August 2014 Meetup: Perils of Self-Documentation & Ponydocs

Hey there, WTD folks! Our August meeting is in two weeks, so make some space on your calendars! We're looking forward to seeing you there.

This time around we're being hosted by the data analytics firm Splunk (http://www.splunk.com/). They'll provide food and refreshments at their HQ in the South Beach corner of SOMA (just a couple blocks from the ball park).

Featured Speakers

We'll have two speakers at the August Write The Docs SF meetup.

Mitch Walker, Software Engineer at AdRoll - "Self Documentation: The Rewards and Perils of Choosing Names"

What's in a name? Lots, it turns out. A well chosen name can give your readers an instant, intuitive handle on a system or concept, while a poorly chosen name may well engender ongoing frustration and otherwise needless documentation. In this quick talk I'll discuss the nominal challenges I've faced designing, documenting and explaining a new billing system for AdRoll.com (http://adroll.com/).

Chris Gales, Rachel Perkins, and Russ Uman - "Ponydocs: Sharing is Caring"

Over the past few years, Splunk has developed a wiki-based documentation platform that they liked so much they decided to open-source it to the masses. And they named it Ponydocs, after the company mascot (an animatronic toy pony, of course).

Chris, Rachel, and Russ will detail the evolution of Ponydocs from its humble MediaWiki origins, discuss the system and content architecture, and talk about structuring information in an unstructured environment where all employees can edit the docs (yes, you read that right).

Come and find out how this crazy thing works, and see if it might not be a docs solution that could work for you!

Request for Future Speakers

We're always on the lookout for speakers. Would you like to talk at an upcoming WTD meetup? Do you know someone who would be a perfect fit? Let us know (https://www.meetup.com/Write-the-Docs/suggestion/)!