenSolaris Governing Board (2009-2010). Gave workshops on video and streaming for Sun staff.
Senior Web Producer, Sun Microsystems
Colorado, 2007-2008
For the Solaris Storage Software group, responsible for content development and management (blogs, web, wikis, video) and web strategy, analytics and reporting, social media strategy and presence. Video production and live video streaming for technical events. Encouraged and assisted engineers in creating technical content. Participated in the design and execution of technical events.
Director of Customer Experience, TVBLOB Srl
Milan, 2003-2007
Joining this startup at an early stage, strove to create a unified customer experience across every aspect of the company, from software design to customer support and service. Accomplishments ranged from designing UI for a very constrained environment (TV, set-top box, and simple remote control), to UI resource management (Eclipse), to management work on integration of customer UI with a CRM system (SalesForce), to internal and customer documentation.
Webmaster & Web Strategies Manager, Roxio
(spun off from Adaptec in May, 2001)
Consultant to the Adaptec Software Products Group,
Online marketing and customer support
1995–2000: Created a strong online presence for the company and its software products, with proven results in customer satisfaction and support.
Responsibilities included:
- Managing the Web content/community team: Part-time and full-time contractors and one full-time employee (all remote). The extended team included technical/customer support specialists, an editor, journalists, graphic artists, and Web developers.
- Web: For the Adaptec site, was solely responsible for areas devoted to CD-recordable products and technology (which got 70% of Adaptec site traffic). Tasks included: content development (technical and marketing), content management in TeamSite, HTML, navigation design, information architecture, management/integration of internal team and outside contractors, and maintenance. Designed and managed implementation of Web-based applications. All CD-R content and applications were moved to Roxio.com in November, 2000. For this new site, was part of the team which chose ATG Dynamo as the application server and personalization platform, and Interwoven’s TeamSite for content management. Had overall responsibility for content and community on Roxio.com.
- Email marketing: Administrator and editor-in-chief (often also writer/editor) for weekly newsletters to opt-in mailing lists. Launched in 1998, the largest list had 170,000 subscribers in July, 2001. Subscriber comment: “Your emails are the best example of the value of this medium. They are always informative, they cut right to the point, and they never seem like self promotional ‘Marketing’ efforts. I find them valuable, and I look forward to receiving them.” More subscriber comments.
- Support and marketing online: Founded the Roxio Discussion email list (formerly known as the Adaptec CD-R list) in 1996 and moderated it until September, 1999; then managed others moderators. The list was widely acknowledged to be one of the most useful sources online for help with CD-R, and was praised for allowing end users to discuss all aspects (positive and negative) of products and customer experience. Similarly responded to customer questions on the Usenet for years, then managed outside contractors to do this.
- Communication: As an internationally-raised American, and a former technical writer now working in marketing, was uniquely qualified to facilitate and promote communication between various teams and locations within the company, and between the company and its customers.
Chief Technical Writer
Incat Systems srl, Milan, Italy
Incat Systems Software USA, Campbell, CA
Incat Systems, an Adaptec company, Milpitas, CA
1991 to 1995
- Responsible for all software manuals and online help, including planning, scheduling, software testing, writing, editing, layout, graphics, and maintaining a consistent style across different software packages. Worked with engineers from the beta stage, testing and reporting bugs, and making suggestions for interface and feature improvements.
- Other Documentation: Wrote and/or edited marketing materials (press releases, brochures, package text, sales and technical training material).
- Online Communications: Section leader and participant in company-specific and general forums on CompuServe, participated in Internet mailing lists on related issues, and monitored Usenet groups. In 1995, developed material for an Incat Web site.
- Sales Support/Evangelism: Technical assistance to sales staff, presented at shows such as Intermedia, gave seminars and lectures.
- Technical Support: First point of contact for online support, helped out on the phones as needed.
Director of Desktop Publishing – Team Technologies, Inc., Reston, VA
1987 – 1989: Systems integration and installation, sales, training, and technical support for DOS- and Windows-based DTP systems. Training courses were individually designed for clients, who included the U.S. Navy, trade associations in Washington, D.C., and two management training institutions in Africa (as a consultant for the World Bank).
Earlier work experience
Some of my earlier work experiences for non-tech companies contributed to my career in tech.
Publications
Book: Publish Yourself on CD-ROM, co-authored with Fabrizio Caffarelli. A comprehensive guide to CD-ROM technology, for everyone from beginners to experts. Published by Random House Electronic Publishing, 1993. One of the world’s first books to include a CD-ROM, containing software and a hypertext version of the book. (Also desktop-published the book and created the hypertext, both using FrameMaker.)
Editing: DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD (Oracle Solaris Series)
Talks & Interviews
see page
Education
- MBA, Open University (UK), 2004
- Bachelor of Arts with High Honors in Asian Studies and Hindi, University of Texas at Austin, 1987
- Woodstock School, Mussoorie, India (high school), 1981
Languages
- Native speaker of English
- Read, write, and speak Italian fluently
- Hindi/Urdu once fluent, could be revived
Volunteer Work
- Woodstock School (Mussoorie, India) – class secretary, former President of WOSA (Woodstock Old Students’ Association) Council Europe, fundraising, writing, General Body and Board member
- former Board Member: Studies Abroad for Global Education (SAGE)
- Founder/initiator Colorado Front Range Girl Geek Dinners
- Democrats Abroad, Italy – former board member of Milan chapter
