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2023 archives

  1. Book review: Understanding Girls with ADHD: How They Feel and Why They Do What They Do

  2. Etto, a new AI co-pilot for Heretto — Q&A with Casey Jordan

  3. Podcast: Notes and themes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

  4. Webinar recording: Experiments and use cases for AI from a tech writer’s perspective

  5. 30+ ways I’m using AI in everyday writing life as a technical writer, blogger, and curious human

  6. Podcast: The evolution of podcasting, with Ed Marsh

  7. Webinar: Let's talk API docs: a discussion about issues impacting documentation for APIs

  8. Podcast: Tech writing and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with Dan Grabski

  9. You've heard of 'Docs as code' -- Now get ready for 'Code as docs': Q&A with Speakeasy

  10. Doing research with AI tools -- avoiding the trap of fabricated URLs

  11. Notes for Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality

  12. Movemate standing board review — fixing your back, legs from sedentary decline from a tech job

  13. My experience trying to write original, full-length human-sounding articles using Claude AI

  14. Chatting about AI trends and tech comm with Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti

  15. What is Diátaxis and should you be using it with your documentation?

  16. [Podcast] AI and APIs: What works, what doesn't

  17. Forrester Report, Coding jobs, Hyper-personalization, RFPs, Call center replacement (Oct 9, 2023)

  18. What I learned in using AI for planning and prioritization: Content strategy might be safe from automation

  19. Open-source contribution myths, Hiring poets to train LLMs, Problems with 'content', AI agents (Oct 6, 2023)

  20. Embracing professional redefinition

  21. Documentation failures, Bestiaries, AI Explain post mortem, Inside TechComm podcast (Oct 3, 2023)

  22. New article: AI and APIs: What works, what doesn't

  23. Claude versus ChatGPT -- and a few thoughts on using AI chatbots on an Alaskan cruise

  24. Alphadoc: Build API documentation that tells your API's story

  25. New API course topic: Using AI for summaries

  26. Links from around the web (Sept 5, 2023)

  27. New API doc course topic: Using AI for glossary definitions

  28. New API doc course topic: Using AI for comparison tasks with API responses

  29. New API doc course topic: Using AI For thematic analysis

  30. New API doc course topic: Using AI for language advice

  31. New API doc course topic: Using AI to create doc updates based on bugs

  32. New API doc course topic: Using AI to learn coding

  33. New topic in API course: Using AI tools to write build and publish scripts

  34. New topic in API doc course: AI document engineering with pattern-based prompts

  35. First Look at Oxygen XML's Positron AI Assistant [API doc course]

  36. Adding a new AI section to my API doc course

  37. First look at the Oxygen XML's AI Positron Assistant

  38. Telling your conversion story into tech comm

  39. Chapter PDFs for API doc course

  40. How to meet other technical writers in Seattle -- WTD Seattle coffee chats

  41. How the blog-to-book experiment is going: challenges and thoughts

  42. Blog and API doc course are now one site

  43. Doctave Q&A with Niklas Begley

  44. News turns the content wheel of advertising

  45. Newsletter: Endless news cycles, style checkers, finding research, noticing things around you

  46. How to find academic research to back up your tech comm decisions

  47. Book review of the Art of Noticing, by Rob Walker

  48. AI starting to diminish work for student essay ghostwriters

  49. From DITA to docs-as-code and Docusaurus: Q&A with Mike Howes

  50. Newsletter: Copilot for Docs, Wappalyzer, Illusions, Late projects, Forbidden Fruit

  51. Newsletter: Doctave, Chatbase, SiteGPT, small CLs, TC bibliography

  52. What’s missing from the AI workflow: incentives for content creators to provide training data

  53. Newsletter: Content creator ROI, Netlify, Madbot, and Hollywood

  54. Newsletter: AI doc alerts, state of tools, saying easy or just, automated writing teams

  55. Newsletter: Docusaurus, Lens, Docs-as-Code, 2022 site analytics, and HTML Table formatting

  56. Newsletter: Markprompt Q&A, LearningDITA, Snowflake docs, AI Commits

  57. Meandering thoughts on my 2022 site analytics

  58. Markprompt Q&A with Michael Fester

  59. Newsletter: Alphadoc, vocab lookup, field, Open Assistant, Markprompt, content ops

  60. Newsletter: GPT-4 tutors, Phind.com, Dark user manuals, interfaces for reading docs, automation scripts, and bball

  61. AI chat interfaces could become the primary user interface to read documentation

  62. Using AI tools to look up words and provide mini-poems to help remember their meaning

  63. A script that creates a new Jekyll post and populates it with YAML frontmatter, and also makes a curl call to add a Rebrandly shortlink

  64. Newsletter: Docs-as-ecosystem, structure in WordPress, identity crisis, and pencils

  65. Newsletter: AI and tech comm survey results, Zoomin's predictions, Beating an ATS, ChatGPT plugin docs

  66. Survey results: Technical writers on AI

  67. Newsletter: Why engineers need to write, tech writers in pop culture, 101 subreddit, Cambrian period of AI (April 4, 2023)

  68. Survey on the impact of AI on tech comm

  69. Upcoming Webinar: API Trends Across the Lifecycle Webinar (April 11, 2023)

  70. Beyond 'parts' documentation: Moving towards systems thinking with developer portals

  71. The influence of language-generative AI tools on tech comm: parlor tricks or disruption?

  72. Updates on my standing experiment: surprisingly good for the lower back

  73. Presentation recording: Specialization myopia syndrome and the content journey

  74. Podcast: All about Redocly, with founder Adam Altman

  75. Building your own balance board for a standing desk

  76. Finally got Covid -- my experience

  77. Five ways to leverage big-picture thinking as a technical writer

  78. New Job-Hunter Support Group course offered by Bobby Kennedy

  79. New series: Sitting, standing, and walking

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the tech comm, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.