Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons A focus of mine over the last few years has been how new users for software are enabled by good documentation, or conversely how easy it is to inadvertently put people off with the language you use. There are countless articles on this, around the use of terms such as “just”, or “simply”, and I’ve made observations myself on other examples over the last couple of years.

Last week I spoke at devrelcon London 2019, which was an interesting and fun experience. Firstly, I’d never heard of “devrel” until a few months ago, and secondly, it’s been a while since I’ve spoken or even attended a conference outside of the cosy little Open Source GIS community. For those short of time, my talk was on “Inspiring and empowering users and techies to become great writers- and why that’s important” and you can find it on GitHub for the live version, and the pdf with speaker notes.