Elevator Pitch
People need to understand how your software works before they can use it. A good tutorial can bring new users to your project. In writing two books and dozens of video tutorials, I’ve learned the principles to create effective, engaging learning content. In this talk, I’ll share them with you.
Description
You’ve seen them - the incoherent, boring technical tutorials that litter YouTube and the web. They overwhelm you with too much information at once, or difficult math, or irrelevant rambling. If the topic was important to you, maybe you managed to stay awake through the whole thing, looked up the parts you didn’t understand from other sources, and actually learned something. But most of the time, you’ve probably just hit the Back button and gone on your way.
I’ve written two books and made dozens of video tutorials, all to overwhelmingly positive reviews. In the process, I’ve picked up a variety of tips for structuring tutorials more effectively, some based on research, some on practical experience. In this talk, I’ll share what I’ve learned with you!
Notes
Jay McGavren is the author of Head First Ruby (Amazon review average 4.6 stars) and Head First Go (O’Reilly Safari review average of 4.4 stars for Early Release). He was a software development instructor at Treehouse from 2016-2019.