2 conferences, 4 cities, 2 countries, and 1 human — Lessons learned from attending technical and content-focused Conferences.
In June, I traveled to two countries and four cities for #SoapConf and API The Docs.
Prelude
I wrote this article in June when I attended SOAP Conf and API The Docs Conf. I published a particular article sharing my SOAP Conference experience. However, I have no idea why I never published it because it was a ‘done’ article. Anyway, I am publishing it now because the lessons are still relevant even if the dates don’t match. So, here goes nothing!
Hi there!
I hope you’ve been having an amazing new month.
You recall that I mentioned attending conferences in my last piece to you. Well, I did, and this piece will highlight lessons learned.
About two months ago, during a bi-weekly Write The Docs (WTD) Florida meetup, one of the attendees mentioned that he would be attending the SOAP conference in Poland. I looked it up and found it interesting and decided to attend.
At the same time, I have already considered attending the API The Docs(ATD) conference in Amsterdam. But the thing is, since I don’t have a job, how do I sponsor traveling to 2 paid conferences?
Reasonably enough, both conferences were in June, and while SOAP was on the 1-3 of June, ATD was on the 6–7 of June. I asked a couple of people which one they’d recommend, and of course, it didn’t make sense to anyone that I wanted to attend a paid conference, especially if I was paying from my pocket.
Little did I or anyone know I would attend both of them!
Interlude
The rest of this piece is a collection of unique things that happened before, during, and after the conferences that changed things for me.
Ask, and you shall receive
Barely weeks before the conference, I contacted the organizers to find out if I could get a discounted or even a free ticket. In exchange, I would volunteer and help them with anything during the conference.
SOAP gave me a discount, and ATD offered me a free ticket. I was super excited, and I told my friends about it. I immediately booked my flight ticket to Poland and started packing.
I couldn’t believe it when Katalin offered me a free ticket. I was super excited, and it made me realize that I, too, could ask for assistance and that there was nothing wrong with asking for help or being vulnerable.
All I did was reach out and explain that I was in between jobs but would love to attend. And she offered me a ticket.
The moral lesson from this is to ask for help; if I don’t get it, I lose nothing; what if I get that help? It could change my life, so ask anyway!
Keep an open mind.
At the SOAP conference, the organizing team initiated a 5-minute block of 4 for the audience to go on stage and talk about anything they wanted.
At first, I just thought I wasn’t prepared, and what could I possibly talk about? Anyway, just after lunch on the first day, I wrote my name down for a 5 -5-minute slot even without knowing what I would talk about. It was not until I was called backstage that I realized I had to think of something.
And yes, an idea came. The organizers asked me, and I said,
“Most times, technical or content writing folks do not apply for CFPs to speak at developer-focused conferences, but then that is exactly where we should be speaking because we always need devs and other team members to help in doing a good job ourselves. If developers and other teammates understand the role we play in the success of the company, it will be easier to get them to contribute and make the documentation process easier”.
I went on stage, introduced myself, and told everyone to please go out and invade developer-focused conferences.
After the talk, people walked up to me and dropped comments like “That was an amazing talk, and I agree,” “Cynthia, your talk was my favorite soapbox talk,” and “Cynthia, how did you give such an amazing talk in 5mins?”
Some of the comments on social media:
Below are posts or tweets that endorsed my talk.
I don’t understand how a talkative like me ended up sending a strong and quality message in 5 minutes, whereas I’ll take days to think about what to put on a slide deck for a talk I got accepted to talk at three months ago.
I am again reminded that when put on the spot, I can think and come up with ideas fast, but when I have such a long time to prepare, I end up overthinking and eventually procrastinating.
Lessons from the SOAP conference
Attending SoapConf was an honor. The people were lovely, and the workshops on day one were insightful. The talks on days 2 and 3 were knowledge-packed. I loved the conversations, the questions, and the food.
Some of the highlights for me were:
In dealing with people with ADHD.
In this talk titled, — “Sure, but you’ll have to remind me: using agile methodologies to bring diverse minds together.” Denise Marshall talked about being a senior tech writer on the spectrum and managing it by being vulnerable to her teammates and having supportive people.
This talk made me realize many things, but most significantly, tips on how to work on some of the things I struggle with daily.
Nothing is wrong with me; I need to be in a suitable space, and I’ll thrive.
Some of the general lessons from the talk are:
- Having a great team makes working fun and more accessible.
- Create systems that support people because people make up everything.
Teaching developers at the company to do tech writing.
In this talk — Teaching Your Colleagues to Write (and Learning from Them), Maria Ermakovich talked about her experience as a solo technical writer and how she has overcome the challenge of working with developers.
Some of the tips she dropped were:
- Show them the importance of docs and why they should be a part.
- Host internal workshops, invite everyone, and help them do better documentation. She also shared a link to the Google tech writing course facilitator page.
- Maria also offered an optional ‘Grammar Prep’ session before the main course to help them understand the use of grammar.
One neat trick I borrowed from Google’s instructors is encouraging students to think of parts of speech in terms of code. Nouns are classes and variables. Pronouns are pointers. Verbs are methods and functions… Look for the subject, action, and object in each statement. Surprisingly, this also helped folks to come to peace with styling rules that have no evident benefit other than decreasing cognitive load. After all, it’s like code styles and linters.
— — Maria
Content Ops
API The Docs
API The Docs held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on the 6 & 7 of June 2023. This conference was more focused on API documentation — internal and external documentation.
Lessons learned
No one has it all figured out.
If you’re a solo writer, you probably struggle with many things. Find another technical writer as a mentor or find a community and let them serve as that extra pair of eyes or that wall to bounce ideas on and receive feedback.
No, not a mentor. Look for other technical writers with similar levels of experience. Build a community with them and grow together.
If you’re not a technical writer, replicate this for anything you do.
Tips on SEO
During one of the unconference sessions, a common topic was that most companies want technical content to contain keywords to improve visibility.
To tackle these issues with Marketing and SEO,
- Convert subheadings in H1, H2, & H3 to questions. So, rather than “Baking a cake,” use “How to bake a cake.”
- Defining the target audience is the first step when deciding how to group content into use cases, conceptual guides, and tutorials. And when you have a target audience, you know how best to write the document.
However, in the case of more than one audience, like a project manager and a developer, split the outline into two parts — the introduction that introduces the topic and why it is necessary — The product manager, and the second part will be a technical guide — the developer.
On a final note
I want you to find conferences or communities particular to what you do and focus on learning from the diverse quality of people around you. I can’t underestimate how much I learned from this experience.
I loved attending these conferences. It was my first experience attending writers' and creators-focused conferences. I learned a lot, and some things I was unsure of got cleared up. I still have much to learn on this path, but the people I met were the highlight.
I thank the organizers for affording me discounted tickets, being kind, and introducing me to people and opportunities.
Most of all, I need to work with a brilliant team of people who want to help me grow in my chosen path. I have worked remotely and as a solo writer, and it is time to find and join a team that I can contribute to while improving my skillset.
I can’t wait for everything I will do from here on.
You should be excited, too, because you are part of this journey.
Till I write to you again, Ciao.
Cynthia
