Some advice if you're just starting out your technical writing career

I recently spoke to some technical writing interns at my work on the topic of career advice. The topic was as follows: What advice would you give to those just starting out their technical writing career? Imagine turning back the clock 20 years. What advice would be most helpful? This post expands on some of these ideas. It also gave me an opportunity to play around with Midjourney, an art AI tool that automatically creates images based on text prompts. (For fun, I included the text prompts as captions.) Unlike my other posts, this post is more visual, as it was originally intended more as a slide deck than a blog post.

Systems thinking: Limits to Growth, Complex Cause and Effect, and Shifting the Burden

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. In this post, I continue to unravel the principles of systems thinking and how this approach fits into the documentation domain. In particular, I dive into three system patterns covered in Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline: Limits to Growth, Complex Cause and Effect, and Shifting the Burden. And I try to connect the ideas back to documentation.

Systems thinking and developer portals

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. In this post, I explore why focusing on the big picture fits into the domain of systems thinking. I also make a case for developer portals as a candidate for study that aligns with a systems thinking approach.

Blobr API portal (API doc topic)

I added a new article about Blobr to my API course. With Blobr, you can create an API store to launch and grow an API business with different monetization models. In the same Blobr portal, you can also include documentation that describes the precise workflow for each use case, helping API consumers easily onboard with your API.

The impact of technical diversity on documentation -- epiphanies on a trip to IKEA

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on the impact of diversity/pluralism/fragmentation on documentation.

Technical diversity/pluralism/fragmentation in tech comm

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on technical diversity/pluralism/fragmentation.

My Commute Seattle Spotlight

Recently I volunteered to have my multimodal commute spotlighted as part of a Commute Seattle campaign. Here's the video.

Review of Peter Norton's Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving

Peter Norton's Autonorama: The Illusion of High-Tech Driving is a must-read for anyone pursuing autonomous vehicles (AVs) as a solution to the problems of transportation mobility. Norton's main argument is that AVs will worsen rather than help transportation issues.

Docs as Code

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on Docs as Code.

Inline ads -- updated advertising offerings

I updated my advertising options a bit and am now offering inline ads.

Keynote presentation to STC India 2022

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post contains a keynote presentation I gave to STC India on March 26, 2022.

Remote work

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on remote work.

Git and GitHub

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on Git and GitHub.

API documentation

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on API documentation.

Every page is page one

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post focuses on "every page is page one."