Chris Ward CV

I have been a freelancer and contractor in the past so attempting to summarise my work experience and history is always challenging.

Below are chronologically the most recent and relevant projects I have worked on, I can supply more details on request.

Accomplishments

Long-form (technical) writing

  • 2017, “Jump start responsive design” from SitePoint.
  • Edited three books for Packt publishing.
  • Technical editor for four books with Manning.
  • “Technical Writing for Developers” for Packt publishing, released in March 2024.
  • Working on a book on Ableton Live 12 for Packt publishing. (Cancelled)
  • Working on a book on Sustainable computing for Apress.

Courses

  • Two video courses for SitePoint.
  • “CSS in Depth” for Manning.
  • An introduction to Swift for Flatiron school.
  • An introduction to web development for Career Foundry.

Presentations

Over the past 4-5 years, I have spoken at over 100 events on a wide variety of subjects. Find more on my website.

Podcasts and Video

  • My 8+ year-old podcast, “Chinchilla Squeaks”, recently renamed to “Tech Lounge”.
  • My YouTube channel is monetised with regular technical and creative content.

Find links to all these at chrischinchilla.com.

Open Source

I have always been active in open source communities, including regular contributions to: Drupal, CiviCRM, Atom, Visual Studio Code, Webpack, Kubernetes, Obsidian, and Vale. See my GitHub profile for more.

Community

  • I ran the Write the Docs meetup in Berlin and have organised other meetups in the past.
  • I was on the organising committee for the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 EU, and 2019 Australian Write the Docs conferences.
  • I co-organised the “Tool the Docs” devroom at FOSDEM in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2024, and 2025.
  • I was a judge for the Mozilla open source awards in 2020.
  • I run the Berlin Shut Up & Write© meetup with over 3,500 members, and thanks to the co-organisers, we run meetups almost every day. It is the largest chapter in the world and I was recently invited to speak at the community symposium.

Work Experience

Freelance Technical Writer, Blogger, and Developer Relations

March 2017 - Present

When not working full time, I work as a freelance writer and blogger, I have contributed to the blogs and documentation sets of technical companies. These ranged from small cutting-edge startups to large enterprises.

Current clients and work include:

  • Parseable: Technical blog posts and videos.
  • Aspect: Documentation and documentation tooling.

Past clients and work include:

  • libcamera: Documentation of an open-source camera stack and framework for Linux, Android, and ChromeOS.
  • Dev Spotlight: Technical blog posts for Salesforce, Kong, and others.
  • ReveCom: Technical blog post editing for high-profile clients.
  • Sky Word: Technical whitepaper writing for high-profile clients.
  • Unity: Documentation for the MARS AR development plugin.
  • GitLab: Technical blog posts.
  • Humanitec: Technical blog posts.
  • here technologies: Updating and maintaining API and reference documentation for the GeoVisualization product.
  • PagerDuty: Non-technical blog posts.
  • OverOps: Technical blog posts.
  • Coralogix: Technical blog posts.
  • Facebook Messenger: Technical blog posts.
  • data artisans: Technical blog posts.
  • Sqreen: Tutorial, API, and reference documentation.
  • Telerik: Technical blog posts.
  • DZone: Tech journalist covering events, interviews, and tools.
  • The Next Web: Tech journalist covering events and interviews.
  • Equinix: Technical blog posts.
  • DGraph: Documentation platform overhaul.
  • Caepe: Documenting a new product release.
  • n8n: Creating a series of self-hosting guides.
  • Sentry: Writing blog posts on how to debug with certain languages.
  • KILT: Working on documentation for the decentralised identity platform.
  • Slint: Overhauling documentation for this cross-platform development tool.

Docker, Staff Technical Writer

February 2023 - August 2023 Docker Inc is a major contributor to many container-related technologies and its own commercial offerings. I was a staff technical writer on the documentation team and was attached to working on a number of commercial products. My responsibilities included:

  • Working with product managers, engineers, and designers to create and maintain documentation for new and existing products
  • Proposing and steering new improvement projects
  • Editing and reviewing submissions from internal and external contributors
  • Liaising and working with our developer relations and marketing teams for collaboration ideas
  • Writing technical blog posts for products
  • Providing guidance, mentorship, and feedback

Chronosphere, Senior Technical Writer

August 2020 - September 2022

Chronosphere is the steward for M3, the highly available time series database, and its commercial offering. I was the sole tech writer for both projects, and my role included:

  • Overhauling documentation and documentation platforms
  • Documenting new features as they developed
  • Creating and maintaining a style guide and automated style-checking tools
  • Creating and maintaining tests, screenshot generation, and other documentation tools
  • Editing and reviewing submissions from internal and external contributors
  • Liaising and working with our developer relations and marketing teams for collaboration ideas
  • Responsibility for metrics, planning, and delivery of documentation
  • I wrote a handful of technical blog posts and a monthly Observability newsletter
  • I hosted several video series interviewing staff members and external experts

Ethereum Foundation, Technical Writer

August 2018 - August 2020

I worked as the sole tech writer for the Ethereum Foundation and its projects. My role included:

  • The Solidity project:
    • Improving the getting started and contributors guides
    • Working with developers to improve feature documentation
    • Coordinating documentation translation
  • The Geth project:
    • Improving the getting started guides
  • The Remix project:
    • Working on creating interactive workshops for people to learn Solidity
  • Ethereum Studio
    • Creating content for this interactive web-based IDE to help people learn Ethereum Dapp development
  • Ethereum Wiki
    • Fixing bug with the current wiki
    • Transitioning the wiki to an improved collaborative platform
  • Organising a monthly education call for all people involved in Ethereum education
  • Creating tool kits for documentation platforms and tools for projects
  • Auditing project documentation needs for funding teams
  • Helping create an RPC standard spec for the Ethereum RPC

Event Store, Technical Writer

March 2017 - March 2020

Event Store creates an open-source events-optimised database with commercial-only features and support. My role included:

  • Migrating to a new documentation platform
  • Improving getting started guides
  • Creating example applications
  • Maintaining reference documentation for an HTTP API, a .NET SDK, command-line interface, and implementation guides
  • Writing a book for a new release
  • Creating a new developer portal to hold old and forthcoming documentation
  • Integrating docs and support platform (fresh desk)

Kauri (ConsenSys), Technical Content Lead

October 2018 - March 2020

Kauri was a content management system and platform built on top of Ethereum technologies. We lost our funding from our parent company (ConsenSys) in March 2020. My role was to do the following:

  • Commission and work with writers to produce content on particular topics
  • Manage a content budget
  • Promote the platform to writer communities
  • Write our help content, newsletters, and some technical articles
  • Work on writer-related features for the platform, for example, improving the editor
  • Suggest edits to unsolicited posts to the platform
  • Organise content into collections and communities

Contentful, Technical Writer

Sep 2016 - March 2017

As the technical writer for Contentful, an API-based CMS, I was responsible for writing and editing all developer documentation. I managed the documentation infrastructure, information architecture, and analytics. I liaised with the engineering, marketing, and support teams to determine priorities and problems that needed addressing in the documentation.

Crate.IO, Developer Advocate

Feb 2015 - Aug 2016

I was a Developer advocate for this open-source, highly scalable database startup. Responsible for Europe, my tasks include handling support, organising events and presentations, networking, creating content, documentation and sample applications, partnerships, social media, and much more.

SitePoint Mobile Channel Editor

March 2014 - Aug 2016

In this part-time role, I was responsible for the SitePoint mobile channel. SitePoint is a global resource site for Developers and Designers that ranks highly on Alexis and has weekly traffic of about 1.5 million page views. My role involves commissioning and editing articles, engaging our community, and creating a strategy based on trends in our readership. As part of editing articles, I have to understand, test, and streamline code in a variety of languages, such as Swift, Java, and JavaScript.

Older work

Summarised for brevity.

  • This Little Duck, Senior Drupal Developer: March - July 2014
  • The Monthly, Drupal and CiviCRM Developer: December 2013 - March 2014
  • Moat Media / Go: April 2012 - October 2013
  • The Australian Conservation Foundation, Online Coordinator
  • CERES, Online Coordinator
  • Green Renters, Operations
  • Portable Content, Developer