エピソード

  • [Podcast] Breaking ground: New API documentation course at UW, with Bob Watson

    [Podcast] Breaking ground: New API documentation course at UW, with Bob Watson
    2024/01/05
    In this podcast, I chat with Bob Watson about an upcoming API documentation course he'll be teaching at the University of Washington. Bob has extensive experience working as an API technical writer at big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. The UW reached out to Bob to develop this new course offering. The 14-week evening course will cover fundamentals like understanding developer behaviors, working with various types of APIs, publishing workflows, as well as hands-on practice. A key component is having students create API documentation portfolios they can use to demonstrate their skills.
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    53 分
  • My 2024 technical writing trends and predictions

    My 2024 technical writing trends and predictions
    2024/01/01
    I've been mulling over whether to write a trends post this year. There's so much uncertainty, it's hard to feel confident about how the tech writing profession will play out. But little trends-related ideas keep surfacing in the back of my mind, so I decided to write out some of my thoughts. Before I jump into this, I want to say that I’m much more agnostic and unsure about directions this year. 2024 could be amazing, it could also be terrible. Or everything could be overblown and remain more or less the same. One thing is for sure: in predictions,...
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    28 分
  • Podcast: Notes and themes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

    Podcast: Notes and themes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
    2023/12/15
    These are some notes and thoughts from reading Robert Pirsig's classic philosophical novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, published in 1974. My reading here focuses more on the technical writing aspects and themes from the book. Some themes include Classic versus Romantic modes of thought, the concept of Quality, our relationship with technology, doing your own maintenance, caring about the work, peace of mind, systems thinking, multiple paths through a problem, troubleshooting, being in-the-scene versus removed, the road trip, effortless action, going with the flow, traveling along the backroads, and presence in the moment. I also include some...
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    1 時間 3 分
  • Webinar recording: Experiments and use cases for AI from a tech writer’s perspective

    Webinar recording: Experiments and use cases for AI from a tech writer’s perspective
    2023/12/13
    I recently gave a webinar titled 'Experiments and use cases for AI from a tech writer’s perspective' on December 8, 2023. The webinar was sponsored by the STC Washington, DC - Baltimore Chapter. In this presentation, I shared some personal experiences in using AI for different writing-related use cases, explaining what I’ve found helpful. These use cases and takeaways were all experiential, based on my experiments with using AI both in the workplace for documentation-related scenarios and writing on my blog.
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    1 時間 3 分
  • 30+ ways I’m using AI in everyday writing life as a technical writer, blogger, and curious human

    30+ ways I’m using AI in everyday writing life as a technical writer, blogger, and curious human
    2023/12/04
    In this post, I provide over 30 real-life examples of how I'm using AI on a daily basis, not just for technical writing tasks but more broadly in life, including summarizing content, explaining concepts, answering questions, troubleshooting problems, and having engaging conversations for a variety of tasks and scenarios. In my view, AI use cases are ubiquitous, equivalent to the use cases for computers or the Internet in general.
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    45 分
  • Podcast: The evolution of podcasting, with Ed Marsh

    Podcast: The evolution of podcasting, with Ed Marsh
    2023/12/03
    In this podcast, I talk with Ed Marsh about podcasting. You may have listened to Ed Marsh's Content Content podcast previously. As an experienced podcaster, Ed has a lot of insights and thoughts about podcasting. We discuss what initially drew him to start podcasting, the equipment and logistics involved in podcasting, different formats that engage listeners (from co-hosts to single person podcasts, and more), incorporating AI tools, why podcasters often go on hiatus, the ongoing appeal of podcasting, and more.
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    57 分
  • Podcast: Tech writing and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with Dan Grabski

    Podcast: Tech writing and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with Dan Grabski
    2023/11/18
    In this episode, I chat with Dan Grabski, a senior content developer based in Portland, both about his recent WTD talk titled 'Zen and the Art of Manually Creating API Documentation' and Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.' Dan explains the importance of focusing not just on technical details of implementations but also on integrating the people side — on understanding the perspectives of different users and stakeholders involved. Dan provides examples from his engineering background to illustrate how intuition develops from experience, how to avoid spectator mode through hands-on exploration of APIs, on carving out time...
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    42 分
  • Doing research with AI tools -- avoiding the trap of fabricated URLs

    Doing research with AI tools -- avoiding the trap of fabricated URLs
    2023/11/09
    In this short podcast, I explore using AI tools to do research, the potential for fake URLs, and how to deal with the fabrication. I started by using Claude to summarize a podcast and provide a list of salient points, including the potential counterargument. What I didn't expect was for Claude to fabricate a list of imagined research and then summarize the fictitious research to conclude that it lended support for the counterargument. I took Claude's list of research and pasted it into ChatGPT with Bing to browse the real-time web to validate the sources. Using Claude and ChatGPT in...
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    15 分