This is a new site and in beta, but enjoy 😁.

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

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  • May 20 2019 to May 23 2019

    KubeCon and CloudNativeCon to hear about your ideas and projects

    Fira Gran Via, Barcelona, Spain

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

    Presentation | Presentation File

  • May 22 2019 to May 24 2019

    Codegarden to speak about Explain Yourself! A crash course in better documentation

    DOK5000, Havnegade 18, 5000 Odense

    I speak at the Umbraco official conference to give a 40 minute crash course in improving documentation.

    Presentation | Presentation File

  • June 04 2019 to June 05 2019

    Emerge to hear about your ideas and projects

    Minsk, Belarus

    I head to Belarus to find out what the tech and startup scene has to offer.

    Presentation | Presentation File

  • May 22 2019 to May 24 2019

    Soap! Conf to speak about AI, friend or foe for tech writers?

    Krakow, Poland

    Tech writers are increasingly reliant on linters, grammar checkers and other tools to help us write. Are they useful, or are they bending our writing to our robot overlords will?

    Presentation | Presentation File

Latest posts

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Developer Relations and Tech Evangelism With Rachel Black of Lisk

for dzone

Chris speaks with Lisk’s new tech evangelist to find out what the developer experience focussed blockchain project has been up to since summer 2018.

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Embleema- The Blockchain That Lets You Own Your Health Data

for dzone

Healthcare generates a lot of data, but most of it isn’t available to those generating the data: patients. Learn how one team is using blockchain to address this issue.

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OpenStack Summit Berlin 2018- Running Your Cloud

for dzone

The latest cloud and DevOps news from Berlin.

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A Year in Review - BlockchainOps Entrepreneur

for dzone

What technologies were the most significant in 2018, and which will go to 2019.

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Thoughtworks Technology Radar 19 — Cloud, Chaos, and Cross-Platform

for dzone

Zone Leader Chris Ward discusses Thoughtworks technology trends and predictions.

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Latest podcasts

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Revolutionising health data with Arkhn

for podcast

In this episode Chris speaks with Alexis of Arkhn about their plans to standardise medical data. Also featured are stories on D&D, the connections between crypto and gambling, the real intentions of Facebook and more.


https://chrischinchilla.com/podcasts

https://arkhn.org/english.html

Original post by — check out The Weekly Squeak.

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Brian Platz of Fluree, the Feature Packed Blockchain-based Database

for podcast

In this episode I speak with Brian Platz of Fluree, a database that packs Blockchain, GraphQL, change reversion and much more. I also cover my geeky squeaks for the week including cashless society, the number 3 mobile OS, mapping works of ancient history and more.

https://chrischinchilla.com/podcasts
@chrischinch

Original post by — check out The Weekly Squeak.

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Ethical Robot Love Hack

for podcast

In this weekly geeky squeak I look at coworking, robot love, unhackability, CUPS, Docker, the male focussed world, article 13, and more.

https://chrischinchilla.com/podcasts

Original post by — check out The Weekly Squeak.

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Decentralised Privacy with Loki Network

for podcast

In this episode Chris covers links of the week including ancient relics, and toys old and new. Also features an interview with Simon Harman, the project lead at Loki, a decentralised privacy network.

https://chrischinchilla.com/podcasts

https://chrischinchilla.com/support

Original post by — check out The Weekly Squeak.

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WTD Episode 19 - Static site generators, with Jessica Parsons

for podcast

Jessica Parsons, a documentation engineer from Netlify, joins us for Episode 19 of the WTD Podcast. Jess recently conducted a Static Site Generator workshop at the Australian Write the Docs conference at Melbourne. It was really excellent, and we’ve been meaning to get Jess on the show for a while to talk shop. In this episode, Jess illuminates the world of static site generators, comparing and contrasting Hugo, Jekyll, Sphinx, Gatsby, and others. Discussions focus on considerations for choosing a static site generator, and how to manage the content they consume, from APIs to Git-tracked markdown files. Headless CMS options like API-driven Strapi and Git-wrapper Netlify CMS make an appearance.

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Recommendations and Newsletters

I currently curate 4 newsletters on Ethics (moslty 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

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Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

We Need to Save Ignorance From AI

from Pocket
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German citizens were offered the chance to read the files kept on them by the Stasi, the much-feared Communist-era secret police service. To date, it is estimated that only 10 percent have taken the opportunity.
Read More

Google employees can’t just walk away from ethical tradeoffs like Dragonfly

from TechCrunch
Let me blunt up front: I think Google should launch a censored search engine in China (albeit with careful organizational boundaries).
Read More

The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes

from The Guardian
When broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was studying anthropology at university, one of her female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. “This,” said the professor, “is alleged to be man’s first attempt at a calendar.
Read More

AI Safety Needs Social Scientists

from
We've written a paper arguing that long-term AI safety research needs social scientists to ensure AI alignment algorithms succeed when actual humans are involved.
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Robot Love: Why romance with machines is a foregone conclusion

from ZDNet
One of the big robotics storylines of 2018, at least in the mainstream press, was the arrival of multiple sex robots on the market.
Read More

Latest language posts

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Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

How to Create Screencasts that People Will Actually Watch

from
Just about anyone can record a video of their screen and upload it to YouTube. But creating a compelling, high-quality screencast that people will not only learn from, but actually enjoy watching… well that’s a bit more challenging.
Read More

Sharing our Common Voices – Mozilla releases the largest to-date public domain transcribed voice dataset

from Mozilla
Mozilla crowdsources the largest dataset of human voices available for use, including 18 different languages, adding up to almost 1,400 hours of recorded voice data from more than 42,000 contributors.
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What Makes a Sentence a Masterpiece?

from Pocket
A great sentence makes you want to chew it over slowly in your mouth the first time you read it. A great sentence compels you to rehearse it again in your mind’s ear, and then again later on.
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How a new technology is changing the lives of people who cannot speak

from The Guardian
Millions are robbed of the power of speech by illness, injury or lifelong conditions. Can the creation of bespoke digital voices transform their ability to communicate? By Last November, Joe Morris, a 31-year-old film-maker from London, noticed a sore spot on his tongue.
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“Plotto”: Generating Truly Offensive Stories Since 1928.

from Medium
Tl;dr: I wrote a lot of code to generate stories from the 1928 writer’s manual “Plotto,” and then I looked at the data and decided that just because I could, it wasn’t a good idea. I’m not releasing that dataset and code.
Read More

Latest blockchain posts

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Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

Facebook and Telegram Are Hoping to Succeed Where Bitcoin Failed

from The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Some of the world’s biggest internet messaging companies are hoping to succeed where cryptocurrency start-ups have failed by introducing mainstream consumers to the alternative world of digital coins.
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Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked

from MIT Technology Review
Early last month, the security team at Coinbase noticed something strange going on in Ethereum Classic, one of the cryptocurrencies people can buy and sell using Coinbase’s popular exchange platform. Its blockchain, the history of all its transactions, was under attack.
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Gwei or die: Is eradicating user gas costs a dangerous move for Web3?

from Medium
During my time as a Guardian journalist, the then Readers’ Editor, Chris Elliott, told me a story. Not long after launching the paper’s website, in 1999, the office began receiving cheques.
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Why your Blockchain Startup Needs UX Design

from Medium
A great user experience can make or break a business. Here are four ways to apply UX design principles to your blockchain project.
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Quality Solidity Code with OpenZeppelin and Friends

from SitePoint
Given the fact that all of Ethereum’s computations need to be reproduced on all the nodes in the network, Ethereum’s computing is inherently costly and inefficient.
Read More