Write the Docs Prague 2017

Disclaimer: I work for Netconomy which was one of the sponsors of Write the Docs Prague 2016 and 2017.

Mikey Ariel presenting the sponsors.

Between 10 September and 12 September a colleague and I were once again in Prague for this year’s Write the Docs Prague conference. We once again skipped the boat tour but arrived just in time for the Writing Day where we both tried as best as possible to contribute to various projects present there.

For me this mostly meant trying to continue my work from the WTD conference in Portland earlier this year. There a couple of people including myself worked on bringing a small video archive to the writethedocs.org website. Thankfully, Leonardo had already done the design and all I had left to do now was getting all the data rendered into HTML files through Sphinx. Sam and Eric then reviewed my changes and could get it to work and online on 15 September πŸ˜€

To be fair, it took me up until Tuesday to get my patch in order but let’s just say that all that was at least mostly related with the Writing Day πŸ˜‰ But Write the Docs isn’t just about sprinting on documentation but also two days fully packed with sessions by speakers from all over the world. All had something I could take home and see a use-case for at work, but if I had to choose the one talk that offered the most for me then I’d pick “Telling a Great Story on GitHub” by Lauri Apple.

During this talk she explained how Zalando is bringing and overarching structure and story to what software they opensource through Github and how that method has evolved over the years. I’m pretty sure this is something every company trying to be a good opensource-citizen is struggling with and so any input there (esp. as well prepared as this one) is very much welcome!

Another highlight this year was the social event. While last year’s evening party was nice, this year the location was just perfect: The Hangar Bar, a bar with an airline-theme including the staff being clad in board-crew-inspired uniforms. I haven’t enjoyed a bar as much as this one in a very long time! If you go there, don’t forget to also visit the basement section!

And while you are in Prague, make sure to come to next year’s Write the Docs πŸ˜‰