Write the Docs Prague 2014
2014-09-08..2014-09-09
Prague, Czechia
[Write the Docs Prague 2014, Write the Docs Prague 2017, Write the Docs Prague 2020, Write the Docs Prague 2021, Write the Docs Prague 2022]
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Engage or Die: Four Techniques for Writing Indispensible Docs | Kelly O'Brien | 35m |
Four concrete tactics: identify reader needs and trade developer interest for task focus, choose tone deliberately (converted a frightened nontechnical… | ||
| Challenges and approaches taken with the Opera Extension Docs | Shwetank Dixit | 32m |
Opera switches extensions to the Chromium/Blink platform and the docs team rebuilds tutorials rather than rewrite API reference, focusing on concise… | ||
| Advanced Web Typography | Idan Gazit | 42m |
Claim: good web type reduces cognitive load and is now practical. Evidence: browser default is 16px default, fonts render differently across OS rasterizers so… | ||
| Writing multi-language documentation using Sphinx | Markus Zapke-Gründemann | 34m |
Shows a concrete Sphinx workflow: extract strings with sphinx-build -b gettext, produce PO/MO catalogs, use the sphinx-intl extension to automate make gettext… | ||
| Lightning talks - Day 1 | 22m | |
A set of quick practical takeaways: a presentation tool called present (written in Go) actually gets patched to run Python and other scripting languages… | ||
| README Driven Development | Thomas Parisot | 31m |
Argues for writing the README first as a specification so code and tests follow from documented examples, using README first plus Markdown on GitHub issues… | ||
| Search and find. How we made MDN discoverable | Jannis Leidel | 24m |
MDN moves from Google custom search to an in-house system: a Kuma (Django) site serving ~33,000 pages, 900 live demos and edits from ~14,000 contributors while… | ||
| Tone in Documentation | Jessica Rose | 27m |
Argues that tone must state a concrete policy — who is expected to use the docs, what actions are allowed, and how much support will be offered — and shows… | ||
| What I have taught developers about writing | David Hooker | 29m |
Gives four concrete, testable rules for developer writing and shows them applied to a real engineering blog: start with the good stuff, keep it simple, write… | ||
| Designing MkDocs | Tom Christie | 35m |
A minimalist documentation generator that builds static sites from Markdown, written in Python and driven by a single YAML config. It includes a live-reloading… | ||
| Self-Directed Learning Material | Robert Lehmann | 18m |
Clear claims and concrete artifacts matter: collaborative material uses lightweight tools like github pages and simple markdown so contributors actually edit… | ||
| Going from Publican to Read the Docs | Sebastien Goasguen | 27m |
Apache CloudStack moves documentation from DocBook/Publican to reStructuredText, Sphinx and Read the Docs to get real contributions. Migration uses a single… | ||
| Pairing with designers to create a seamless user experience | Christine Burwinkle | 32m |
Designers contribute 100 customer interviews and prototypes; documentation teams add analytics events on UI links and weekly customer visits. Practical… | ||
| Blogging as Non-Traditional Support Documentation | Elizabeth Urello | 23m |
Company blogs and staff-written posts function as low‑cost experiments that produce concrete wins: a Zero to Hero 30‑day challenge raises participant posting… | ||
| Lightning talks - Day 2 | 28m | |
Quick specifics: a five‑minute sketching workflow uses lines and boxes plus paper pens and a wall to iterate cheap ugly ideas before prototyping; error… | ||
| The community wrote my docs! | Fintan Bolton | 19m |
Claim: community docs can become product docs but only with tooling and guardrails. Uses Confluence→DocBook converters (homemade plugin, Scroll DocBook… | ||
| Keeping trust: Testing documentation as part of a continuous integration process | Kristof Van Tomme | 37m |
Proposes two concrete paths: merge executable tests and docs so a failing test flags stale text, or embed machine-readable metadata (using RDFa) to generate… | ||
| Your Personal Tech-Writing Agile Manifesto (or: Scrum is not a 4-character word) | Mikey Ariel | 46m |
Argues concrete ways for documentation to fit agile: use definition of done for tasks, aim to write sprint+1 so UI and tasks publish quickly, and track… | ||
| What I learned writing a lousy tech book | Swizec Teller | 21m |
Writes hands-on d3.js examples, produces 180 pages then gets told to cut 60 pages and rewrites the manuscript multiple times, losing jokes but preserving… | ||
| nothing matches | ||