Chris Ward CV

I have been a long term freelancer and contractor in the past so attempting to summarise my work experience and history into a CV is always challenging.

Below are chronologically the most recent and relevant projects I have worked on, I can supply them on request.

My years of experience organising user groups, training days, and managing small developer teams make me suitable for community, evangelist, training, or writer roles.

Accomplishments

Long form (technical) writing

  • 2017, “Jump start responsive design” from SitePoint
  • Editing two books for Packt publishing
  • Kubernetes Whitepaper for Weave.works

Courses

  • Two video courses for SitePoint (behind a paywall)
  • “CSS in Depth” for Manning
  • An introduction to Swift for Flatiron school
  • An introduction to web development for Career Foundry

Presentations

Over the past 4-5 years, I have spoken at over 100 events on a wide variety of subjects. Find more on my website.

Podcasts and Video

I contribute to several regular podcasts:

  • My Geek, tech, and gaming show, “Chinchilla Squeaks”
  • The “Write the Docs” podcast
  • As well as a gaming and storytelling podcast

I host the following regular livestreams:

  • Weekly “Learning livestream” with a tech tool
  • Regular “hands on” videos
  • As well as a gamin livestream

Find links to all these at chrischinchilla.com.

Open Source

I have always been active in open source communities, including regular contributions to: Drupal, CiviCRM, Atom, Visual Studio Code, Webpack, Kubernetes, Test the Docs, and Vale. See my GitHub profile for more.

Community

  • I run the Write the Docs meetup in Berlin, and have organised other meetups in the past
  • I was on the organising committee for the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 EU, and 2019 Australian Write the Docs conferences
  • I co-organised the “Tool the Docs” devroom at FOSDEM in 2018, 2019, and 2021
  • I was a judge for the Mozilla open source awards in 2020
  • I run a regular writers meetup 2 times a week in Berlin

Work Experience

Chronosphere, Senior Technical Writer

August 2020 - September 2022

Chronosphere is the steward for M3, the highly available time series database, and its commercial offering. I was the sole tech writer for both projects, and my role included:

  • Overhauling documentation and documentation platforms
  • Documenting new features as they developed
  • Creating and maintaining a style guide and automated style checking tools
  • Creating and maintaining tests, screenshot generation, and other documentation tools
  • Editing and reviewing submissions from internal and external contributors
  • Liaising and working with our developer relations and marketing teams for collaboration ideas
  • Responsibility for metrics, planning, and delivery of documentation
  • I wrote a handful of technical blog posts and a monthly Observability newsletter
  • I hosted several video series interviewing staff members and external experts

Freelance Technical Writer, Blogger and Developer Relations

March 2017 - Present

As a freelance writer and blogger, I have contributed to the blogs and documentation sets of multiple technical companies. These ranged from small cutting-edge startups to large enterprises. Clients and work include

  • libcamera: Documentation an open source camera stack and framework for Linux, Android, and ChromeOS
  • Dev Spotlight: Technical blog posts for Salesforce, Kong, and others
  • RevCom: Technical blog post editing for several high-profile clients
  • Sky Word: Technical whitepaper writing for several high profile clients
  • Unity: Documentation for the MARS AR development plugin
  • GitLab: Technical blog posts
  • Humanitec: Technical blog posts
  • here technologies: Updating and maintaining API and reference documentation for the GeoVisualization product
  • PagerDuty: Non-technical blog posts
  • OverOps: Technical blog posts
  • Coralogix: Technical blog posts
  • Facebook Messenger: Technical blog posts
  • data artisans: Technical blog posts
  • Sqreen: Tutorial, API, and reference documentation
  • Telerik: Technical blog posts
  • DZone: Tech journalist covering events, interviews, and tools
  • The Next Web: Tech journalist covering events and interviews
  • Equinix: Technical blog posts
  • DGraph: Documentation platform overhaul

Ethereum Foundation, Technical Writer

August 2018 - August 2020

I worked as the sole tech writer for the Ethereum Foundation and its projects. My role included:

  • The Solidity project:
    • Improving the getting started and contributors guides
    • Working with developers to improve feature documentation
    • Coordinating documentation translation
  • The Geth project:
    • Improving the getting started guides
  • The Remix project:
    • Working on creating interactive workshops for people to learn Solidity
  • Ethereum Studio
    • Creating content for this interactive web-based IDE for helping people learn Ethereum Dapp development
  • Ethereum Wiki
    • Fixing bug with the current wiki
    • Transitioning the wiki to an improved collaborative platform
  • Organising a monthly education call for all people involved in Ethereum education
  • Creating tool kits for documentation platforms and tools for projects
  • Auditing project documentation needs for funding teams
  • Helping create an RPC standard spec for the Ethereum RPC

Event Store, Technical Writer

March 2017 - March 2020

Event Store creates an open source events-optimised database with commercial-only features and support. My role included:

  • Migrating to a new documentation platform
  • Improving getting started guides
  • Creating example applications
  • Maintaining reference documentation for an HTTP API, a .NET SDK, command-line interface, and implementation guides
  • Writing a book for a new release (in progress)
  • Creating a new developer portal to hold old and forthcoming documentation (in progress)
  • Integrating docs and support platform (fresh desk)

Kauri (ConsenSys), Technical Content Lead

October 2018 - March 2020

Kauri was a content management system and platform built on top of Ethereum technologies. We lost our funding from our parent company (ConsenSys) in March 2020. My role was to do the following:

  • Commission and work with writers to produce content on particular topics
  • Manage a content budget
  • Promote the platform to writer communities
  • Write our help content, newsletters, and some technical articles
  • Work on writer-related features for the platform, for example, improving the editor
  • Suggest edits to unsolicited posts to the platform
  • Organise content into collections and communities

Contentful, Technical Writer

Sep 2016 - March 2017

As the technical writer for Contentful, an API-based CMS, I was responsible for writing and editing all developer documentation. I managed the documentation infrastructure, information architecture, and analytics. I liaised with the engineering, marketing, and support teams to determine priorities and problems that needed addressing in the documentation.

Crate.IO, Developer Advocate

Feb 2015 - Aug 2016

I was a Developer advocate for this open-source highly scalable database startup. Responsible for Europe, my tasks include handling support, organizing events and presentations, networking, creating content, documentation and sample applications, partnerships, social media, and much more.

SitePoint Mobile Channel Editor

March 2014 - Aug 2016

In this part-time role, I was responsible for the SitePoint mobile channel. SitePoint is a global resource site for Developers and Designers that ranks highly on Alexis and has weekly traffic of about 1.5 million page views. My role involves commissioning and editing articles, engaging our community, and creating a strategy based on trends in our readership. As part of editing articles, I have to understand, test, and streamline code in a variety of languages such as Swift, Java, and JavaScript.

Older work

Summarised for brevity.

  • This Little Duck, Senior Drupal Developer: March - July 2014
  • The Monthly, Drupal and CiviCRM Developer: December 2013 - March 2014
  • Moat Media / Go: April 2012 - October 2013
  • The Australian Conservation Foundation, Online Coordinator
  • CERES, Online Coordinator
  • Green Renters, Operations
  • Portable Content, Developer