Events

I have spoken at and reported on hundreds of events around the world.

PyCon Slovakia

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies, Ilkovičova 2, 842 16 Bratislava 4

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
https://www.pycon.sk/2017/speakers/

Agile the Docs

Monday, 5 December 2016

BIS Conference Centre, 1 Victoria Street, SW1H 0ET, London

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.
https://www.meetup.com/Write-The-Docs-London/events/234913157/

Web Summit

Monday, 7 November 2016

MEO Arena, Lisbon

I'll be attending Europe's pre-eminent event for Startups. I'll be keen to meet interesting products, projects and people.

Software Freedom Kosovo

Friday, 21 October 2016

RIT Kosovo, Shpetim Robaj Str, 10000 Prishtina, Kosovo

In this presentation I'll examine how various diverse sources have taught me how to write better technical documentation.
https://sfk.flossk.org/sfk16/

Spiel 2016

Thursday, 13 October 2016

Messe, Essen

I will be play testing and promoting my board game [Chip Shop](https://chipshopgame.com) at the infamous [Spiel messe in Essen](https://www.merz-verlag-en.com/). Drop by stall A109 in hall 4 and say hello!

LinuxCon Europe

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

Potsdam I/II

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
https://sched.co/7o8w

Voxxed Days Belgrade

Thursday, 29 September 2016

Bel Expo Centar

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: - What can be accomplished with 'open' Swift - What's missing from 'open' Swift - Back end Swift and MVC - Swift on non-Mac desktops - Swift on non-iOS mobile devices - Extending Swift - What's next?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYdDOHVxK0

Write The Docs EU

Monday, 19 September 2016

Prague, Czech Republic

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: - Game Manuals and tutorials - Assembly instructions (e.g. those wonderful Ikea inserts) - Service Manuals for electronics And as part of looking at these case studies, the presentation will cover: - Iconography vs Text - The limitations of updating print manuals - Reducing language and cultural colloquialisms - Identifying what needs to be said and what doesn't 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).
https://www.writethedocs.org/conf/eu/2016/speakers/#speaker-chris-ward

Ignite Berlin

Monday, 12 September 2016

RADIALSYSTEM V, Holzmarktstraße 33, 10243 Berlin

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.
https://igniteberlin.com/

DroidCon Greece

Friday, 8 July 2016

Noesis Thessaloniki Science Center & Technology Museum, 6ο χλμ. Οδού ς Τ.Θ. 60330 Θέρμη, Thermi 570 01, Greece

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.
https://2016.droidcon.gr/speakers/chris-ward/

Vienna.html

Tuesday, 28 June 2016

sektor5 Coworking Café+Lobby, Siebenbrunnengasse 44, Wien 5

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.
https://viennahtml.github.io/

Oscal 16

Sunday, 15 May 2016

Tirana, Albania

In this presentation I'll be dragging LaTeX out of the past kicking and screaming and be showing that it's actually kinda cool.
https://oscal.openlabs.cc/

OpenTech Summit

Thursday, 5 May 2016

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.
https://opentechsummit.net/programm/#OT2-10

DevWeek London

Thursday, 21 April 2016

Central Hall Westminster, London

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.
https://devweek.com/agenda#back-to-the-future-with-static-site-generators

MDevCon

Friday, 18 March 2016

Tuschinski Theater(near Rembrandt Plein), Reguliersbreestraat 26, Amsterdam.

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: - What can be accomplished with 'open' Swift - What's missing from 'open' Swift - Back end Swift - Swift on Linux - Swift on Windows - Will Swift on Android be possible - What's next for Swift?
https://mdevcon.com/posts/2016/02/01/chris-ward/

Voxxed Days Vienna

Monday, 29 February 2016

Cineplex, Wienerbergstraße 11, 1100, Vienna, Austria

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.
https://voxxeddays.com/vienna/

Poor and Literate Short Stories

Saturday, 20 February 2016

Poor & Literate, Kopenhagener Straße 77, 10437 Berlin

I will be reading the intro from my '[One Day the World Ended](onedaytheworldended.com)' project at this cosy little bookshop.
https://www.facebook.com/events/498210087018059/

Fosdem 2016

Saturday, 30 January 2016

H.2215 (Ferrer), Fosdem

Programming a Board game? Why would you want to do that? In this lightening talk I will take as few turns as possible to explain why and how I decided to program a board game. Yes, a physical, printed board game. We will look at wondrous technologies such as Markdown, Pandoc, LaTeX and chaining them all together to create a multi-format generating workflow and (hopefully) win.
https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/board_game/

Art Game meetup

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

Saftladen, Waldemarstr. 37, 10999, Berlin

This is a meet-up group for people interested in games as audio/visual interactive art, with less focus on mechanics or gamer culture. I will be speaking about the ongoing design process of creating the Chip Shop Board game using a computer coding framework.

up.front Berlin

Tuesday, 8 December 2015

_(and how tools written in obscure programming languages helped)_ Just over a year ago I had a great idea for a boardgame where players get to run a computer company in 1980s America. As a programmer of over 15 years, it seemed obvious to me to code the game and this led me down a meandering path of obscure toolsets where I discovered some amazing gems. In this presentation I want to introduce you to the why and how I did this, what I discovered, how it can help you and the digital future of cardboard.
https://up.front.ug/2015/12/08/meetup/