In this conversational podcast, Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti (Passo.uno) and I talk about the impact of AI on the technical writing profession. We tackle the anxiety, seen and felt almost everywhere, but especially on Reddit, within the community about job security and analyze the evolution of the technical writer's role into a more strategic context curator or content director. We also cover practical applications of AI, such as using agents markdown files to guide language models (with style overrides or API reference contexts), and the role documentation plays in improving AI's outputs (Fabri's phrase AI must RTFM).

This is a recording of the AI Book Club discussion about Karen Hao's Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. The discussion is an informal, casual discussion with about half a dozen people online through Google Meet. You can also read a transcript and other details about the book here.

This is a recording of our AI Book Club session discussing Kai-Fu Lee's AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. There are 4 people in this book club discussion, and our conversation focuses on the emerging AI duopoly between the US and China. We share our own US-centric blind spots and weigh the political and cultural implications of China potentially winning the AI race. We also talk about Kai-Fu Lee's prediction of mass job displacement and his proposed social investment stipend, questioning both its feasibility and its potential drawbacks. The discussion also explores how our own professional...

In this podcast, I chat with Fabrice Lacroix, founder of Fluid Topics, about the evolution of technical communication. Fabrice describes the industry's progression from (1) delivering static, monolithic PDFs to (2) using Content Delivery Platforms (CDPs) that provide dynamic, topic-based information directly to users to (3) developing content not just for human consumption, but for AI agents that will use this knowledge to automate complex tasks and workflows.

This is a recording of our AI Book Club session discussing Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Nearer podcast: When We Merge With AI. You can watch the recording on YouTube, listen to the audio file, read some summary notes, browse discussion questions, and even listen to a NotebookLM podcast (based on the summary). There are 5 people in this book club discussion, and we focus a lot on the topics of acceleration, especially as we see it happening in the workplace. We also weigh in on Kurzweil's techno utopianism and how persuaded we are by the arguments about AGI landing...

This post describes the key arguments and themes in The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future, by Mustafa Suleyman, for the AI Book Club: A Human in the Loop. This post not only breaks down the logic but also jumps off into some themes (beyond the book) that might be more tech-writer relevant, such as potential future job titles, areas of focus for tech writers to thrive now, questions for discussion, and more. It also contains the book club recording.

This post has notes and questions for discussion for More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, published in February 2025 by Jonathan Warner. Warner's book, which explores what we lose when we outsource writing to AI, is the first book in the AI Book Club: A Human in the Loop.

I gave a presentation to the Write the Docs Australia group on using AI to write release notes using file diffs, on Feb 16, 2025. Here's the recording, presentation description, and transcript.

It's that time of year again when we take to analyzing trends. If you know me, you're probably gearing up for a load of AI-optimistic predictions because, as I've noted in previous posts like Unpacking the issues from AI, I'm an AI optimist. However, my AI optimism isn't based on hype or the current tech zeitgeist. Rather, I'm an AI optimist because my daily experiences using AI for technical documentation, especially API docs, throughout 2024 has shown it to be invaluable.

This podcast explores GenAI in technical documentation scenarios, highlighting the AI features and capabilities provided in Document360. I talk with Saravana Kumar, CEO of Kovai.co, which makes Document360, about how AI is changing search functionality and reducing support costs in knowledge bases. We discuss practical applications of AI for technical writers, including automated tagging, SEO optimization, glossary creation, and more. Saravana shares about AI agent workflows, conversational search experiences, automating screenshot captures, and much more.