Putting the “tech” in technical writer¶
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Description
It is often a myth that developers get to play with more shiny stuff and tools. Over the last few years, a lot of non-tech teams have upped their game and are now actively involved with, and collaborating using the same toolchain as the rest of the technical team.
Coming from organizations where I was primarily writing documentation using tools with often standalone WYSIWYG editors and environments for over 10 years, docs-as-code (particularly writing plain text) has really been a massive change. I suspect I am not the sole occupant of this proverbial boat though. Quite a few tech writers who have made this journey would agree that it is indeed a leap worth taking.
How do they make this transition though? How do they get comfortable with the idea of plain text, command line, and automation?
In my talk, I take the audience through a few ideas and examples (both personal and community sourced) for: a. Looking under the hood (of WYSIWYG tools) b. Learning just enough Git c. Thinking in plain text d. Templates, toolchain and processes e. Faster reviews and builds
- Conference: Write the Docs Portland
- Year: 2021
