Moving from passive to reactive documentation -- recording of presentation by Greg Koberger, ReadMe.com founder

The following is a recording of a presentation about passive versus reactive documentation by Greg Koberger, developer and designer for ReadMe.com, a slick new REST API documentation tool. Greg gave this presentation at the STC Silicon Valley chapter meeting on January 12, 2015 in Santa Clara, California. (He gave a similar presentation to a Write the Docs meetup group in San Francisco.) Listen here: You can view the sl...

Most important factor in APIs is complete and accurate documentation

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

API doc survey: Do engineers write API doc in the source code?

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

API doc survey: How much of your doc process is automated?

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

Several REST API tutorials using the EventBrite, Klout, and Flickr APIs

In preparation for my upcoming API workshop at TC Camp, I created several REST API tutorials. These tutorials walk through the process of calling and endpoint and displaying parts of the response on a web page. Here are the tutorials: EventBrite example Klout score example Aeris Weather example Flickr example If you feel like walking through them, trying them out, and giving me feedback, that would be helpful. I chose 3 ...

Experimenting with Jekyll for tech comm

Today I had the opportunity to explore Jekyll a bit more. Jekyll is a static site generator that helps you build websites quickly. The sites can be blog sites or regular sites (or documentation sites). However they're used, there's definitely a trend toward static site generators over database-driven sites. Seven years ago, online CMS platforms backed by databases were all the rage. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Alfresco, Blogger, Typepad we...

API doc survey: Most challenging aspect of API documentation

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

Jan 12 Silicon Valley STC meeting: Passive vs. reactive doc + readme.com

If you're in the San Francisco Bay area (near Santa Clara), come join us Monday, January 12 at around 7pm for a presentation by Greg Koberger on passive versus reactive documentation, plus a demo of readme.com docs, which is a new cloud platform for REST API documentation that is extremely well-designed. I saw Greg present at a Write the Docs meeting a few months ago and was impressed. He said he is designer who is obsessed about technica...

Question: How do I add my DITA content in Confluence for SME review?

Someone recently asked me: I am using DITA with structured Frame and Tech Comm Suite. Do you know the best output to use so the docs can be displayed in Confluence? The SMEs want to proofread in Confluence and use it for a knowledge base. Ideally, I'd like to output from DITA or Robohelp and then just upload to Confluence. Great question! Mixing DITA and Confluence is a major challenge. I noted in my API doc survey that about a third of p...

Podcast: Unifying the API doc publishing toolchain, with Mark Baker

Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Mark Baker from Every Page Is Page One about unifying the API doc publishing toolchain. Here are some questions I ask Mark during the podcast: What kinds of API docs pose challenges with the tool chain? Do API reference docs need to be separate from other docs? How do you integrate API reference with non-API reference info? How do you extract source code comments from Java or C+...

API doc survey result: How to learn what you need to know?

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

API doc survey result: How do you get the source files that contain code comments?

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

API doc survey result: Automating REST API documentation

API documentation survey 1.0 I need your responses to my API Documentation Survey 1.1 API doc survey: The most popular type of APIs that technical writers document 1.2 API doc survey: The most common programming languages tech writers know ...

Podcast: Automating REST API documentation, with Peter Gruenbaum

Listen here: In this podcast, Peter Gruenbaum talks about automating REST API documentation. Here are a few questions I asked Peter during the podcast: What do people mean when they use the term "automated documentation"? Is automated documentation preferable to manual documentation? Why is it more difficult to automate REST API documentation than it is with platform API documentation? What are some tools used to autom...

New cost-per-click feature for advertising on I'd Rather Be Writing During 2015

I usually renew advertising on I'd Rather Be Writing at the beginning of the year. I just updated my Advertising page with more details. This year I'm hoping to try something new. In the past, I've only done advertising based on the number of impressions. That is, each time my site loads, an ad appears and makes an impression for the year. Over the course of 2014, there were about 588,000 impressions (I equate each page load with one impr...