I'd Rather Be Writing Podcast
Topics and issues for technical writers. Improve your technical communication role. Empower users with better documentation.
- Update frequency
- every 22 days
- Average duration
- 41 minutes
- Episodes
- 323
- Years Active
- 2006 - 2025
Review of Andrew Etter's ebook on Modern Technical Writing
In Modern Technical Writing: An Introduction to Software Documentation, which is an e-book you can read on your Kindle, Andrew Etter argues for a model of technical writing that involves lightweight …
00:10:24 |
Tue 26 Jul 2016
Applying Tim Ferriss' 4-hour work week rules to tech comm projects
Principles in Tim Ferriss' book The 4-Hour Work Week can be applied to tech comm projects. By focusing on the 20% of tasks that result in 80% of the results, limiting your focus to two mission critic…
00:09:34 |
Wed 20 Jul 2016
Thoughts on Transforming Documentation Processes presentation at WTD: Evaluating the trend to treat documentation as code
At the last Write the Docs conference, Riona Macnamara, a tech writer working on internal developer documentation at Google, moderated a panel about transforming your documentation process. The panel…
00:09:56 |
Fri 15 Jul 2016
Context switching and efficiency -- Kanban to the rescue?
In Become More Productive and Motivated, Mattias Sander provides a well-written overview of Lean, which is a strategy for eliminating waste and focusing more on customer value. What interests me most…
00:07:09 |
Wed 13 Jul 2016
Why Programming Sucks and the fallacy of documentation in the context of code chaos
Yesterday on Write the Docs, someone shared an article titled Programming Sucks, by Peter Welch. More than just a developer monologue, this article seems to hit on universal truths about programming,…
00:07:28 |
Tue 12 Jul 2016
Thoughts on Documentation Avoidance for Programmers
This past week on the Write the Docs forum, there was a bit of discussion around a recent presentation titled Documentation Avoidance for Programmers. In the presentation, Peter Hilton lays out a ser…
00:06:00 |
Sat 09 Jul 2016
Presentation recording: Move Fast And ... Document Things? Lessons learned in building documentation culture at a startup, by Ruthie Bendor
During the May WTD meetup, Ruthie Bendor, a web engineer, gave a presentation titled Move Fast And ... Document Things? Lessons learned in building documentation culture at a startup. This post conta…
00:35:50 |
Sun 22 May 2016
Recording of 'Two great teams that work great together: Bridging the gap between documentation and support,' by Neal Kaplan at Write the Docs
We recently hosted a Write the Docs meetup in Redwood City with a couple of excellent presenters. Below is the recording of Neal Kaplan's presentation. I also explain a bit about my new lapel mic and…
Sun 22 May 2016
Recording of STC-SV presentation on the Shape of a Modern Technical Communication Organization, by Sanborn Hodgkins
Sanborn Hodgkins gave a presentation to the STC Silicon Valley chapter called <i>Shape of a Modern Technical Communication Organization</i> on April 18. In the presentation, she highlights the variet…
01:01:14 |
Sun 24 Apr 2016
Recording of WTD presentation on Video Documentation, by Alicia Avrach
Alicia Avrach, a content strategist at ThoughtSpot, gave a presentation about video documentation at a recent Write the Docs San Francisco meetup. In this presentation, Alicia covers all the aspects …
01:16:37 |
Sun 24 Apr 2016
Spec-driven Development with RAML -- presentation by Michael Stowe to STC Silicon Valley chapter
In October 2015 Michael Stowe presented to the STC Silicon Valley chapter about spec-driven development, with a demo of RAML, which is an API specification similar to Swagger. Pretty much everyone wh…
Sat 09 Jan 2016
Recording of Creating Documentation for Startups: Panel Discussion -- Write the Docs San Francisco
The following is a recording of a panel discussion at a Write the Docs San Francisco meetup held Dec 17, 2015. The topic is on creating documentation for startups.
Tue 22 Dec 2015
Recording of Version Control, Writers, and Worfklows by Richard Mateosian
You can watch the recording of Richard Mateosian's November 2015 presentation to the STC Silicon Valley about version control, writers, and workflows.
01:03:31 |
Thu 17 Dec 2015
Podcast: Spec-driven Development of REST APIs, with a focus on RAML -- interview with Michael Stowe
Spec-driven development is an approach to developing REST APIs by first describing and prototyping the API through a specification file (such as RAML or Swagger), and then coding the API. The spec no…
00:45:48 |
Mon 12 Oct 2015
Udemy podcast (with me) and infographic on technical writing
Recently I was interviewed by Alex Bankoff from Udemy for a podcast on the field of technical writing. The Udemy team also created an infographic about the topics covered in the podcast.
00:38:46 |
Tue 06 Oct 2015
Podcast: The divide between academics and practitioners -- Interview with Lisa Meloncon
In this podcast, I talk with Lisa Meloncon, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnatti, about the academic-practitioner divide.
00:57:01 |
Mon 10 Aug 2015
Podcast: How do design, length, and relevance affect how people use API reference docs -- interview with Bob Watson
Bob Watson recently finished a PhD with research that examined how the design and content of API reference docs affects the user's performance. In this podcast, I talk with Bob about his findings and…
00:52:21 |
Thu 30 Jul 2015
The key to writing good documentation: Testing your instructions
Writing good documentation requires you to set up a test environment and test all of your instructions -- testing the instructions yourself and against a user. Testing instructions can be time consum…
00:23:44 |
Tue 07 Jul 2015
API Documentation presentation to East Bay STC chapter -- slides and recording
The other week I gave a introductory presentation on API documentation to the East Bay STC chapter in Silicon Valley. Here are the slides and recording.
01:00:50 |
Sat 16 May 2015
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