Norm Sohl
Retired at Self-Employed
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolNorm Sohl is a retired programmer-turned-technical-writer based in Seattle with decades of experience translating complex programming and multimedia concepts into clear, actionable documentation. He began his career in video production, 3D animation and game development—shipping titles and building graphics, AI, and networking—and later led large documentation efforts at Microsoft that reduced maintenance costs and improved internationalization. Over the last 15 years he combined hands-on C++/C# programming with authoring API and conceptual content for products like Office, Bing, and Microsoft Teams, including direct contributions to the Microsoft Teams developer docs. Comfortable owning vast doc sets and coordinating releases, he also brought internal research teams at Oculus up to speed with detailed developer-facing guidance. Beyond writing, Norm’s background in musical technology, MIDI and audio production gives him a multidisciplinary perspective that helps him craft engaging explanations for technically sophisticated audiences.
11 years of coding experience
23 years of employment as a software developer
Trade Certificate program, Early Woodwinds, history and restoration., Trade Certificate program, Early Woodwinds, history and restoration. at London College of Furniture (aka Guildhall University)Computer science, Computer Graphics, Computer science, Computer Graphics at The Evergreen State CollegeC++, C++ at Bellevue Community CollegeBA, Musical Technology, BA, Musical Technology at Hampshire College
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (8)
microsoft-teams10
content-model10
web-content10
documentation10
markdown-it9
html9
markdown9
bots8
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
MicrosoftDocs/msteams-docs
Nov 2017 - Dec 2018
Source for the Microsoft Teams developer platform documentation.
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:504 commits, 292 PRs, 1011 pushes in 1 year 1 month
Contributions summary:Norm primarily contributed to the repository by merging branches related to content updates and proactive messages. Their work involved significant edits, formatting adjustments, and reorganization of existing documentation, particularly related to bots and messaging extensions. They added new schemas and content while updating existing pages. The contributions strongly suggest a focus on improving the clarity and completeness of the Microsoft Teams developer documentation.
microsoft-teams
NormSohl/string-resonator
Jun 2026 - Jun 2026
Contributions:30 pushes, 1 branch in 7 days
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