This document discusses improving a company's developer documentation (Docs). It recommends assessing the current state of Docs, gaining leadership buy-in, and developing a strategy and roadmap. It also suggests starting reactive by addressing customer feedback and becoming proactive by establishing workflows. The document emphasizes that great Docs go beyond words and should include onboarding, naming, tools, feedback channels, and more. It provides resources for learning about developer documentation best practices.

1. Houston, we have a
Docs problem
Ash Ryan Arnwine, Director of Developer Relations, Nylas
indieweb.social/@ashryan
Re–commitment to developers through Docs

2. 2
First, why does this matter?

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Stop the Freefall
Assess the situation and get moving

5. User Experience debt
Understanding your current state of Docs
Technical Debt
Information
Architecture debt

6. 6
Developer
Advocates
Customer-Facing
Teams
Find the allies and helpers
Engineers

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Leadership buy-In
Where is this impacting customers today?
Where is this putting strain on the organization?
What do we lose if we don’t do this?

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Strategy & Execution
Process
Hiring a team
Technical Chops

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Orchestrate the Upswing
Proactive and Reactive Docs

10. Start Reactive
Create open and clear lines of communication 🗣
Uncover customer feedback whenever you can 🔎
Find and extinguish the fires 🔥

11. Get Proactive
Get involved in the PDLC/SDLC process 🔧
Establish efficient and repeatable workflows 📝
Draft a roadmap and get feedback 🚀

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To Infinity and Beyond
Going beyond words on a page to truly delight your developers

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● Onboarding journeys
● Naming things
● Dev tools
● Feedback tools
● Technical and strategic SEO
● Changelog and release notes
● Docs features
Docs is more than “Docs”

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Great Docs at Work
G2 Crowd review
Nylas has been a great partner and their API
has been a blessing that solved a lot of
business issues for us. Also, it's documentation
is by far more details than any other product
out there.

16. The next frontier
GitHub Copilot for Docs
DocsGPT

17. The next frontier
Talking to your OpenAPI spec with ChatGPT

18. Key Takeaways
● Assess your current situation
● Get started now with what you have
● Hire for well-rounded skill sets
● Start reactive
● Get proactive
● Docs is more than “Docs”

19. Helpful Resources
● Book: Docs for Developers
○ docsfordevelopers.com
● Community: Write the Docs
○ writethedocs.org
● Blog post: “Experimenting with AI in DevRel”
○ ashryan.io/experimenting-with-ai-in-devrel

20. 20
Want to work with Nylas DevRel?
● Developer Advocacy team
● Developer Documentation team <- WE’RE HIRING

21. We’re hiring
● Technical Writer (Remote in U.S. or Canada)
● Eng (ML, SRE, QA)
● PMM
● BDR
● And more!
nylas.com/careers