Barking Dog Communications

Technical content that drives adoption and retention

Join the many enterprises that have worked with Barking Dog to help technical teams, end users, and business stakeholders understand and use technology products faster and more efficiently.

Services

Information carefully designed for your specific needs, with engagements scoped to your product, audience, and deadlines.
Check out our Engagements page for more information.

Product & Technical Documentation

Structured product documentation that scales with your product, from taxonomy and content models to DITA-based templates.

Principles

Our principles, based on Amazon’s Leadership Principles, that are the basis for all our engagements.
Check out our Principles page for more information.

Reduce Cognitive Load

Technical content shouldn’t be difficult to understand, and shouldn’t stand in the way of usability.

Your Very Smart Friend

Content that is approachable is more usable.

Instructional Content & Technical Education

Hands-on guides, tutorials, and onboarding content that meets users at their level and helps them learn about and use your product with confidence.

Reader Obsession

All content should focus on the reader, and not just be an item on a checklist.

Keep it Mnml

Content that is to the point with minimal clutter or excess verbiage.

Mezmo Telemetry Pipeline Product Guide

By creating a scalable, DITA-based documentation system with clear taxonomy and reusable templates, we helped Mezmo turn its product docs into a living knowledge base that improved discoverability, sped up updates, and helped users understand and adopt new features faster.

Mezmo Telemetry Pipeline Processor Module Demos

By turning Mezmo’s long, error-prone live demos into interactive, modular processor walkthroughs, we helped users and sales teams visualize how data moved through telemetry pipelines, improving understanding, streamlining demos, and even turned stuck trial users into paying customers.

You’ve come to the experts for creating technical content that is:

  • Discoverable
    If users can’t find it, it doesn’t exist

  • Readable
    Clear, structured content fit to your audience and AI training

  • Useable
    Complete a task, solve a problem, or learn about key products and services

Thought Leadership & Storytelling

White papers, books, social media posts, and narratives that shape industry pespective and connect your technical insight with your business vision.

Many Minds, One Voice

We create unified information experiences so your users aren’t confused by clashing voices or lack of structure.

Design for Search and AI

Content structured for SEO and integration with AI systems.

Work

Examples of how we’ve helped others tell their stories and enable their customers.
Check out our Portfolio page for more information.

Ethical AI, A Handbook for Managers and Developers

By rewriting and restructuring multiple chapters of this book, we helped an AI startup turn a surface-level manuscript into a credible, thought-provoking resource on Ethical AI.

Mezmo’s Approach to Telemetry Data Management

By developing a thought-leadership white paper with Mezmo’s CMO, we helped connect their telemetry data product to a broader narrative about data management.

Testimonials

What others have said about working with Kai and Barking Dog Communications.

“I had the pleasure of working with Kai at Mezmo. Beyond managing the technical documentation, Kai made huge contributions to overall customer education and the technology information system at Mezmo. Very responsive, extremely smart, and deeply passionate about knowledge management, they helped launch new products to the market, supported by innovative assets such as interactive demos, how-to guides, and an O'Reilly eBook, integrated into the growth loops inside and outside the product. Any team engaged with Kai can learn and supercharge their technology information strategy.”

Ajay Khanna, Chief Marketing Officer, Mezmo

“I had the pleasure of working with Kai for over three years while Mezmo was a customer of DeveloperHub.io. Kai was the driving force behind Mezmo’s adoption of our platform and quickly became one of our most active and knowledgeable users. He brought a deep understanding of what makes a great customer support experience, regularly suggesting thoughtful improvements—many of which we implemented. His product sense, attention to detail, and clear communication made him an exceptional collaborator and a rare kind of client who truly helped shape the direction of our platform.”

Zaid Daba’een, Founder and CEO, Developerhub.io

“I had the pleasure of working with Kai for a year, and they are an exceptionally talented thinker and writer. They have a deep understanding of the tech space and took the lead in creating clear, highly effective documentation that made a real impact. Their work played a key role in helping our company onboard new clients quickly and smoothly, all while keeping the documentation up to date in a fast-paced, rapidly shifting environment. Kai was a joy to collaborate with and consistently brought both insight and reliability to the team!”

Mike Innes, Senior Product Designer, Mezmo

“Kai is intelligent, creative, and hard working. I very much enjoyed collaborating with them to build out customer education and best practice collateral. They continually found areas to bring innovation into what we provided our customer base, which had a significant impact. More than one customer remarked umprompted to me about the value of the material Kai created and how it helped them better understand our product.”

Bill Balnave, VP of Customer Success, Mezmo

“I had the pleasure of working with Kai at two different companies. In both cases, they were able to transform the way we approach our technical content strategy to drive measurable impact across various touchpoints of the customer journey. From documentation to training and beyond, Kai brings a deep understanding of information architecture, what good technical content looks like, and how to measure its effectiveness against the needs of the business. They are very capable of defining editorial processes, and executing on that process both by delivering stellar content while also empowering everyone in the organization with the tools and best practices they need to contribute to technical content at scale. Additionally, Kai is a skilled manager, and I have watched him develop and mentor young writers by giving them the tools and frameworks they need, as well as continually advocating for their growth within the organization.”

Alissa Lydon, VP of Marketing, Actively AI

“I am thrilled to recommend Kai Alvason, who heads up technical product communications at Mezmo and with whom I've worked over the past year. Under Kai's leadership, our technical documentation has risen to set the industry standard for excellence.

Kai brings a depth of knowledge and passion I've rarely seen in this role. In addition, Kai is an excellent people manager and team leader, able to reach across the organization - driving initiatives in docs, support, product-led growth, and product marketing.

Working alongside Kai has been an absolute pleasure. Kai's mastery of technical product communications, combined with a genuine leadership style, has driven our team to improve continually and inspired me personally. Kai's dedication, innovative approach, and ability to inspire co-workers make Kai an invaluable asset to any organization.”

Kevin Woods, Director of Product Marketing, Mezmo

“Kai isn't just one of the best technical writers I know, they’re also one of the best teammates. We worked together at AccelOps and BigPanda where they developed our information architecture, trained technical teams to use it, and developed or modified hundreds of pages of content.

I love that Kai always asks “why” and proposes alternate approaches if he disagrees with the plan. Kai-ness (yeah, it's an adjective) was most on display when we were considering how to categorize docs at AccelOps. Rather than agreeing to re-write what was there, Kai proposed a new structure that significantly reduced editing time and improved performance. Huge win all around.

I also love that once we agreed on an approach, Kai never questioned decisions made or missed a commit. I enthusiastically recommend Kai for anyone looking for a great technical content developer. You’ll also get a strategic thinker and exceptional teammate.”

Dan Turchin, CEO, PeopleReign