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Panelists

Portia Burton | Eric Holscher

Guest

Amy Burns

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Docs, a show where we explore the intersection of technical docs, open source, and community. Today, we have joining us as our guest, Amy Burns, who is the Senior Content Developer at Vercel. She’s here to talk about how she got into technical documentation, and she explains four job titles regarding writing and the differences between them. We also hear about what an ideal developer experience looks like, her work on Xamarin, the philosophy of Vercel when it comes to developer experience, and how Amy would advocate her approach of engaging documentation. Download this episode now to find out more, and until next time, keep writing and shipping those Docs!

[00:00:52] We hear Amy’s background, how she got into technical documentation, and working at Vercel and GitHub.

[00:04:38] Amy tells us about four job titles regarding writing and the differences between them.

[00:07:12] Portia asks Amy if she thinks technical writers should a bit about content design and copywriting.

[00:09:43] What does an ideal developer experience look like?

[00:11:25] Amy talks about The Content Design Book.

[00:12:32] Amy worked at Xamarin, an open source mobile platform, and we learn how she got involved in contributing to open source, and she shares suggestions if you want to get more involved in open source.

[00:16:40] Find out what it is about documentation that Amy sees as a great way to get involved.

[00:18:37] We learn about the philosophy of Vercel when it comes to developer experience, and how the docs are involved there.

[00:23:35] Portia brings up business driven goals and talks about Tori Podmajersky’s book, Strategic Writing for UX.

[00:25:46] If Amy were to advocate her approach of engaging documentation, she informs us of how she would pitch and advocate this.

[00:30:00] We end with Amy sharing a book she wants to read called, The Imagineering Process: Using the Disney Theme Park Design Process to Bring Your Creative Ideas to Life.

Quotes

[00:05:08] “In my experience, a content developer will be more hands-on with providing code examples or writing bits of code here and there, whereas a technical writer, you might be writing a hundred percent of the time, but that’s not always true.”

[00:20:35] “And everybody from CEO down has an opinion on docs, which is great because everyone will pitch in and help, give examples and ways they think the docs could be improved, so it definitely feels like there’s a docs forward culture at Vercel, which is part of the reason I wanted to move there.”