NOTE: We'll be in New Relic's newest meeting room, on the 27th floor

The Write The Docs NA conference returns to Portland in May, and the deadline for proposals is February 10 (midnight PST).

For the third year, we'll give people who want to propose a chance to test things out, either by speaking briefly, or by brainstorming their proposals.

FYI, O'Reilly has an excellent guide to creating conference proposals, "Propose, Prepare, Present". If you navigate to http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920027096.do, you can get the eBook version for free.

We'll start with a brief networking session from 6-6:30.

At 6:30, I'll make a few announcements. Anyone who wants to try out a "preview" of a conference talk (5-10 min), or just present their draft proposal for comments, can speak to the group (or ask questions) after that.

Wacom -- a company which develops Pen Input hardware -- needed a user help system to move beyond static PDFs. Their solution was to separate product-specific PDFs into a series of, mostly common, HTML topic pages. These HTML file were, in turn, processed into a web deliverable package via Python scripting.

The solution is complex, as the Wacom system includes interrelationships between 150+ topics across over 30 products and 14 languages.

The solution required “a more technical Tech Writer” -- as it required knowledge of HTML
Python
JavaScript
Excel Macros

Wacom implemented their solution by integrating their tech writer in their Engineering team. They also included a dedicated engineering resource to support design and development of their technical docs.

Speaker: Arthur Krebsbach, Windows Software Engineer

Save the date! We'll give people who are scheduled to speak at the Write The Docs 2017 conference a chance to rehearse their talks.