About Our CEO

Our owner, Sharon Burton, is trained as a cultural anthropologist, with a focus on cognitive anthropology, Mayan studies, and economic anthropology. She has met all the requirements for her Ph.D., except writing the dissertation.

"History shows that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when provided the right tools and instruction," Sharon says.

Sharon has been in the technical writing field since her first technical writing job in 1991, while still in graduate school. That job showed her the connections between her studies in anthropology and her strong interest in the new field of personal computers. Her interest in how any technology works and how people use that technology continues today.

By 1996, Sharon was very frustrated with bad technical writing. There had to be a way to have a company that wrote good documentation that made technology available to people. Sitting in traffic one afternoon, the words Anthrobytes Consulting popped into Sharon's head. She had a name that reflected her interests; it was time to start the company.

Technical writing is an important occupation. People depend on the instruction materials to tell them how to use their tools. The one thing that we know about humans is that if you give them tools to use, they will do things with them you cannot imagine. Like send a skate board to another planet. Like make devices that talk to satellites to tell you where you are on the face of the Earth. These are amazing technological advances.

Sharon has a stone scraper that dates to about 1000 AD she likes to show people. If you turn it slowly in your hand, it suddenly fits. There is a definite way to hold it. It is a strange thing when it happens, because you feel the person who made it 1000 years ago standing behind you. Some people actually look over their shoulder. That scraper is part of the chain that leads us to our technology today.

Today, we have 4 writers and 1 accounting person. We have created product documents for many technologies. Anthrobytes Consulting is making a difference in the world, which is what we want. And we have a reputation for writing really good product documents, which is very good.

Upcoming Talks

Sharon teaches technical writing at the local University of California. She also travels all over the country, speaking about technical writing-related topics. The hot topics right now are Getting Good PDF and Planning your Documentation Projects.

Currently Sharon is speaking at:

If you want Sharon to speak at your location, contact us. Depending on the location, we may meet our own travel expenses. Right now, we are especially interested in going to northern Ohio, Florida, and Oklahoma. Sharon is a fun, funny, intense, and exciting speaker!