Industry
Nothing gold can stay
This month marks the end of two organizations that were really important to me, and I want to tell you about them. Alterconf Alterconf was a conference series that happened all over the world. The organizing spirit was Ashe Dryden. She took all her experience with the tech industry, gaming, and conferences, and used it…
Our tools shape our worldview, or Least-bad Confluence techniques
If you have been in a conference open space with me, you know that I make a terrible yuck face whenever you ask me to talk about working with Confluence. I have yet to work with an instance of Confluence that didn’t make my soul hurt. But it’s not really the technology’s fault if I…
Think Globally, Sponsor Locally
Possibly the most exciting thing about my new job as Developer Advocate (there are so many!) is that I don’t have to scramble and ask conferences to fund me anymore. That means that speaker funds can go to the next generation of up-and-coming speakers, independents, and folks who don’t get paid to go to conferences.…
Is this the gate you want to keep?
Today on Twitter, I said: I really want everyone to stop conflating coding skill with technical skill. Tech is so much bigger than code. Or it could be. — Heidi @DevOpsDaysYVR (@wiredferret) August 16, 2017 That’s a lot of response for me. Like “Livetweeting @kelseyhightower” levels of reaction. So let’s stop and talk about that…
Retrograde tooling
We've reached a tipping point in technical writing, and we need to deal with it. The future is not going to involve producing documents, it's going to be producing seamlessly integrated content in and around products, and that means we need to change our expectations around tooling. This is going to hurt, but hopefully in…
Why on earth would developers WANT to write documentation?
This week I was at DevOpsDays Minneapolis, which was an amazing, warm, and inclusive event. There were at least three open spaces on documentation, communication, and related problems, and I didn’t propose any of them! The question the devops world keeps asking, over and over again is, How do I get developers to write anything?…
New job title: Developer Advocate
I've had a lot of job titles in my career: Technical Writing Intern Queen of Documentation (It was 2000, OK?) Technical Writer I, II, III Technical Communicator Senior Technical Writer Technical Writing Consultant Documentation Architect Documentation Mercenary You might notice a theme there. I've been a technical writer for a lot of different companies, because…
Software and pink collars
Yesterday, I said this: The real reasons we don't have docs/ux/pm bootcamps/code schools/hack days: 1) They're coded as feminine2) They pay less Code patriarchy. — Heidi @DevOpsDaysYVR (@wiredferret) July 4, 2017 And I want to come back and address it in a bit more depth, because someone called it “a bold statement”, and it is,…
Becoming a welcoming open source project, Mentoring Branch
Cate Huston (@catehstn) asked what we could do that would get us from “open source” on a project to “welcoming source”. Codes of conduct, good newbie issues and good onboarding were her initial suggestions, and I said that a good project would also have a really clear goal, because one of my consistent frustrations with…
The Cardinal Virtues? of Technical Writing
First, a disclaimer: Medium served me this article, but it’s a year old. Weird. Nonetheless, I have things to say about the content. The Virtues of Technical Writing, by a pseudonymous writer Introduction They are gleaned from a Bachelor of Science degree in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota’s Writing Studies Department,…
Upcoming appearances
Velocity Berlin
Minneapolis DevOps Meetup
DeliveryConf