Events

This year at Fosdem I'm helping organise the Documentation tooling developer room, so drop on by.

Are you into APIs? Then you should be at API Days Paris and I'd love to meet with you to talk about planning and documenting this glue of modern applications.

I will be reading a new piece of short fiction on the subject of 'Dead of Winter'.

I'll be at the venerable CCC this year, possibly running a documentation assembly, watch this space for details.

I'm back at Finovate for the first time in 3 years, and this time in Dubai. I'd love to hear about what you're working on.

Developers of voice and chat assistants are crying out for good writers to help them create the conversational interfaces of the present and future. In this talk, I will introduce what constitutes a 'good' conversational experience and how we, as writers, can benefit from this trend. This will include advice on tone, variety of language, setting and checking user context, testing interfaces, presenting choice and much more.

As programmers, designers, writers and those who pursue 'creative' pursuits we consider ourselves mostly immune to the predicted forthcoming robot invasion of our jobs. But should we be so confident? A recent tool released to tell you the percentage chance of robots taking your job set the percentage at 89% for technical writers. Scary news. In this presentation I will take a forward look at the ways that our roles may change and what we can do about it, covering topics such as: - Automatic writing and code generation. - Outsourcing and undercutting. - The 'devaluation' of programming knowledge. - New Luddites and the rejection of technology. I promise to make you smile along the way 😁.

As programmers, designers, writers and those who pursue 'creative' pursuits we consider ourselves mostly immune to the predicted forthcoming robot invasion of our jobs. But should we be so confident? A recent tool released to tell you the percentage chance of robots taking your job set the percentage at 89% for technical writers. Scary news. In this presentation I will take a forward look at the ways that our roles may change and what we can do about it, covering topics such as: - Automatic writing and code generation. - Outsourcing and undercutting. - The 'devaluation' of programming knowledge. - New Luddites and the rejection of technology. I promise to make you smile along the way 😁.

In this presentation I will explore other ways to communicate concepts beyond words to show that documentation needn't just be about technical writing. In the first part of the presentation I will briefly cover theories and principles behind forms of communication and what documentarians can learn from them. Topics such as: - Portraying meaning in images: Iconography, maps, manuals - Non-verbal conversation: Body language, ways of speaking - Fidelity: Sketch notes, simplicity, style During each of these topics I will present in the style of the topic, so expect something a little different. In the second practical part of the presentation I will take elements of the theory and applying them practically. I will start by looking at screenshots and diagrams. When and how to use them, what they should show, and how to manage them. Then I'll cover taking screenshots to the next level with animated gifs and screen recordings that show clear user flows and expected results. Finally in this part of the presentation I will cover interactive documentation, and the options for allowing readers to directly manipulate and experiment with documentation and directly see inputs and outputs. In summary, our work typically appears on one of the most dynamic platforms (the web) that has ever existed, let's all do more with it!

Chris is talking about sound quality and editing out echoes. Especially useful in Berlin Altbaus!

_I am back in beautiful Nürnberg and it's developer week to give another installment of my documentation for developers talk_. 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: - Why write documentation? - Explaining your point and motivation - Creating context and meaning - Writing clear copy - Creating meaningful examples and tutorials - Documentation systems and formats - Making documentation part of build processes - Testing Docs - Versioning of Docs and maintaining consistency

Whilst at Developer Week in Nürnberg I'll be at their "Ask the Experts" community night, helping you understand how to explain complex topics.

Documentation is essential for potential users to understand your awesome coding efforts. But I know that you'd rather get back to coding as soon as possible, so how about automating as much of your documentation as possible? In this presentation I will show you how to automate some of the repetitive tasks involved in documentation and make your colleagues jealous.

If you're at the Pioneers festival in wonderful Vienna, I want to hear from you! Let's share a coffee and a slice of strudel and tell me what you're working on.

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: - Why write documentation? - Explaining your point and motivation - Creating context and meaning - Writing clear copy - Creating meaningful examples and tutorials - Documentation systems and formats - Making documentation part of build processes - Testing Docs - Versioning of Docs

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.