About

Lin 175x217About Lin Laurie
I am the owner of LinLaurie.com. Along with my many years of experience with major corporations like Coca Cola, Microsoft, Intuit, and Hewlett Packard, I’ve owned my own training company for many years and have a wide variety of experience training and developing content using tools like RoboHelp, Captivate, and Word. I plan to roll out training on these and other tools as time allows. If you sign up for my newsletter you’ll know whenever we bring an new course online.

Here’s my history with RoboHelp and Captivate training:

I was one of the first team of approximately ten instructors to be certified as RoboHelp trainers by its original creator, Blue Sky Software. The original class was held in the mid 1990’s when Joe Welinske partnered with Blue Sky to offer a certification class at the end of one of his WinWriters Conferences. Approximately 15 people took the class, but only fewer than ten of uspassed the certification. Mike Hamilton, who now is a co-founder of MadCap Flare (a competing online help product), oversaw and certified me on the stand up portion of my training in the mid-90s when he worked for Blue Sky. It really is a small world in the online help community.

I taught RoboHelp and eventually Captivate in Seattle out of my own facility and for Blue Sky, who later changed their name to eHelp. Eventually eHelp sold RoboHelp to Macromedia and then to Adobe, while I continued to provide training classes through my own company until 2003, and then after moving to San Diego in mid-2003, I continued teaching RoboHelp, Captivate, and Photoshop part time through Sterling Ledet and Associates until approximately 2010. While I stopped doing training on both Captivate and RoboHelp around 2010, I continued using both tools professionally, continued to lecture, and occasionally offer classes through STC until reopening my training facility in early 2016 in San Diego for virtual, live web-based training. In October of 2016 I relocated back to Seattle, where I continue to offer top quality training courses, consulting, and other services.

I was first introduced to RoboHelp while interning and later working on a part time basis with Joe Welinske, for many years. Joe is considered by many to be the world’s best online help expert, and I was a contributing writer to his book, Developing Online Help for Windows 95. I also managed his print and later online newsletter and was a presenter, facilitator, or assisted in other roles as needed for many years at his WinWriter and later WritersUA conferences. I also taught online help and other technical communications topics at Bellevue Community College, in the Seattle, WA area for several years in their technical communications program, and has been considered an expert in the fields of online publishing and online help for many years.

Before becoming a technical writer and later a trainer, I was a contract software developer and analyst, specializing in custom accounting applications for several industries, including construction and wineries, just to name a few. Out of all the tasks she performed in the course of doing her job, I found she liked documenting how to use the software she created and training end users, so after 10 years of developing custom software, I hung up my software developer hat and moved into the field of technical writing when I was discovered writing about desktop publishing by Microsoft and invited to work with them.

In 1986 I created a newsprint magazine on desktop publishing with a PC and $500. The magazine was distributed all over the Puget Sound and several people on the Windows 3.0 API team at Microsoft saw it and invited me to work for them. I was later hired by Microsoft as a technical editor and writer and eventually promoted to manager. After my first contract at Microsoft, I attended the University of Washington, where I obtained my Technical Writing and Editing Certificate, met Joe Welinske, and fell in love with the field of technical communication. I later returned to UW, where I received my Masters in Educational Technology and found a love of teaching technical subjects, especially in an online environment. Now, with more than 15 years of training experience and about 18 years of technical writing experience, I’ve taken my passion for teaching and writing to a new subject and now write about living a grateful life in my spare time. I’ve published 4 books including one called “That Gratitude Attitude,” available on Amazon.com, with another boo, That Gratitude Attitude, Learning to Forgive, planned for release in 2022.

In 2016, I returned to the training business and am offering a variety of RoboHelp and other courses largely focused on a  technical communicator audience. With the early 2017 release of the Adobe Tech Comm Suite I will be updating RoboHelp training and also planning to roll out out Captivate courses in late 2017.  I also offer live courses by arrangement and take on some consulting projects.

For the last two years I was proud to be a part-time adjunct instructor at the University of Washington in their technical writing certificate program. I left in the Summer of 2021 to teach workshops and shorter courses.

More training courses will be posted as they become available! If you are a trainer with relevant courses and want to be considered for training opportunities, please contact us. We’re looking for more trainers so we can offer additional content.