Welcome to the API The Docs Podcast

Laura Vass, co-founder of the API The Docs conference series, hosts documentarians and other practitioners from all across the API world to discuss the latest topics, new learnings and best practices around API documentation and developer portals.

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Building a DevRel Team - Interview with Lorna Mitchell, Head of Developer Relations at Aiven

15 July, 2021

Building a DevRel Team - Interview with Lorna Mitchell, Head of Developer Relations at Aiven. 

Lorna is an open source software developer and project maintainer, published author, blogger and conference speaker, who is with us today to talk about the skills and roles that contribute to successfully operating a devrel team:

  • Priorities and structure when developing a new devrel team
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Involving a technical writer in the team
  • Career path, growth and collaboration in a devrel team
  • Insights of creating a new open source devportal
  • Aiven open source data tools and products
  • Maintenance of documentation and workflows

Sources:

Read more about Lorna’s work here: https://lornajane.net/

For job offerings at Aiven, please visit: https://aiven.io/careers

The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

Feedback is the key! - Interview with Alex Hoffer, Developer Relations Engineer at Plaid

03 June, 2021

Alex Hoffer is a DevRel engineer at Plaid. Previously, she was managing the QA team at Dropbox for 6 years. At Plaid, she's been working on documentation and an overhaul of the Plaid developer docs. Developer experience is extremely important at Plaid and the docs are a big part of that. Tune in to hear more about how to create an excellent developer experience:

  • How does a cross-functional team work together with other departments in order to improve the developer functionality?
  • How developer experience is about product, documentation and engineering collaborating together?
  • What is her role in the API Review Committee, which helps ensure APIs are standardized and maintain their API style guide?
  • Docs revamp - how have they approached it, why have they done it, where is it going next?
  • How does the entire doc editing and authorship process work at Plaid?
  • And last but not least, how have they incorporated user feedback into the docs process!
  • The host is Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix).

Sources:

https://plaid.com/blog/new-plaid-docs/

plaid.com/careers

Getting into the tech industry through technical writing - Interview with Carolyn Stransky, Frontend Engineer at Bryter

19 May, 2021

Former technical writer, previously a journalist and now fronted engineer, conference speaker and workshop organizer. Tune in to learn about Carolyn's career journey.

  • How did she transition from journalism to technical writing and how did her previously acquired journalism skills support that journey?
  • Why and how did she become a software engineer?
  • What was her role in the Google Season of Docs program that connects experienced technical writers with the open source community?
  • What does humanizing your documentation mean in practice?
  • How to write a good FAQ page to best support the onboarding process?

In this episode we are exploring a new topic that hasn't been touched on yet over the API The Docs podcast series.

The host is Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

Sources:

https://workwithcarolyn.com/

Google - Season of Docs

A good design is not about how something looks, it's about how something works - Interview with Liam Gallagher and Jake Eastham from Barclays

29 April, 2021

Today our guests are Liam Gallagher (UX Designer/API Platforms) and Jake Eastham (Front-end Developer and Accessibility Champion) from Barclays:

“It's very easy to get caught up in aesthetics, you want to design something that is really cool and you think it is amazing.. You actually want to show it to everyone, but you completely messed up the accessibility part. As I matured, I realised that good design is not about something that looks good, but how something works. A good design is naturally inclusive. “

“An accessibility champion is someone who fosters within their environment, within their own team, while being aware of the different accessibility challenges you have and why we are designing and developing our products, what is the importance of it. “

Join us for an inspiring conversation with the two times winner of DevPortal Awards in the Best Accessible Portal category.

The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

Creating a fully self-service API program - Interview with Alvaro Navarro and Anthony Roux

07 April, 2021

Meet the Developer Relations & API product management team on Amadeus for Developers - Open API Product for the travel industry. Our guests are Alvaro Navarro and Anthony Roux.

“Building trusted relationships is actually what matters in our job.. and empathy is what makes the big difference. Put yourself into the shoes of the other person, that's how you're going to learn how they use your product. And that's how you're going to be successful.“

How has Amadeus innovated a framework and a new set of self-service APIs, where developers can connect in a matter of only three minutes?

How have they scaled up and automated all the processes to make the onboarding as smooth as possible?

Why is testing and user centric feedback, API Governance and product management support important when creating solutions that provide the best developer experience for your API consumers? Tune in to hear more.

The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

Tech writing for software engineers - Interview with Barry Rosenberg

24 March, 2021

Our guest is Barry Rosenberg, technical writer at Google and co-author of courses Technical Writing One and Technical Writing Two. At the beginning of his professional journey, Barry was starting out as a teacher for a smaller group of undergraduate students at MIT. How did he become a teacher of a highly scalable class for thousands of engineers at Google? How has writing fiction helped him to write better technical courses? Join us to learn more about his inspiring career and the courses he created:

  • How and why have these courses been developed?
  • Why is it valuable to teach tech writing to engineers?
  • What are the prerequisites and skills required to become an efficient technical writer?
  • What new tech writing courses are currently being created at Google?
  • The hosts are Laura Vass (Editor of Developer Portals Newsletter, Co-Founder of Pronovix) and Anett Pozsár (Senior Technical Writer, Pronovix).

Sources:

Barry Rosenbeeg - Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists

Overview of technical writing courses at Google