Get ready for APIs at STC Summit 2014

STC Summit 2014 is fast approaching! The conference starts in Phoenix AZ on Saturday May 17th. I’ll be speaking on Monday afternoon, on the topic of API Technical Writing: What, Why and How. My aim is to inspire people about APIs: how much fun they are, how developers use them to build useful, fascinating, inspiring software, and how we as technical writers can help by providing the essential documentation and other assistance.

In my session, we’ll take a look at what an API is, and see two popular APIs in action: The Flickr API and the Google Maps JavaScript API. Then we’ll move on to the technical writing side of things: what an API technical writer does, and what good API documentation looks like.

Part of the discussion will be about different types of APIs: web services, JavaScript APIs, object-oriented libraries, and more. There won’t be enough time to cover this aspect in depth, so as an adjunct to the session I’ve put up a short slide deck that accompanies my recent blog post about API types. The blog post has a link to the slide deck, as well as more detailed information about API types. Check out the comments on the post too, for knowledge shared by others.

I’m greatly looking forward to all the sessions and meetups at STC14. I hope to see you there!