Documenting APIs - all day mini-conference

A special whole day meetup, in which we'll undertake an in-depth exploration of the tools and processes you can use to document APIs.

Preliminary agenda:

9:00 - 09:30 | Coffee and networking

09:30- 9.40 | Intro and welcome to GDS - James Stewart, Director of Technical Architecture at GDS

9.40- 10.00 | Understanding the needs of API documentation users - Rosalie Marshall, Tech Author at GDS

10:00-10:40 | Aye, Aye, API - What makes Technical Communicators uneasy about API documentation, and what can we do about it? Ellis Pratt, Technical Communicator and director at Cherryleaf.

10:40-11:10 | Coffee break

11:10-12:00 | A Quick Introduction to RAML - Christian Vogel, RAML

12:00-12:40 | Swagger - Ole Lensmar, Chairman of the Open API Initiative and CTO of SmartBear Software

12:40-14:00 | Lunch break - order pizza

14:00-14:40 | Lightning talks (5- 10 mins)

• Kristof Van Tomme, Code sample libraries in Drupal, using the GitLab field module.

• Alexander Browne (HMRC product manager) , The HMRC developer portal

• Andrew Marshall (technical author)- the potential of API docs to evolve technical architecture and API design (TBC)

• Chris Smith (lead technical architect at Companies House) - Introducing Swaggerly

• ….more TBC

14:40-15:20 | Documenting APIs for Humans - Kyle Fuller, API Blueprint

15:20-16:00 | Interactive API documentation - Kim Stebel, Tech Author

16:00-16:40 | "API docs in DITA" - Roger Sheen, Information Architect & DITA Open Toolkit Collaborator, Documentation Maintainer

16:40-17:00 | Closing