API The Docs Podcast

Our guest Emese Hallgató works as a UX researcher at Pronovix Developer Portals. Her education and experience in computer programming and in psychological research open the door to better understanding developers and their needs. How do developers approach coding, and what do they need to reach a state of flow? We talk about the archetypes of systematic, opportunistic, and pragmatic developers. If you would like to deep-dive into the topic more, read Emese’s ‘How do developers learn about APIs?’ article.

In Part 2 of our conversation with Miro's DevRel Lead Anthony Roux and Senior Techwriters Mira Balani and Marco Spinello, we walk deeper into how their respective teams complement each other, and we will also get a detailed narrative from Anthony about their process to aggregate all types of feedback, whether it's a feature requests, bugs, or documentation improvements into one central base.

With our three Mironeer guests, DevRel Lead Anthony Roux and Senior Techwriters Mira Balani and Marco Spinello, we talked about how they joined their teams, what they learnt since, how and by whom their developer docs came to be as they are today, and what two documentarians are to do if they disagree.

Our guest is Anthony Sansone, staff technical writer at MongoDB, who has spent 20+ years in computer hardware, software, and services, specializing in data protection and user security. His experience ranges from startups to large multinational companies. In this episode, Anthony shares his insights about the techwriters’ onboarding and the inspiration you can get from new hires.

Or, maybe you could map it: what does each of you do, why, and how? We converse about integration of practices and practice networks with Marc Burgauer, co-founder of Contextualise. Together with Chris McDermott, they assist large organizations in their transformation efforts through maturity mapping. We are teasing out our ideas on how can the understanding of social practice theory–and the acceptance of complexity–possibly help write better technical documentation. How can we better ease and inform the users of the docs into the context in which the artifact operates? What would be the minimum shared vocabulary and methods to change anything for the better in a persistent, self-stabilizing socio-technical system–our workplace–and do we need to name practice theory at all for it?

Or, maybe you could map it: what does each of you do, why, and how? We converse about integration of practices and practice networks with Marc Burgauer, co-founder of Contextualise. Together with Chris McDermott, they assist large organizations in their transformation efforts through maturity mapping. We are teasing out our ideas on how can the understanding of social practice theory–and the acceptance of complexity–possibly help write better technical documentation. How can we better ease and inform the users of the docs into the context in which the artifact operates? What would be the minimum shared vocabulary and methods to change anything for the better in a persistent, self-stabilizing socio-technical system–our workplace–and do we need to name practice theory at all for it?

We asked DevRel Kristyn Bryan and Application Architect Dmitry Pashkevich from the Calendly API team about the new, v2 of their API and the upgraded devportal. Why and how did they redesign the legacy API? They adopted a design-first approach to building APIs. How does this new strategy manifest in their daily jobs, what are they now doing differently? What are their teams' practices with customer feedback, and with internal mentoring?

Interview with Ruby Batallones, Technical Writer at Adyen and Aleksei Akimov, Head of API at Adyen Involve your technical writers already from the API design discussions: this can help ensure a consistent user experience across all APIs, and in finding the middle ground between the usability requirements and the architecture requirements. At Adyen, technical writers have the ways and means to add and maintain the descriptions in the source code, they can make sure that all the bits and pieces are linked together and enough context is provided everywhere. This practice brought that techwriters habitually use the developer tools as well, and have a deeper technical understanding of the API, which in turn enables better communications earlier on. The recently open sourced Adyen Explorer and documentation won 2 prizes at the 2019 DevPortal Awards: Best API Reference Documentation and Best Decision Maker Documentation. Our guests are Ruby Batallones Technical Writer at Adyen, former solution architect and implementation engineer, and Aleksei Akimov, who started his career in software development, then added technical writing, was leading the Documentation & Developer Experience team and is now responsible for Adyen API design, strategy, and governance. The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

MongoDB is one of the most popular NoSQL database programs, providing both on-premise and cloud-based solutions. Tony works as a senior technical writer on cloud based tools. He has 20+ years experience in computer hardware, software, and services, specializing in data protection and user security, and he is a long-time supporter of API The Docs. In this second part of the interview we continue our conversation: - Adoption of OpenAPI specification - How to save large amounts of documentation time? - How to keep the specifications up-to-date? - How to simplify API documentation? The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

Confidence and Critical Thinking: techwriting is life-long learning - Interview with Anthony Sansone, Senior Technical Writer at MongoDB MongoDB is one of the most popular NoSQL database programs, providing both on-premise and cloud-based solutions. Tony works as a senior technical writer on cloud based tools. He has 20+ years experience in computer hardware, software, and services, specializing in data protection and user security, and he is a long-time supporter of API The Docs. In this interview, Tony and the hosts are delving into the following topics: How has the technical writing job market changed lately? Speeding up complex onboarding and training of new technical writers at MongoDB Embrace inquisitive juniors and help build confidence, keep open office hours In Part 2, Episode 22, we continue our conversation: Adoption of OpenAPI specification How to save large amounts of documentation time? How to keep the specifications up-to-date? How to simplify API documentation? The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).