Connecting the unpredictable and the predictable

  • Presentation
  • AI & Automation in Technical Communication
  • Chris Ward

    • Supabase

Contents

Many technical tech writing teams were deep into implementing more traditional automation tools into their workflow when the proliferation of AI tools hit. Tools like link checkers, spell and style guide checkers, code tests, and more. For some teams, these were table stakes. For others, a target. And then came AI tools that could do all these tasks, and more, leapfrogging some of these more "traditional" tools.

One of the problems with AI tools is that they are unpredictable and inconsistent. One of the positives is that they give more friendly and actionable feedback to contributors in the authoring process than the wall of errors and warnings of traditional tools.

In this presentation, I look at pairing the two and keeping them in sync. Using AI tools "configured" with the traditional and more prescriptive tools to provide actionable and context-aware feedback during the authoring process, and then using the traditional tools to double-check the AI tools' feedback during the review process, hopefully with a smoother process for all.

Takeaways

Learn how to connect AI and traditional automation tools together for an optimal authoring workflow.

Prior knowledge

A level of experience with either traditional or AI automation tools.

Speaker

Chris Ward

  • Supabase
Biography

A technical communicator with a love of explaining technical concepts in documentation, blog posts, videos, books and more.

Currently works for Supabase, leading a small technical tech writing team.

A podcaster, video maker, writer of interactive fiction, and games. Maintainer of various tech writing open source tools and co-organiser of Write the Docs Berlin.