If you’re at the Next Web festival in cheerful Amsterdam, I want to hear from you! Let’s share a coffee and a slice of cake and tell me what you’re working on.
Explain Yourself! Documentation for Better Code (Chris Ward) - How many times have you come across an awesome looking library or tool that you’re keen to work with in your own project but can’t even begin to understand how to use it?
Programmers are great at creating amazing and cutting-edge code, but not always so good and explaining themselves, and I want to help. In this presentation I want to draw upon my experience in writing tutorials and technical documentation to help you write clear, concise and usable documentation for your own projects.
We will cover topics such as:
Cate will be speaking about how technology is increasingly impinging on every corner of our lives, including our sex lives.
Games have been with us for centuries, from those that emulate battles like Chess and Risk, to the intricate mysteries of Go.
In the past decades the world of boardgames has growing in popularity, breaking into the mainstream with games like Catan. However the industry is generally staunchly traditional in the way it produces and markets it’s ideas.
Until recently.
In this presentation I will look at how digital versions of games, tabletop simulators, app augmented games and kickstarter have changed the world of cardboard and look to the future to see where this may lead.
Atom is the hackable text editor begun by GitHub, it was also the first application to use the Electron framework for creating native applications in JavaScript. Thanks to it’s underpinnings, customising the editor and creating your own packages to extend functionality is relatively simple. In this presentation I will show how to change and extend Atom with configuration, themes and creating your own package with the Atom API, showing practical examples with the packages I have created.
I’ll be attending Europe’s pre-eminent event for digital business. I’ll be keen to meet interesting products, projects and people.
Explain Yourself! Documentation for Better Code (Chris Ward) - How many times have you come across an awesome looking library or tool that you’re keen to work with in your own project but can’t even begin to understand how to use it?
Programmers are great at creating amazing and cutting-edge code, but not always so good and explaining themselves, and I want to help. In this presentation I want to draw upon my experience in writing tutorials and technical documentation to help you write clear, concise and usable documentation for your own projects.
We will cover topics such as:
I’m back at the infamous FOSDEM, this time to talk about making your documentation polished by automating spelling, grammar, testing, screenshots and so much more.
I’m back at the infamous FOSDEM, this time to talk about how the Electron framework may or may not help our cross-platform dreams.
A whole day meetup, organised in collaboration with GDS, to explore the tools, processes and methodologies that teams use to write documentation in an agile environment.
I’ll be attending Europe’s pre-eminent event for Startups. I’ll be keen to meet interesting products, projects and people.
In this presentation I’ll examine how various diverse sources have taught me how to write better technical documentation.
I will be play testing and promoting my board game Chip Shop at the infamous Spiel messe in Essen. Drop by stall A109 in hall 4 and say hello!
Explain Yourself! Documentation for Better Code (Chris Ward) - How many times have you come across an awesome looking library or tool that you’re keen to work with in your own project but can’t even begin to understand how to use it?
Programmers are great at creating amazing and cutting-edge code, but not always so good and explaining themselves, and I want to help. In this presentation I want to draw upon my experience in writing tutorials and technical documentation to help you write clear, concise and usable documentation for your own projects.
We will cover topics such as:
Whilst open sourcing a language is nothing new, Apple’s unprecedented step has caused massive excitement and activity for this new language, with a flurry of development and contributions.
In this presentation I would like to explore the current potential of Swift and what’s going to be possible in the future.
I will cover:
Outside of my technical writing work for software projects I have been creating a board game. A board game also requires mechanics to function and players to clearly understand how these mechanics work to use and appreciate fully.
As part of my research for writing game manuals I looked at manuals for furniture, electronics, and cars to see how they explain to users how to setup and use their products.
In this presentation I will look at how the technical writing skills of different industries can learn from each other.
This will include:
And as part of looking at these case studies, the presentation will cover:
And by the end of the presentation I hope that everyone will have learnt a lot from each other and realize that we’re all trying to achieve the same thing(s).
Games have been with us for centuries, from those that emulate battles like Chess and Risk, to the intricate mysteries of Go.
In the past decades the world of boardgames has growing in popularity, breaking into the mainstream with games like Catan. However the industry is generally staunchly traditional in the way it produces and markets it’s ideas.
Until recently.
In this presentation I will look at how digital versions of games, tabletop simulators, app augmented games and kickstarter have changed the world of cardboard and look to the future to see where this may lead.
The battle between Google and Oracle may finally be over, but let’s face it, the relationship between Android developers and Java is still a rocky one.
In this presentation I would like to look at the potential for Android development with a series of alternatives to Java, especially Go, Dart, Kotlin and Swift.
I will introduce the languages, analyze their potential and what is achievable with them, seeing if any of them are viable alternatives to the Java behemoth.
Electron is a fantastic tool for creating cross-platform apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that look and feel relatively native to the hosted Platform. In this presentation I’ll give a quick overview of what’s possible.
An insight look on how to build a print-at-home Chip Shop (offline) board game with printed paper cards (72 products, 76 events and 36 personalities) that let you run a computer company in the 80’s to build your silicon empire. Learn how to turn cards in markdown files as used on the game website into high-quality printable PDFs for a premium pre-boxed or print-yourself card deck version and much more.
In this presentation I’ll be dragging LaTeX out of the past kicking and screaming and be showing that it’s actually kinda cool.
We spend countless hours creating technically amazing projects built upon awesome, cutting edge code. We then promote our project through newsletters, events and social media and await certain success. But nothing happens. Why? Whoops, we forgot to tell anyone how to effectively use our project, all that time waisted. In this presentation I want to draw upon my experience in writing tutorials and technical documentation to help you write clear, concise and usable documentation for your own projects.
If you remember when web sites were all created with plain HTML pages, then you’ll know that CMSs and dynamic web frameworks saved us and solved all our problems. Or did they? In fact, we instead spend a lot of time customising existing code to meet our requirements, grappling with deployments and then whacking caching on top of over-powered servers to get an ounce of speed.
Static Site Generators aim to sit somewhere in the middle and are perfect for semi-dynamic sites and with a little learning, better for content creators.
In this session, Chris will look at an overview of the principles and options for static site generators and deep dive into one or two to explain further how the work and can fit into your projects.
Whilst open sourcing a language is nothing new, there is no denying the popularity of Apple’s new language and this has solidified with their recent move.
In this presentation I would like to explore the new projects created by and with Swift and see where this may lead in the future.
We will look at:
We keep up to date with the latest developments in technologies and tools. We make sure to post pull requests to fix bugs we found in projects. We offer helpful advice in forums to people with coding questions. We propose talks for meetups and conferences to provide insight and inspiration.
All this on top of our day job.
When in the midst of all this activity do we stop to think about our mental or physical health?
The mental stress of sustained periods of high intellectual activity is draining and exhausting. The Physical impact of having such a sedentary job is becoming increasingly recognised. And all those caffeinated and sugar filled drinks we consume to keep going? Yeah, they’re not that good for us either.
In this presentation I will look at quick tips to keep ourselves a little healthier whilst we do what we love. I’m not talking gruelling evenings huffing and puffing at the gym, but manageable and easy advice to whip you into shape.
