A basic intro to JQuery Mobile for Cross Platform developers.

A basic intro to PhoneGap and Titanium Appcelerator for web developers.

An overview of blogging with Drupal and moving from other platforms.

An overview of how to use CiviCRM with Wordpress.

I love the works and worlds of HP Lovecraft, here’s a talk I have done occasionally, it’s usually followed by a reading.

A history and analysis of the Godfather of cosmic horror, HP Lovecraft.

How Drupal handles security and privacy.

The various methods to customise a CiviCRM installation to meet your needs and requirements.

Your view of the world is wrong. In this session we learn how and why many conventional maps are incorrect and why it may or may not matter. We also look at some of the sad, gory and checkered stories that have lead to what we know about the world. Or think we know…

Advice, tools and tips for tweaking, testing and debuging your mobile apps.

Learn how to utilise Drupal to power your mobile app or website.

When running an organisation or service that is reliant on the efforts of volunteers, members or a community to run and sustain itself, it can be hard to attract recruits and really tell them what you need help with. Many make it difficult to access information and get involved, with technology making accessing this information easier and easier, why not take advantage of it.

What’s the workflow for DevOps in Drupal? We look at tools, tips and examples.

Why Melbournians should come to DrupalSouth.

My MelbJS Feb 2014 talk on how CMSs (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and Expression Engine) use JavaScript.

I love the works and worlds of HP Lovecraft, here’s a talk I have done occasionally, it’s usually followed by a reading.

What are the new paradigms for User Experience with the new wave of always listening devices such as Siri and Google now?

Scale Your Database like Your Application: Crate is a distributed database that allows you to create a flexible and scalable backend suited to a wide variety of purposes. Read more

How Crate integrates with Amazon Web Services

Crate is a distributed database that allows you to create a flexible and scalable backend suited to a wide variety of purposes.

What other creative endeavours use the concept of ‘open source’?

In this talk we’ll focus on the use of Crate alongside Weave in Docker containers, the technical challenges, best practices learned, and getting a simple web application running alongside it. You’ll learn about the reasons why Crate.IO is building “yet another NoSQL database” and why it’s unique and important when running containerized applications.

Crate.IO have made a fully open source distributed SQL database that offers a wide variety of features behind a standard SQL Interface. Perfect for the ever changing needs of IoT, Chris will show you why we decided to create the database, how it fits into the database landscape and how to use it.

In this talk we’ll focus on the use of Crate alongside Weave in Docker containers, the technical challenges, best practices learned, and getting a simple web application running alongside it. You’ll learn about the reasons why Crate.IO is building “yet another NoSQL database” and why it’s unique and important when running containerized applications.

In this talk we’ll focus on the use of Crate alongside Weave in Docker containers, the technical challenges, best practices learned, and getting a big data application running alongside it.

In this short presentation I gave an overview of what Developer Advocates are and what we do.

In this short presentation I gave an overview of the development and build process behind the Chip Shop boardgame.

Read more

Crate is a distributed database that allows you to create a flexible and scalable backend suited to a wide variety of purposes. By deploying and managing your Crate Cluster using Docker, you benefit from simple scalable capacity, resilience and portability, no matter how complex or large your application becomes.

Whilst not a part of the core documentation of projects, presentations and delivering them to the public are an essential part of spreading the word about what you do.

The single node backend is dead. A single instance of a database is no longer sufficiently available, resilient or elastic to cope with the quantities and changing requirements of data that modern applications demand.

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.

Apache Mesos is a fantastic tool for abstracting CPU, memory, storage, and other compute resources away from machines (physical or virtual). Alongside these features is Mesos-DNS, which provides service discovery for all applications and services running in a Mesos cluster. These features combined lets you program against your datacenter like it’s a single pool of resources, a useful tool when building highly scalable applications stacks.

In this presentation we revisit an infamous talk from Strata conference in 2012. We will look at importing, querying and analyzing the millions of events generated from one of the internet’s most popular tools, GitHub.

In this presentation we will look the fact that in large scale and complex web applications the single node backend is now dead or dying.

The single node backend is now dead or dying, let’s look at the future.

Using Crate a distributed database (Crate has a NoSQL base but is queried in SQL) as an explicit example Chris will show the theory and practice behind their component architecture, along with some basic but extremely cool queries to show what’s possible with it. He will demonstrate the basic practicals of querying and coding for Crate using the gitHub archive.

Modern applications store a lot data and demand high availability of access to it. To cope with this increasing need, developers have long struggled with scaling, sharding and synchronizing multiple instances of traditional databases.

The single node backend is dying or dead. A single instance of a database is no longer sufficiently available, resilient or elastic to cope with the quantities and changing requirements of data that modern applications demand. A single point of failure is no longer an option.

(and how tools written in obscure programming languages helped)

Jekyll is an awesome static site generator written in Ruby. It’s designed with simplicity in mind, but can be made more extensive and powerful by creating plugins and leveraging existing ruby gems.

This is a meet-up group for people interested in games as audio/visual interactive art, with less focus on mechanics or gamer culture.

Programming a Board game? Why would you want to do that?

How digital games are influencing board games and vice versa. I will discuss the numerous ways that board games are joining the digital era.

I will be reading the intro from my ‘One Day the World Ended’ project at this cosy little bookshop.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this presentation I’ll be dragging LaTeX out of the past kicking and screaming and be showing that it’s actually kinda cool.

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.

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.

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.

Games have been with us for centuries, from those that emulate battles like Chess and Risk, to the intricate mysteries of Go.

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.

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.

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?

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!

In this presentation I’ll examine how various diverse sources have taught me how to write better technical documentation.

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

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’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.

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?

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

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.

Games have been with us for centuries, from those that emulate battles like Chess and Risk, to the intricate mysteries of Go.

Cate will be speaking about how technology is increasingly impinging on every corner of our lives, including our sex lives.

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?

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.

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.

Documentation is essential for potential users to understand your awesome coding efforts.

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

I am back in beautiful Nürnberg and it’s developer week to give another installment of my documentation for developers talk.

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

In this presentation I will explore other ways to communicate concepts beyond words to show that documentation needn’t just be about technical writing.

As programmers, designers, writers and those who pursue ‘creative’ pursuits we consider ourselves mostly immune to the predicted forthcoming robot invasion of our jobs.

As programmers, designers, writers and those who pursue ‘creative’ pursuits we consider ourselves mostly immune to the predicted forthcoming robot invasion of our jobs.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I will be discussing linting your documentation. More to follow.

Backend/frontend developers, product owners, product managers, UX experts in Germany! If you’re planning to participate in the Bosch ConnectedExperience (BCX) two-day Internet of Things (IoT) hackathon, then also mark your calendar to attend the “Investor Tea Time Pitch” which will be hosted by Robert Bosch Venture Capital. You’ll get to see selected IoT startups pitch their projects to invited investors and then you’ll also be able to network with those investors and startups.

Bosch ConnectedWorld’s purpose is to provide the inspiration, education, and connections you need to thrive in IoT. This February, we will host more than 140 speakers on four stages presenting IoT trends and implementations in front of more than 3,500 conference and hackathon participants.

I will be discussing ethics in design. More to follow.

We’ll be in Barcelona from February 25 to January 1 and available for interviews, appointments, parties etc.

My first ever SXSW! I am super excited and looking forward to hearing amazing presentations, enjoying warmer weather, and… BBQ 😋.

I’m visiting wonderful New Orleans for the glorious Collision Conf, I’m sure there will be a lot of fun to be had and I hope to see you there.

I’m attending the preeminent conference for documenentarians in the US, I hope meet you there and talk about all sorts of interesting topics.

I’ll be attending the Katapult Future fest in Oslo to what we in the tech industry can do to help the public like and trust us again. I’ll also appear on a panel or two.

I’ll be on the beautiful island of Mauritius to present on this new documentation tool I’ve been experimenting with and how you can use it for your projects.

Both event stores and blockchain offer technology that creates a constantly appending log of immutable data, so how are they different? In this presentation I’ll be on the beautiful island of Mauritius to take a look.

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.

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 year I’ll be at the UK games expo purely for fun, but always happy to talk games, technology, storytelling and play a game or two with you.

At this one day event I’ll give a short presentation on my advice for starting and maintaining a freelance career as a technical writer.

We’re finally visiting Login and Vilinus to see what the Lithuanian tech and startup scene has to offer. This trip is kindly supported by Telesoftas.

The conference on everything related to governance, collaboration, legal and economics within the scope of FOSS.

This time around for Tech Open Air, Chris is flying solo to hear from a whole bunch of amazing ideas and of course attempt to attend as many side events as possible.

At this evening meetup I’ll give a short presentation Docfx, a static site documentation tool from Microsoft.

A blockchain conference purely for makers and creators, sounds intriguing!

Discussions on various aspects of a decentralised future.

At this one day event I’ll give a short presentation on my advice for starting and maintaining a freelance career as a technical writer.

Chris investigates the wonderful world of African tech at Afrolynk 2018. A conference where entrepreneurs, accelerators, policy makers, chambers of commerce, and VCs within the African /European tech ecosystems have the opportunity to get valuable insights from each other!

Chris and cate are back at IFA, the world largest consumer electronics show to see what crazy ideas the world is working on.

Chris heads to Dezentral, which aims to be an inclusive blockchain conference by bringing newcomers, builders and longtime hodlers from all over the world together to Berlin for a day full of immersion.

I’m back at Write the Docs in Prague again, but this time handling social media for the event.

Chris and Cate attend high-level business and political discussions on 5G global deployment, including on how to turn visions into real business models, as well as the four key vertical markets which could have the biggest benefits from the introduction of 5G – Smart City, Smart Mobility, Smart Healthcare and Industry 4.0. The Forum will also include the latest 5G technology presentations. A two-day agenda at the heart of the Baltics will bring together up to 1000 attendees - European policymakers, government officials, business leaders, investors, industry experts, start-ups and academic representatives, including 60+ senior speakers from Europe, Asia, and the USA.

IT Arena takes place on 28-30 September in 2018 (2 conference days at the stadium and 1 day with meetups in the historical city center) and Chris is back to see what Ukranian entrepreneurs are working on.

Chris delivers a Q&A and workshop on pitching your ideas to the press.

Chris delivers a workshop drawing from his experience as a technical writer to explain how to explain complex ideas clearly and effectively.

As a lover of open source software and communities, Chris is attending this one day event to discuss how we keep our communities supplied with what they need.

Chris visits “crypto island” to discover more about Blockchain on this small European nation.

Chris and Cate are back at Europe’s pre-eminent event for Startups. We’re keen to meet interesting products, projects and people.

API The Docs is an event for tech writers, API developers, product owners and developer evangelists who embrace documentation as a crucial aspect of a great developer experience. The conference is a great opportunity to share and discuss the latest best practices, strategies and new trends relevant to API documentation and developer portals!

Chris joins the people building and operating open infrastructure at the OpenStack summit. With over 200 sessions and workshops on Container Infrastructure, CI/CD, Telecom + NFV, Public Cloud, Private & Hybrid Cloud and members of open source communities like Kubernetes, Docker, OPNFV, Ansible, Ceph, ONAP, Open vSwitch, and OpenStack.

Chris represents the Kauri project at Revision Berlin to host a discussion on decentralised information for technology projects.

Chris represents the Kauri project at Codemotion Berlin to show enthusiastic developers and writers how to contribute their Ethereum knowledge to the platform.

Chris represents the Event Store at DDD Europe to show enthusiastic developers the concepts of event sourcing with Event Store.

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

Chris represents the Kauri project at ETHDenver to show enthusiastic developers and writers how to contribute their Ethereum knowledge to the platform.