Chris Chinchilla

I am a technical communicator with a love of explaining technical concepts in documentation, blog posts, videos, books and more. I run a small agency called Gregarious Mammal if you’re interested in hiring me for that kind of thing.

This website is a home for all my blog posts, podcasts, newsletters and creative projects.

It’s also new and very much in development, so watch this space. 👀

Next events

February 22 2020 to February 22 2020

World IA Day to hear about Inclusive information architecture

CareerFoundry GmbH,Köpenicker Str. 126, Berlin

I am attending World IA day in my home town of Berlin to dig more into creating inclusive information architetcure.

Presentation | Presentation File

February 27 2020 to February 27 2020

MEGAComm to speak about Automating and testing documentation

Cinema City, Jerusalem

TBC

Presentation | Presentation File

March 06 2020 to March 07 2020

FOSS Backstage to hear about your ideas and projects

ExRotaprint, Berlin

The conference on everything related to governance, collaboration, legal and economics within the scope of FOSS.

Presentation | Presentation File

March 11 2020 to March 22 2020

SXSW Interactive to hear about your ideas and projects

Austin, Texas

I’m back at SXSW! I am super excited and looking forward to hearing amazing presentations, enjoying warmer weather, and… BBQ 😋.

Presentation | Presentation File

March 30 2020 to April 02 2020

KubeCon and CloudNativeCon to hear about your ideas and projects

RAI, Amsterdam

I travel to Amsterdam to report on the latest updates and best practices for Kubernetes and Clound-native computing.

Presentation | Presentation File

Latest posts

- more

Introducing StarlingX 3.0 For Edge Computing and IoT

for dzone

Take a look at how StarlingX as an edge computing platform provides support for multiple low-latency use cases as well as a number of useful features.

Introducing StarlingX 3.0 For Edge Computing and IoT

for dzone

Take a look at how StarlingX as an edge computing platform provides support for multiple low-latency use cases as well as a number of useful features.

Kong API Platform for Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Organizations

for dzone

Kong has evolved significantly from an open-source API gateway, handling just north-south traffic, to a full cycle API management platform.

Kong API Platform for Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Organizations

for dzone

Kong has evolved significantly from an open-source API gateway, handling just north-south traffic, to a full cycle API management platform.

CES 2020 — Highlights for the More Technically Minded

for dzone

Chris Ward is here (a week late) reporting on his favorite announcements from the Consumer electronics show.

Latest podcasts

Patrick McFadin talks Datastax and Cassandra, MIDI 2.0 and how do planes fly?

for The Weekly Squeak

In this episode I speak with Patrick McFadin about Datastax and their plans with Apache Cassandra, ponder on the release of MIDI 2.0 after 37 years, plane security, what happened in Iowa, and more

Paul Kuijf of learned.io, Wine, filter bubbles, and what is meat?

for The Weekly Squeak

In this episode I speak with Paul Kuijf of learned.io, look at the new Lovecraft film, burst some bubbles, learn new languages, and much more.

The Tactigon, academic scandal, and gaming colonialism

for The Weekly Squeak

In this episode I speak with the makers of the Tactigon wearable gesture controller, look at scandal in Oxford, DLC in D&D, decolonialising gaming, and much more.

Responsible AI with Shlomi Hod, the wierd web and fax on the beach

for The Weekly Squeak

This episode I speak with Shlomi Hod about responsible AI, look at the worst D&D monster of all, hello world in assembly, and more.

Transcript

Responsible AI with Shlomi Hod, the weird web and fax on the beach

for The Weekly Squeak

This episode I speak with Shlomi Hod about responsible AI, look at the worst D&D monster of all, hello world in assembly, and more.

Recommendations and Newsletters

I currently curate 4 newsletters on Ethics (mostly in technology), Blockchain, Language and Linguistics, see my latest recommendations and join those newsletters below.

The Weekly Squeak Newsletter

My general newsletter "The Weekly Squeak" draws content from all these sources and a couple more, sign up to that below.

Latest ethics posts

Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

Emotion AI researchers say overblown claims give their work a bad name

from MIT Technology Review

Perhaps you’ve heard of AI conducting interviews. Or maybe you’ve been interviewed by one yourself. Companies like HireVue claim their software can analyze video interviews to figure out a candidate’s “employability score.

Ethical Maturity in User Research

from

Summary: How ethically mature are your user-research practices? Assess your current state of ethical maturity by answering these simple questions. Many organizations have flourishing design teams who conduct user research on a regular basis.

What Happens After Prisoners Learn to Code?

from The Atlantic

Jesse Aguirre’s workday at Slack starts with a standard engineering meeting—programmers call them “standups”—where he and his co-workers plan the day’s agenda. Around the circle stand graduates from Silicon Valley’s top companies and the nation’s top universities.

Understanding the Hidden Bias in Emotion-Reading AIs

from

Facial recognition technology has progressed to point where it now interprets emotions in facial expressions. This type of analysis is increasingly used in daily life. For example, companies can use facial recognition software to help with hiring decisions.

The AI community needs to take responsibility for its technology and its actions

from MIT Technology Review

On Monday, at the opening of one of the world’s largest gatherings of AI researchers, Celeste Kidd addressed thousands of attendees in a room nearly twice the size of a football field. She was not pulling her punches.

Latest language posts

Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

A Code-Obsessed Novelist Builds a Writing Bot. The Plot Thickens

from WIRED

In the first episode of the Netflix adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s best-selling novel, Sacred Games, the criminal kingpin Ganesh Gaitonde makes a phone call to a detective, Sartaj Singh.

The advantages of Document Markup Languages vs WYSIWYG editors

from Medium

Did you ever wonder what’s the best tool to write an article, user manual, book, or any other kind of text document? There are many options to choose from. Most people use a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor (also called a text processor), such as Google Docs, LibreOffice or Word.

5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World

from Pocket

If your language had no words to describe “the future,” would you still stress over it? I went to my neighbor’s house for something to eat yesterday. Think about this sentence. It’s pretty simple—English speakers would know precisely what it means.

What I learned from studying billions of words of online fan fiction

from MIT Technology Review

When I was 10, I was a lonely, geeky girl, a first--generation Latina growing up in a small town in Indiana. I happened across J.R.R.

Write Better Stories with this Python Tool

from Towards Data Science

If you write articles, blog posts or reports to your boss a lot, then you want to make sure people are understanding what you say. In this article, I’ll show how to use a Python library called textstat to determine readability, complexity, grade level and more about your text.

Latest blockchain posts

Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

A Practical Guide To Building Zero Knowledge dApps

from

Grab the source code for the blogpost here. For the past few months, I've been building a couple of toy dApp projects on Ethereum that ultilize zero knowledge proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs.

Better Solidity debugging: console.log is finally here

from Medium

It’s happening. Building smart contracts on Ethereum is slowly distancing itself from being a task better suited for Elon Musk’s friends on Mars, and looking more and more like something maybe doable by human beings.

4 Factors We Considered Before Choosing Ethereum

from

When we started out designing the Orchid privacy network, we faced the fundamental decision of which blockchain Layer 1 platform to build on. Deciding on the best solution required us to take a hard look at multiple options in the market, and the tradeoffs involved with each one.

Introducing Embark 5

from

If you’ve been following the development of Embark you’re probably aware that we regularly put out alpha and beta releases for upcoming major or feature versions of Embark.

Welcome to OpenZeppelin Documentation!

from

We have three different components to help you solve all your smart contract needs. Each one builds on top of the previous one. Our contracts library is our cornerstone product, a secure foundation for your solidity needs.