The Write The Docs Kenya Summit 2024 was one of the most awaited events by the community at large, it was an opportunity for the documentarians, technical writers, and other professionals from the region to come together and share ideas.
The primary purpose of the event was to provide an avenue for the attendees to learn from industry experts, engage in discussions, and network with fellow peers who share a passion for documentation.
What is WTD Kenya?
I know you are all curious about what went down and all that, but first, let's get a brief understanding of what our community is all about and what it entails. Write The Docs Kenya is a chapter formed from the global Write The Docs organization. By us being a chapter, it means we borrow most of our core values and adapt our principles to be sure they adhere to those of our parents.
With that in mind, our community can be described as a vibrant community dedicated to the art and science of documentation. It comprises programmers, technical writers, customer support professionals, designers, project managers, developer advocates, and anyone passionate about ensuring a smooth experience with software through effective documentation.
Event Overview
With that description laid out, now let's address the elephant in the room, WTD-Kenya Summit. The WTD-Kenya Summit was a meetup organized by the community to allow industry leaders, professionals, and enthusiasts to converge to explore, share, and elevate the discourse in the Tech field under the theme "Bridging Tech with Writing.".
Attendees, including technical writers, programmers, customer support professionals, designers, product managers, and developer advocates, delved into themes such as documentation best practices, collaboration, user-centric design, API documentation, tools and technologies, localization, community building, and success stories.
Event Highlights and key moments
Speakers and Sessions
The event featured several speakers who shared their experiences with the attendees. Their talks were mainly focused on the current trends in the market and how they affect documentation, technical writing, and community building. Here are some key takeaways from each session.
Jimmy Tron - Why Write Documentation
Jimmy is a community manager at SpaceYaTech and also works in tech. His talk was mainly focused on the importance of documentation, what to include in your documentation, and what the project solves. Wrapping the talk with a live demo of a project titled Mastori project, leaving the audience with a key takeaway, Tell a story Build a narrative.
Caleb Jephuneh - Empowering Documentation with AI
Caleb is the founder of Bricklabsai, an AI therapist on WhatsApp. He shared his expertise on AI and how it can be used to create good documentation. In his talk some of the key discussion points included:
The current state of AI in documentation
NLP machine learning example through DocuGenAI
Benefits of AI and machine learning for documentation
Benefits of adaptive user content using AI
This was followed by a partial demo of generation documentation automatically using AI.
Felix Jumason - AI for Smarter Documentation
Felix is a Postman student leader, with knowledge of API documentation. His talk was focused on how to create smarter and cleaner documentation using AI. His talk had a lot of helpful info with it highlighting reasons why you should use AI. Some of them were:
To overcome writer's block
Break research bottlenecks
Finish repetitive tasks and Content Exploration
In addition to this, some of the tools and technologies discussed during the talk were:
Automating documentation creation with Scribe AI.
Formatting and layout consistency using Adobe Sensei and Canva Magic Resize.
Quality assurance through StyleGuard, Grammarly, Hemingway, and ProWritingAid.
Multilingual support with Lokalise, Smartling, Google Translate API, and Microsoft Cognitive Services.
Sumaiya Nalukwago - Building a Thriving Tech Carrer - Soft Skills and Diverse Teams
Sumaiya is a Tech Content creator as well as a WTM Ambassador. Her talk was mainly focused on the importance of soft skills in tech and how one should develop and improve on the skills through self-reflection, feedback, courses, workshops, and joining professional organizations.
She also touched on the power of diversity and inclusion, highlighting the impact of seeing fellow women contributing to tech.
Brayan Kai - Docs as Code
Brayan is a GitHub Campus expert as well as a technical writer. His talk was mainly focused on how we should treat documentation the same way we treat code. He also touched on how tools like Vale can be used for technical documentation linting as well as how to utilize GitHub Copilot for documentation.
Albina Nyawira - The Agile Way
Albina is a developer and passionate about tech as well as a mentor. Her talk on the Agile way mainly focused on Agile as a user-centric approach to software development.
Through her talk, she managed to teach more on how to use Jira for documentation. She also gave an overview of Confluence and how to use it for feature requirement documentation, Jira Scrum for task identification and bug reporting, and AIO for test suite documentation.
Brian Mugweru - Approach Code Writing Using Swagger Documentation
Brian is an experienced software engineer with years of experience in the field. Through his talk, he was able to demonstrate how to use Simple validation in Swagger, with complex validation handled in the code.
Maurice Nyanja (Dr. Nutcase) - Write API Tooling
He did a demo workshop showing the attendees how to use Mintify for API documentation. His demo was with Mintlify with Daraja API, showcasing APItoolkit.io.
This comprehensive recap covers the variety of topics and discussions that took place at the WTD-Kenya Summit, highlighting the valuable insights and practical demonstrations provided by the speakers. Attendees left with a deeper understanding of the intersection of documentation and technology, empowered by the knowledge shared at this significant event.
Networking and Attendee Experience
Throughout the program, multiple networking sessions were placed between talks to ensure attendees had enough time to interact. We also had a dedicated hashtag, #WTDKenya and #WTDSummitKE2024 that encouraged the attendees to share their experiences, insights, and photos from the event creating an online community that extended beyond the physical gathering.
Acknowledgements.
We extend our deepest gratitude to our generous sponsors, whose support was instrumental in the success of the WTD-Kenya Summit. A special thank you to Write the Docs, GitHub, and in partnership with other communities like SCAnairobi, DSEAfrica, and KCA University for their unwavering commitment and invaluable contributions.
The success of this summit is a testament to your dedication to fostering innovation and excellence in the field of documentation. Your support not only facilitated an enriching experience for all attendees but also helped strengthen the bonds within our community. We are profoundly thankful for your partnership and look forward to continuing our collaboration in future endeavors.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to all the speakers who shared their expertise and insights, making the summit a rich learning experience. Special thanks to the organizers whose hard work and dedication ensured the event ran smoothly. Finally, a big thank you to all the participants who attended, engaged, and contributed to the vibrant atmosphere of the summit.
Looking ahead, Write The Docs Kenya is excited to build on the momentum of this successful summit. Plans are already underway for future events, including more regular meetups, workshops, and an even bigger summit next year.