Tech writers do plenty of work that deserves more attention inside the organizations they serve.
Maybe you redesigned onboarding and customers started succeeding faster. Perhaps you restructured a documentation set and made that information much easier to find. Or you helped move documentation team to structured content, improving publishing efficiency, reducing support demand.
If you can show what changed because of your work, the LavaCon Content Impact Awards may be worth a look.
The awards take place during the Lavacon Conference on Content Strategy and Technical Documentation Management (Oct 28-28, 2026 in Charlotte, NC) and are designed to recognize content professionals whose projects produced a positive impact on their organizations or customers.
This award program isn’t a competition to determine who created the biggest or best project. Awards recognize people who expanded the influence of content, enabled organizational change, contributed to customer success, or produced other demonstrable results.
A documentation project doesn’t have to be enormous to matter here. A relatively focused change can affect support costs, customer onboarding, localization expenses, product adoption, publishing time, employee productivity, or the amount of effort required to keep information accurate.
The judging criteria places an emphasis on results. Entries are evaluated for:
impact of change
creativity, innovation
organizational adoption
and return on investment
Projects must already be completed; planned initiatives and pilots aren’t eligible. Submissions are free, and you can submit up to ten applications if you’ve contributed to multiple projects or teams.
Award recipients receive certificates and an award badge, and LavaCon may invite them to present their case study at a future conference. The award team also sends a personal letter to the recipient’s boss and the president of their organization explaining the award and the impact of their work.
For tech writers whose contributions sometimes disappear inside larger product initiatives, this kind of recognition can help make the importance of our role more visible.
So think about the projects your documentation team completed during the past year. What improved? What became easier, faster, less expensive, more reliable, or more useful because of your work? If you have evidence of that change, you may already have the beginnings of an award submission.
The submission deadline is October 8, 2026.
Thinking about attending Lavacon in-person — or online — this year?
Save 10% off the cost of registration when you use discount code — TCW — at checkout.