Write the Docs Portland is back for 2025, and the speakers are as strong as ever!

As has become tradition, Write the Docs Portland will kick off on Sunday, May 3rd with an optional hike through Portland's scenic trails, offering early arrivals a chance to network in a relaxed, natural setting. The main conference kicks off on May 4th with a Writing Day, which is a collaborative session for hands-on learning and teamwork on documentation projects. Before an action-packed two days featuring expert-led talks, rapid-fire lightning talks, and participant-driven unconference sessions focused on the topics that matter most.

Unfortunately we will not be making it out to Portland for this year’s event but we will be eagerly following along from afar. Among the many topical presentations, we are particularly excited for two talks focused on improving the quality and resilience of technical documentation:

Docs as Tests: A Strategy for Resilient Docs
Presented by: Manny Silva

Outdated docs break user trust. Sometimes it's small—a screenshot that doesn't match the UI. Sometimes it's a one-and-done broken relationship—a critical procedure that fails at a key moment. You don't always get a second chance.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves Manny!

This talk introduces a forward-thinking approach to maintaining robust documentation by treating it as part of the testing process. It will demonstrate how to integrate documentation checks into testing workflows, ensuring content remains accurate as products evolve.

Attendees will learn practical methods for embedding documentation validation into continuous integration pipelines, which helps proactively identify and resolve inconsistencies. Not only enhancing documentation reliability but also encouraging closer collaboration between development and writing teams.

We are obviously biased here at LaunchBrightly but we are big believers that the product visuals in your documentation—like screenshots—are the most immediate way customers identify if your documentation is out-of-date. So eager to hear the strategies Manny shares for keeping documentation accurate as your product changes, to build and maintain user trust.

The Power of Two: How Support and Documentation Teams Transform Technical Content Quality
Presented by: Yanjie Niu

In this session, Yanjie will address the challenge of improving existing documentation with limited resources and data. She will highlight the power of collaboration between technical writers and support engineers to enhance content systematically by combining insights from documentation analytics, support tickets, and customer interactions, to help prioritize improvements and measure impact.

This partnership not only raises documentation quality but also benefits both groups: technical writers gain deeper product knowledge, while support engineers develop stronger communication skills. Attendees will walk away with practical strategies to implement data-driven processes and foster closer collaboration between support and documentation teams.

Other speakers on this stellar list of documentation experts include:

Docs AI Tooling is Better (and Better for Us) than You Think
Presented by: Alex Garnett

Writing the Shipwreck
Presented by: Stephanie Fuller

Quest for the Holy Grail: Turning User Feedback into Meaningful Change
Presented by: Rachel Rigdon

Regulate This! Writing for the Medical Device Industry
Presented by: Holly Mickelson

Knitting Together a Technical Writing Career
Presented by: Heather Zoppetti

Seven habits of increasingly technical technical writers
Presented by: Janine Chan

Using Competitive Analysis to Your Advantage
Presented by: Leah Catania

Embracing the Kraken : How to build a docs-toolchain monster and why it’s OK
Presented by: Ravind Kumar

Unifying Documentation: A Tale of Two Security Giants
Presented by: Jodie Landes

Open Docs, Open Collaboration: Building Better Documentation with Community PRs
Presented by: Colin Loretz

Scaling a unicorn: how to mature your documentation program and support a changing business
Presented by: Elise Davis

And should you want some bonus content you can also see a recording of the talk our CEO, Dennis, did at Write the Docs Atlantic on: The Power of Product Visuals in your Help Documentation.

Wishing all those speaking, and all the attendees, a wonderful event! Looking forward to keeping a track of all the updates from afar on social and in Slack :-)