Becky Todd

In episode 21, Becky Todd from Atlassian joins us to talk about career growth, leadership, and mentoring. How do you move up to the next level at your company? Does upleveling require a management track, or there other ways to increase your leadership and influence? We also chat about mistakes we've made, what we've learned, ways to increase our influence and visibility both inside and outside corporate walls, why we sometimes back away from persuasion efforts, the balance between autonomy and micromanagement, mentoring strategies and opportunities, and other career-related topics within technical communication. We also look at the Season of Docs as an opportunity for getting involved in open source projects.

In episode 21, Becky Todd from Atlassian joins us to talk about career growth, leadership, and mentoring. How do you move up to the next level at your company? Does upleveling require a management track, or there other ways to increase your leadership and influence? We also chat about mistakes we've made, what we've learned, ways to increase our influence and visibility both inside and outside corporate walls, why we sometimes back away from persuasion efforts, the balance between autonomy and micromanagement, mentoring strategies and opportunities, and other career-related topics within technical communication. We also look at the <a href="https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Season of Docs</a> as an opportunity for getting involved in open source projects.

WTD Episode 21: On career growth, leadership, and mentoring in tech writing, with Becky Todd

Matt Reiner

In episode 20, Matt Reiner from K15t joins us to talk about minimum standards for documentation - what techniques or standards can you put in place to help engineers and other contributors meet the minimum requirement for good tech docs? What essential sections, headings, or topics should you include in templates? And how do you help non-native speakers with grammar issues? We also discuss how tech writers can work with marketing to create honest and interesting writing. There seems to be the feeling that tech writing is dull but accurate and marketing copy is flashy and fluffy - we brainstorm ways technical writers can better align with marketing writers.

WTD Episode 20: Minimum requirements for good tech docs, with Matt Reiner

Jessica Parsons

Jessica Parsons, a documentation engineer from Netlify, joins us for Episode 19 of the WTD Podcast. Jess recently conducted a Static Site Generator workshop at the Australian Write the Docs conference at Melbourne. It was really excellent, and we've been meaning to get Jess on the show for a while to talk shop. In this episode, Jess illuminates the world of static site generators, comparing and contrasting Hugo, Jekyll, Sphinx, Gatsby, and others. Discussions focus on considerations for choosing a static site generator, and how to manage the content they consume, from APIs to Git-tracked markdown files. Headless CMS options like API-driven Strapi and Git-wrapper Netlify CMS make an appearance.

WTD Episode 19: Static site generators, with Jessica Parsons

In episode 18 of the Write the Docs podcast, we discuss the recent Write the Docs Australia 2018 conference held in Melbourne. Jared was an emcee at the event and shares his inside perspective about what made the event so successful. We dive deep into the unconference format, how to instill the Write the Docs brand into the conference experience, how super volunteers can avoid burnout, what sessions stood out, and more. Also, Chris confesses that he has attended about 40 conferences this year, and explains a few reasons why.

WTD Episode 18: Recap and thoughts on Write the Docs Australia 2018

In this Write the Docs podcast episode, we chat with Mark Baker about structured writing, specifically focusing on his new book Structured Writing: Rhetoric and Process. After introducing and defining structured writing, Mark explains the four domains you can add structure: media, document, subject, and management domains. He explains the advantages of working with structure in the subject domain, and why mixing structure across subject and document domains can be inefficient. We also chat about how structured writing connects with SEO and microformats on the semantic web, the limits of structure in Markdown formats, how to implement structure in linking, and more.

In this Write the Docs podcast episode, we chat with Mark Baker about structured writing, specifically focusing on his new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Structured-Writing-Rhetoric-Mark-Baker/dp/1937434567" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Structured Writing: Rhetoric and Process</a>. After introducing and defining structured writing, Mark explains the four domains you can add structure: media, document, subject, and management domains. He explains the advantages of working with structure in the subject domain, and why mixing structure across subject and document domains can be inefficient. We also chat about how structured writing connects with SEO and microformats on the semantic web, the limits of structure in Markdown formats, how to implement structure in linking, and more.

WTD Episode 17: Structured writing &mdash; reasons and approaches

Grammarly

This episode focuses mainly on testing tools. Last month, some rockstar WTD community members spent a few days at the Pronovix offices in Szeged, Hungary, trying to create a series of open-source testing tools. Specifically, they wanted to create a ‘create a container deployable solution that can automatically check docs’. In more blunt terms, a kind of open-source Grammarly, but integrated into deploys and repositories and focused on tech docs. Host Chris Ward and our podcast guest Anett Pozsar from Szeged (pron. Seg-jed) Hungary also participated in the Test-the-Docs hackathon. Anett recently started in her role as a technical writer, so in this episode we also chat about what it's like starting out as a new technical writer. Finally, we transition from testing tools and linters to templates. Structure and templates can be especially helpful for guiding engineers in writing docs.

WTD Episode 16: An open-source Grammarly for tech docs?

After a short summer break, we've returned to the WTD podcast and taken up our mics again to talk about important doc issues. In this episode, we first chat about assumptions we have regarding our users and the value of doing user research. Basing the discussion on Jen Lambourne's talk at WTD Portland 2018, we talk about ways to capture the user perspective and limitations/workarounds for user research within the corporate domain. Next, we chat about an article by Emily January Petersen on the Make-It-Pretty Philosophy, where the roles of tech writers are reduced to grammar and style editing only, without more substantive updates and revisions to content. Finally, we talk about Tom's research project on healing the academic/practitioner divide and how he hopes his conversation posts will bring both sides more closely together.

WTD Episode 15: User research, tech writer stereotypes, and conversations

In this episode, we chat with Carolyn Stransky, a journalist and JavaScript developer living in Berlin, about ways to humanize documentation. We discuss dilemmas with transparency in docs (the balance between honesty and negativity), ways to avoid gendered language (including whether to correct workplace misuse of 'he'), strategies for achieving plain language and clarity (such as by reading your content out loud), the term 'user' and alternatives, how to develop empathy for your audience, why terms like 'simple' and 'easy' are problematic (even in Marketing), tools for identifying insensitivity and complexity in docs (Hemingway, Alex), what makes content sound truly human, and more.

WTD Episode 14: Humanizing your documentation

Postman Founder

Postman

In this episode, we chat with Abhinav Asthana (founder and CEO of Postman) to explore how Postman, a REST client, can be used to create, collaborate, and publish API documentation. If you work with API documentation, you've probably used Postman to make and test API requests. But you can do also a lot more with Postman. You can embed Run in Postman buttons that contain collections of requests that users can load in their own Postman clients (perfect for getting started tutorials). You can collaborate with engineers on the requests and documentation by syncing collections across a team account. And with just a few clicks, you can also publish and host your documentation through Postman, complete with code samples in multiple programming languages. Check out Postman's API Network to see many ways different companies use Postman in their documentation.

WTD Episode 13: Postman for API development and docs &mdash; Interview with Postman Founder

In this episode, we chat with Eric Holscher (WTD cofounder) and Mikey Ariel (WTD Europe organizer) about the Write the Docs community itself, including origins, founding ideas, goals, challenges, trends, and roadmaps for the community. We dive specifically into idea of diversity of roles (and the term 'documentarian'), the way open source principles inform the community's core values, balancing individual freedom to contribute on one's own terms with the expectations of the WTD experience, and more.

WTD Episode 12: Founding ideas behind Write the Docs

Podcasts for the Write the Docs community. Mostly focused on tech comm, tech writing, UX, IA, and more.

The topics and discussions are interesting and engaging.

My one suggestion is that they can improve the sound quality and mics they’re using. They often talk over each other or have awkwardly long pauses due to lag and connection issues. 

Otherwise, I’m very glad I found this show.

Great podcast!

Write the Docs Podcast

In this episode, we discuss top technical writing trends for 2017. Chris discusses how more technical writers are interacting with support groups, and even being embedded within support departments. Jared discusses how docs are being planned for earlier in development cycles, as more product managers are seeing the value of docs. Tom talks about how more technical writers are treating documentation as code, and the challenges inherent in developer tools and workflows.

WTD Episode 3: Technical writing trends for 2017

In this episode, we explore where technical writers belong in an organization. Is tech comm best placed within engineering, marketing, product management, or another group? We also talk about strategies for doc navigation, in particular, the merits of inline links and/or sidebar navigation, using a post from Every Page Is Page One as a starting point. Are hierarchical sidebar menus still useful, or are they a relic of the past? Finally, we provide details about the upcoming Write the Docs conference in Portland, and Chris mentions his new book on responsive design.

WTD Episode 5: Where do we belong?

In this episode, we're joined by Ellis Pratt from Cherryleaf to talk about chatbots in documentation. What are chatbots, and how can you incorporate them in your docs to enhance the user experience? Are chatbots the next evolution of wizards? What are some examples of successful chatbots? How does one get started using chatbots in documentation? Are there chatbot services you can leverage inexpensively to try them out? These are some of the questions explored in this podcast.

WTD Episode 9: Chatbots in Documentation

In this episode, we talk about continuous integration strategies for docs (for style, screenshots, and REST calls). We also dive into discussions around docs as code, including how to encourage developer collaboration, how to stay informed about the code updates that developers make, and more.

WTD Episode 4: Continuous Integration and Docs like Code

In this episode, we explore the role of metadata in documentation and how it can be used to classify topics and assist in the discoverability of information. We're joined by special guest Eva Jackolis who explains a strategy for metadata used in German mechanical engineering documentation. We also discuss involving tech writers in UX copy and the challenges inherent in influencing UI copy, product naming, and working with UX designers and product teams.

WTD Episode 6: Metadata and UI copy

In this episode, we talk about what's going on in our lives as documentarians and product owners. Chris talks about challenges in collaborating with reviewers in efficient ways. Google Docs works great for gathering comments, but it isn't so good for storing source code in a manageable format. Also, it seems that every company/client has their own preferred toolchain around reviews, and it's hard to know the best approach to take. Jared talks about the ebbs and flows of managing products in the gambling space, and the challenges around benchmarking, performance testing, and uptime demands for the products he manages, especially during the Melbourne Cup. Tom is excited about the docs-as-code milestone reached at his work, where his team can now build and deploy Jekyll directly from the server through commits to an internal git repo. This publishing efficiency allowed their team to get rid of an old, archaic CMS publishing process that was slowing writers down.

WTD Episode 10: What's going on in our lives as documentarians and product owners

In this episode, we're joined by Beth Aitman to talk about what happened with the Stack Overflow Documentation Beta. What did Stack Overflow try to do with documentation, and why did they abandon the effort? Why did their effort to crowdsource docs fail but succeed so well with forums and niche content? Additionally, we discuss the difficulties of creating good documentation with open source projects. A recent survey found that incomplete or outdated documentation is the number one issue with open source projects. Why? What makes it so difficult to create documentation on an open source project?

WTD Episode 8: Stack Overflow's Documentation Failure and Open Source Challenges

In this podcast, we first explore the flourishing community of technical writers in Poland, discussing why the tech writing scene in Krakow is taking off so quickly and what trends this young tech writing community is embracing. We're joined by special guest Pawal Kowaluk, a Polish tech writer who runs SOAP (a tech comm conference based in Poland). We also talk about automation and robot takeovers of tech writing jobs. How are machine-assisted technologies enhancing or displacing technical writers and their work? Given the increase in automation, is tool expertise becoming more or less essential to thrive as a technical writer?

WTD Episode 7: Let the robots do the work

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