Insider's advice on actions your tech writers can take to create quality API documentation

API The Docs Podcast

At the 7th API The Docs Virtual event Michelle Fredette, technical writer at New Relic and Chris Cowell, Oregon-based technical trainer and writer presented on the issues of onboarding writers with different knowledge gaps and how to solve them with 8 hours of training. Uwana Ikaiddi, Developer Documentation Manager at BigCommerce explained the significance of external and internal audience feedback, and gave guidance on how to improve API documentation by them. In the Q&A panel of the event, they reflect on their talks and provide further insights on:

• Do you also train your developers on how they can document for themselves?
• What would you recommend for people who want to change career-path from development to techwriting?
• Is there a need for anti-personas, i.e. people who aren't specifically the core audience of the API documentation but might need to consider when writing the docs?
• How to build trust with your internal audience?
• Can you speak to techniques who are getting collected external feedback to the appropriate writers on a large writing team?
• Does teaching developer students technical writing support a faster and more efficient on-boarding process in the long run?