[go: up one dir, main page]

About me, my experience, and how to get in touch

I’m Brian Smith, I work on Firefox and the web platform at Mozilla, based in Berlin. My background spans technical writing, open-source systems, and product work.

My background

My interest in the web goes back to the late 1990s, when I started teaching myself web development. I later studied some fundamentals of computer science, including C programming in university. Much of my work has focused on improving large, evolving systems with many moving parts.

Before joining the MDN Web Docs team at Mozilla, I was Head of Content for a YC-backed open-source time series database called QuestDB. At QuestDB, I was deeply involved in helping the CTO and CEO build a company that went from seed round right through to a successful Series A.

I first started working with tech companies in 2014, initially through UX testing roles, and I was drawn to learn more about common principles of software development lifecycle. I started my career as a full-time technical writer in 2016, although my responsibilities have more often widened to support product teams.

In purely technical roles, I maintained the language specification of a strongly-typed superset of JavaScript that was built from scratch. I also maintained and owned REST API documentation for cloud services.

Outside of work, I love traveling around Europe, good coffee spots, and using music gear as long as it doesn’t have a screen.

Contact me

You can get in touch here:

Experience

Mozilla — Staff Technical Writer

Aug 2022 – ~Present Berlin, Germany

I maintain MDN Web Docs, an open-source project that documents web platform technologies like CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and Web APIs. MDN serves 13,700 pages of en-US documentation for 15 million monthly visitors who want to learn how the web works.

I help keep wheels of the platform moving, which means filling content gaps, implementing and improving automations, making contributing easier, bringing feedback to engineering and product, reviewing content, GitHub administration, and various other chores. I support MDN’s mission to provide a blueprint for a better internet and empower a new generation of developers and content creators to build it.

QuestDB — Head of Content

Jan 2021 – Aug 2022 Berlin, Germany

Wearer of many hats, mainly ran technical content from reference documentation to tutorials, blog posts, and user guides. I managed community contributions, and the planning and executing on long term content strategy. I intimately supported many aspects of growth of the company from a $2M seed stage through a $15M Series A.

Technical Writer at eMnify

Dec 2020 – Sep 2021 Berlin, Germany

I built and maintained the REST API documentation using Open API specification. To encourage the developer community to use our API, I created demo applications on AWS. I ran documentation deployment, customer-facing user guides & tutorials documented with Asciidoctor. I ran webinars & product training and built example apps that used Raspberry Pi & LTE development boards.

Technical Writer at enfore

Feb 2018 – Jul 2020 Berlin, Germany

I maintained the language spec for N4JS, a TypeScript-like language. I owned internal architecture and design documentation written in LaTeX and user-facing tutorials and guides. We took a docs-as-code method deploying static HTML to S3, using custom Docker images for our toolchain.

Google Android Auto UX Tester

Oct 2015 – Feb 2016 Berlin, Germany

I tested Google Android Auto and evaluated it according to Nielsen’s usability heuristics. I conducted screencasting of the sessions, and after testing, I filed detailed issues with reproducible steps on usability improvements that could be made.

Web developer

Jan 2009 – Nov 2015 Berlin, Germany

I built and deployed websites for small businesses. I also specialized in technical content for startups, and small-to-medium businesses. I most enjoyed helping brick and mortar businesses go from zero to online, and eventually scale their e-commerce systems when needed. Specialized in technical SEO, static site generation, Wordpress maintenance, CI/CD, backend development, domain management, CDNs, etc.