Have you ever skimmed through a README, tried to follow a quickstart tutorial, attempted to decipher an error message, or typed ‘–help’ in your console? Congratulations – you have encountered documentation! Long gone are the days of massive books with never-ending stories about your software. Today’s users are smarter and less patient, which means that we no longer need to document all the things, as long as what we do document is clear, concise, helpful, and accessible. And that’s where the real work starts.
Documentation requires some attitude adjustment, since prose doesn’t neatly compile into binaries as code does. But Don’t Panic™! No matter what your role is in the community, you can apply a few key principles from the technical writing world to make your project more docs-friendly, and therefore more user- and contributor-friendly.
This talk covers strategies, best practices, and pro tips for rethinking how we create and curate documentation. This special edition will include Django-specific examples and use-cases as well as a special Q&A session, where we will try to address some of the community’s top concerns and ideas about the Django docs.
Special edition: Send me questions before the talk, and I will try to answer them on stage. If you have a twitter account send your question here. Otherwise, you can email me at docs@docsideofthemoon.com. Don’t be shy!