Sep 23 – 27, 2024
ESRF Auditorium
Europe/Paris timezone

Documentation is communication. Tips to make documentation more successful.

Sep 24, 2024, 6:00 PM
2h
ESRF Entrance Hall

ESRF Entrance Hall

Poster Open source collaborations Posters

Speaker

Olga Merkulova (DESY)

Description

Breaking news, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts,… Living in the era of information intoxication means the average person’s attention span was ~8 seconds in 2022. No wonder it’s hard to conquer readers’ attention with documentation. That’s why it’s important to make documentation exciting and interesting to read still keeping it informative.

Documentation is communication. And it is an important part of a community builder. It is also a visit card of your project. Via documentation you bring a message to your clients or community. It is a way of communication. And without communication there is no sustainability, consistency, etc. How to communicate to succeed with your community?

Documentation within a group or a facility may also be a single source of truth.
Documenting processes and protocols may be even more important than documenting project itself, especially if it is some kind of a library.

Another big issue in creating documentation is that your team probably doesn't know how to do it. If you make the process understandable and a standard one, there will be no problem.

I will tell what types of documentation exist, share some tips and tools to simplify the process of writing documentation.

Abstract publication I agree that the abstract will be published on the web site

Primary author

Presentation materials