Jay Elmore

@jelmore.crystalwind.org

143 Followers 306 Following

He/him. Comics, games, computers, sci fi—but not in THAT way. Header image by @dysonlogos.bsky.social

From BATMAN (1989), Batman (Michael Keaton) fights a Joker henchmen armed with a pair of swords
A slide showing a two-axis table: low/high-impact columns and low/high effort rows. Low-effort/high-impact is labeled “Do First”, high-impact/high-effort is labeled “Schedule”, low-effort/low-impact is labeled “Batch”, and high-effort/low-impact is labeled “Drop”. There are examples of tasks in each quadrant.
A photo spotlighting a door on an automated coffee maker with several signs: “Do Not Push Door”, “Do Not Push Door Closed” (x2), and “Warning: Do Not Close Door With Hand”
A slide showing details of taking five FAQ entries, written over five years, and consolidated into a single long-form article
A “before” and “after” slide showing examples from a proposal she worked on.The left side is cluttered and hard to read compared to the right side
A comparison table with her proposal highlighted in blue
A slide showing the volunteers at the conference, several of whom appear on stage
“I still have no idea what I’m doing”
Mo Nishiyama, the OSHA-compliant guidance gnome
If you’re using this restroom and you think a person’s gender doesn’t match the sign on the door, follow these steps: 1. Don’t worry about it, they know better than you
A close-up picture of the side of a backpack with an "Empathy is Cool, Actually" pin above a d20 pin
An animated GIF from the classic video game Lemmings showing lemmings digging through the ground to get to water
Herger the Joyous from The 13th Warrior (1999)
Marc Singer in THE BEASTMASTER (1982) with his "black panther" (actually a tiger dyed black) Ruh
Maxmillian, the sinister murder robot from THE BLACK HOLE (1979)
An incomprehensible PowerPoint slide from a DoD presentation: with lines zoom around between cryptic acronyms and military jargon terms with "Where Are the Weapons?" in a big oval in the center
Slide with “We made it!”
Get down to the details: Be specific, be thorough, be clear, do a sanity check before presenting. Broad: content types, writing styles, doc design Specific: brand info, typography, colors, voice, FAQs, tips, examples
A slide showing three websites. The upper left shows the old ForgeRock site, the lower left shows the old Ping site, and the right shows the next Ping site
A slide showing her knitting style guide: common abbreviations for knitting instructions
A slide showing a sample from a knitting pattern. There are abbreviations for “knit”, “purl”, “repeat”, and stitch”
Testing Tools by Technical Skill Level Novice: none Intermediate: Doc Detective, Innovation Engine, RunMe Advanced: Playwright, Cypress, Postman, Bruno
A slide labeled “A little complexity never hurt anyone” above a wall of Python code
There are two Venn diagrams. The first is labeled "Imposter Syndrome" with a small blue circle labeled "What I know" inside a larger circle, "What I think others know". The second is labeled "Reality" with a small blue circle labeled "What I know" surrounded by other small yellow circles, "What others know"
Anatomy of a well-asked question: Here’s the situation I’m in Here’s what I’ve already thought about Here’s where I got stuck Here’s what I’m hoping to learn from you I’m asking you in particular for this nice reason Here’s an acknowledgment that I appreciate your time
Janine's slide: Year 0: Graduate with an English degree - I can analyze the heck out of Shakespeare and really like MS Word Year 3: First technical writer job - I think I know what HTML is? ?!!!!! Year 10: Senior technical writer at Datadog - I wrote some code and they hired me!
A slide showing four QR codes with links to articles about information architecture
Tom’s slide showing a tree representation of their API
Eric presents a slide labeled "Thanks" with Speakers, Organizers, Staff, Sponsors, and Attendees
Eric shows a slide demonstrating the Pac-Man Rule: a group of people standing in a circle but with an opening for a new person to join
Eric presenting a slide: a circle of different people (writers, developers, testers, marketing, support, devops, designers) with "Documentarians" in the center
Eric Holscher acknowledging that the land the venue sits on belonged to the Multnomah tribe
Mo Nishiyama wears a safety cone hat and high-visibility vest
Attendees at the registration desk, picking up badges and swag
The Excalibur firing its forward guns as fighters fly by, a scene from the Babylon 5 spinoff CRUSADE
Shira Brie as a Rebel pilot
Herger struggles to his feet during a duel while Ahmed is blocked from intervening in THE 13TH WARRIOR
A panel from BATMAN: FORTRESS showing President Lex Luthor wearing a blue, white, and gold version of his trademark power suit with the U.S. presidential seal on the chest.
Holding my copy of the new hardcover collection of TIME BREAKERS by Rachel Pollack and Chris Weston
Rorschach, from WATCHMEN
A photo of a shelf showing several NASA Lego sets. You can also see RPG books and other fun collectibles.
Teal’c from Stargate SG-1
A small hand-drawn Christmas tree, inked in color pens.
A list of fake baseball player names from an old console game, Fighting Baseball. Names include gems such as "Sleve McDichael", "Raul Chamgerlain", "Jeromy Gride", and "Mike Sernandez"
An official graphic noting that I am user number 515,016 on Bluesky
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan
Sam Reich, Josh Reuben, Zac Oyama, and Brennan Lee Mulligan jamming in the NPR's Tiny Desk bit from Make Some Noise
Lorien from Babylon 5. If you still haven’t watched this show, it’s streaming for free on Tubi
The opening screen for JOURNEYQUEST: The Halls of Rathos
Batman (Michael Keaton) grabbing the Joker (Jack Nicholson) by the lapels in BATMAN (1989)
A still from The Crow (1994) with Brandon Lee as Eric, standing with his hands spread wide open
The System Lord Baal from Stargate SG-1
A meme based on a comic by Cupcakelogic. Panel one: the dog asks someone off panel to "Pls fix??". Panel two: when someone reaches for the ball, the dog says "No troubleshoot!!" Panel three: the irritated dog demands "ONLY FIX"
An example of a platform-based toolchain
A slide depicting an MS-Word-based toolchain
An workflow for an AsciiDoc toolchain
A slide showing two extremes of timeliness, relevance, and context: design reviews versus system documentation
The Diataxis diagram for explanatory systems documentation: Tutorials (action/acquisition), How-To Guides (action/application), Explanations (cognition/acquisition), and Reference (application/acquisition)
First panel: "SITUATION: There are 14 competing standards" Second panel: Man–"14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases." Woman–"Yeah!" Third panel: "SITUATION: There are 15 competing standards"
The TL; DW (Too Long; Didn't Watch): Stripe built an internal docs team + platform to combat growing pians with fragmentation, freshness, discoverability, and more — Here's what we're trying!