Confessions of a Technical Writer
Lana Brindley
Extended (60 minutes) on Friday, 26 November 2010 10:30 - 11:30 in room Room 3
TAGS: Development Tools, Development Process & Project Management, authoring, awesome, content, content author, documentation, open source project, tech writing, technical writing, writing
We all know that technical writing is boring. That's why technical writers exist, so that developers don't have to write it. The bad news is that great technical documentation can do wonders for your project. The good news is you don't need to be a dyed-in-the-wool writer to create great technical documentation.
Writing documentation for open source projects can be very different from writing for proprietary models. This discussion will cover why it is different, why it is important, and how you can fail to completely suck at it.
All delegates attending this session must bring and ensure:
Attendees should bring a red pen. No really.
Lana Brindley
Technical Writer
Red Hat
Lana Brindley has several university degrees, a few of which are even relevant to her field. She has has been playing and working with technology since she discovered the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game in the 80's. Eventually, she worked out a way to get paid for her two passions - writing and playing with gadgetry - and has been technical writing ever since. Right now, she's working for Red Hat from her home in Canberra Australia, getting her hands dirty on middleware documentation, and loving every minute of it. She's very active in the women in tech community, and is raising her very own geek girl. One day, Lana hopes to write the manual for that, too.