Write the Docs Australia & India 2020
2020-12-03..2020-12-04
-- online --
who it's for
technical writers, developer experience writers, documentation engineers, content designers, documentation managers, open source contributors, localization engineers
topics
sketchnoting for documentation; markdown reuse snippets; embedding documentation fragments; APIs beyond REST (GraphQL/WebSocket); docs as code workflows; single sourcing markdown; video tutorial production best practices; microcontent and reusable content; in-product contextual help; documentation discoverability techniques; internationalization for docs; collaborative authoring practices
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction and welcome | Swapnil Ogale | 18m |
Conference opens with logistics and concrete community numbers: 850 meetup members, 230 slack members and over 50 events in four years; India community reports… | ||
| 5 Steps towards making sketchnotes | Linette Voller | 05m |
Five concrete steps toward making sketchnotes that actually look good and work: write each word on its own line slowly, draw a box around the words then add… | ||
| State of | Cameron Shorter | 05m |
An open-source effort called good dogs project consolidates scattered best practices into a shared repo, running for about two years with 10 to 20 people… | ||
| Markdown and the art of reuse | Swapnil Ogale | 05m |
Claims a concrete feature: embed markdown snippets that enable reusable content across docs, implemented for Redocly and wired into a GitHub docs as code… | ||
| Embedding documentation content | Eric Holscher | 05m |
A hosted API returns HTML fragments and header lists for any published page so web pages or apps can pull exact doc sections; a small JavaScript widget inserts… | ||
| Sneak peek into the API world outside REST | Ankita Tripathi | 04m |
Claims that REST dominates but there is a practical world beyond it: SOAP for payment gateways and a cited ~60% market share shift to REST, live demos that… | ||
| Data harvesting from liturgy | Anindita Basu | 05m |
Built a simple API from spreadsheet by extracting three repeatable fields per verse — addressee god, poet, meter — and converting the spreadsheet to JSON and… | ||
| Experimenting with video length for great justice | Jared Morgan | 06m |
Claim: slicing hour‑long podcast episodes into shorter, titled segments triples reach. Uses YouTube view counts and comments as measurements, and switches from… | ||
| How (and why) to make awesome video tutorials | Sayraphim Lothian | 36m |
A viral tweet documents demand for how‑to video learning with 17,529 likes, 18,621 retweets and 6,629 replies, and the concrete recommendations are: pick… | ||
| Everyone's a player (in a mid-90s MUD) | Kenzie Woodbridge | 45m |
Applies Bartle’s four player types to docs, mapping sprout turnip kale broccoli to support desk, explorer, achiever and gatekeeper behaviors and recommending… | ||
| The Pains of Composition: How to write your best documentation in a collaborative world | Matt Reiner | 39m |
Claims that collaboration speeds reviews but creates new frictions: moving docs into Confluence collaborative editor and using k-15t apps yields faster… | ||
| Content strategy in practice: a case study | Sam Irons | 42m |
A case study shows a small part‑time team builds an in-product contextual help prototype using an off‑the‑shelf vendor, measures defined KPIs, and sees 15–20%… | ||
| Influence your customer outreach with best practices for internationalization | Vikram Mulay | 30m |
Claims concrete: localized mobile games capture 24% market share 75% revenue, user docs are translated to Japanese and the product supports 23 languages, and… | ||
| A treasure map for the doc – Exploring the discoverability of documentation | Marika Vertzonis | 26m |
Documentation discoverability is the problem being solved with concrete steps: claim that discovery paths cut time to useful content by linking videos blogs… | ||
| An introduction to developer experience, and the role of a documentarian | Chris Ward | 35m |
A d-x-p-o-s-e livestream shows 45–60 minute experiments building developer-focused projects and records concrete failures and fixes: form-gated downloads and… | ||
| Overcoming the Plight of Lone Writers | Ankita Tripathi | 36m |
Survey shows 34% of respondents work as lone writers, so the concrete fixes matter: build a company style guide, a public process document, and a tracking… | ||
| Legacy content from various perspectives | Marcelina Haftka | 32m |
Three concrete paths appear: destroy and rebuild when budget allows; review and update but account for translation costs because small source edits trigger… | ||
| 5 things I learned from my first open source contribution | Andrea Szöllössi | 38m |
A project with over 25,000 users uses Middleman where empty markdown image brackets become filename alt text, producing unhelpful strings like image001. The… | ||
| Microcontent: Designing & Developing Reusable Content | Scott DeLoach | 40m |
Claim: create short, self-contained answer blocks that search engines and products actually surface. Tools mentioned: MadCap Flare and Adobe RoboHelp… | ||
| When Agile Fails: Working on Large Documentation Projects | Lana Brindley | 39m |
A large SUSE docs suite of 30,000 lines of AsciiDoc spread across 10 books accumulates structural debt that Agile sprints won't fix; a proof‑of‑concept during… | ||
| Onboard yourself: How to get set-up for success in a new role | Michael Belton | 39m |
Five concrete steps emerge: listen to get the context, audit the docs and interview users to form observations and pain points, embrace feedback and show work… | ||
| Little words, big ideas: How to write microcopy that works | Yael Ben David | 42m |
Microcopy changes move metrics and cut costs with concrete tactics: swapping “book a room” for check availability lifts engagement 17%; adding “applicants who… | ||
| Storytelling for Technical Products - What We Can Learn from | Akshay Iyer | 40m |
Argues that specific product stories drive adoption not vague explanations and shows it with Clarity: a seven‑video Clarity getting started series voiced by a… | ||
| nothing matches | ||