Gandi at Write the Docs Australia 2019

Gandi was proud to be a sponsor of the Write the Docs Australia 2019 Conference, which was held in Sydney, Australia on November 14 and 15. We also sent our own technical writer as a participant.

Write the Docs is a worldwide community of people interested in software documentation. The group includes technical writers, developers, and everything in between.

Attending the Sydney conference was a wide variety of “documentarians” from all over the world. There were game developers, developers who write documenation, technical writers, authors, usability experts, open source advocates, and more. Participants came from Australia, Thailand, India, Taiwan, San Francisco, Seattle, among other locations.

Some of the highlights from the conference included:

• Riona MacNamara started the conference with an excellent talk on how good documentation makes it easier for less privileged individuals to contribute to open source projects, and by extension gain the benefits that come from participating in open source projects.

• The Good Docs Project <https://thegooddocsproject.dev/> led a workshop aimed at improving their documentation templates. The Good Docs Project wants to make it easier to have good documentation for open source projects that don’t have a dedicated technical writer by creating templates that make it easier for anyone to create good documentation.
• Dave Parker presented a short talk on inclusivity in documentation using sign language, via interpreter. Dave worked as a technical writer for several years before becoming an advocate for the deaf community in Australia. Dave’s unique experience as a deaf technical writer provided some great insight on how to create documentation that is accessible for all audiences.
• Alec Clews gave a talk on the special challenges of writing API documentation for international audiences. He discussed some of the difficulties of writing documentation that will be translated into many languages, and how to style English documentation so it is easier to read for non-native English speakers.

This is just a small sample of all the great talks and information that was had at Write the Docs Australia 2019. You can view many of the talks on the Write the Docs YouTube channel.