Dario works as Documentation Manager at OnTheGoSystems. After two years, Dario became the company’s documentation leader. It’s a very challenging and dynamic job which allows him to work with all the teams very closely. Thanks to this, and the fact that he helps with the product usability testing, Dario gets to see all the upcoming features and plugins very early and help improve them.
Dario was born in Croatia but now lives in Slovenia. Besides WordPress and technology in general, Dario’s biggest passion is music and he’s actually pretty good at it.
What was your motivation to become a speaker at WordCamp Prague 2020?
There are two. One is to share some experience with fellow WordPressers. The other is that I simply love WordCamp Prague and was lucky to attend it in the past, twice. It’s just a great conference with great people organizing it.
What will be your talk about?
I’ll talk about writing and managing documentation in the WordPress world. I’ve been the documentation manager for almost five years now and I’d like to share the challenges and my experience with it all.
What are a few takeaways that attendees will get from your talk?
That it’s important to have good documentation for your projects, be it themes, plugins, or websites. That documenting a product is far from simply writing about it, it involves many interesting steps. I’ll also share some experience on workflows and tools I use in my daily documentation work.
How did you become the manager and writer of technical documentation at OnTheGoSystem? What do you enjoy about this role and what challenges does it present?
Well, I started out as a tester with the company. I always loved writing and my English is very good, so I offered to help with documentation. It turned out I’m pretty good at it and our products definitely needed a focused documentation effort and leadership. So, I was happy when the company offered me the position to lead our documentation. 🙂 The biggest challenge is the sheer amount of work, so I really needed to learn to accept the fact that I’ll never be able to do it all. You have to be zen about it and do the best you can and make sure the quality is more important than the quantity.
As a part of your job, you also produce various video tutorials, which is a lot of work. To what sort of companies or agencies would you recommend producing video tutorials for their products? What are their benefits and drawbacks?
Videos are very very popular today and people keep asking for them. The problem is as you say, it takes time and resources to produce quality videos. Sure, you can produce simple ones quite easily today, but it depends on what you want to achieve. I think such videos are perfectly fine for communities and „non-official“ tutorials, you know like, I found a great plugin, let me show you how it works. That’s fine, but if you want to produce professional-looking videos it will take time and resources/money. I would advise anyone to have at least one good video to promote their theme or plugin. But also, do use the video to actually showcase the product and its features and not just having something fancy to put on your webpage.
This is not going to be your first contact with our WordPress community. From what you have seen so far, can you tell us about the differences between communities in the Czech Republic and in Slovenia (eventually Croatia)?
We’re all Slavs, and I personally enjoy seeing how similar we are, from languages to our temperament. So, in that manner, it’s quite similar and the people are warm and welcoming. I love interacting with all three communities! The biggest difference at the moment is that the Slovenian meetups in Ljubljana are very relaxed because they’re not aiming to have a WordCamp in the near future, as the community in Zagreb is. This means there is no „central overseer“ or pressure on the types of talks, topics, and presenters. I think this is a really great thing because the topics are more varied. Want to present your new product we could find interesting? Please, step up and show us, we would like to listen. And so on. I think this gives us a good idea that trying to overly control activities in „satellite communities“ is not really a good thing. Of course, there need to be guidelines and preferences, but you cannot force everything on everyone. People like freedom more than they like products, even if the product is as great as WordPress.
What is your background? What should our attendees know about you?
I was born in Croatia but I live in Slovenia now for twelve years, with my wife Katja, daughter Gloria, and our 12-year-old Chihuahua Mrfi. Almost five years ago, I was lucky enough to get a job with OnTheGoSystems, the creators of WPML and Toolset plugins. I love working there and the team, the people are awesome. Finally, I’m also a pretty good musician, a singer-songwriter. My project Helika is currently on hiatus, but I have a lot of songs ready, just waiting for time to record. 🙂
What are you looking forward to WordCamp Prague 2020? Why is that?
I am looking forward to more English talks because last year there were quite a few for me to listen to. I am also looking forward to seeing the people I met last time and have a drink with them in Prague. 🙂
What would you like to see in the future for WordPress?
I would like to see more acknowledgment that we are different, that we come from different cultures and that that is actually OK as long as everyone is respectful and kind. And finally, I would like to see things moving quicker in WordPress development (looking at you, Gutenberg). It seems like it takes too much time for certain features to arrive or be improved. Like, isn’t this a global effort backed by a company worth a billion dollars? Why does it take so long?
Have you adopted Gutenberg, the Blocks editor? If yes, do you have a favorite use case for it? If not, why?
Yes, I have. Well, I now love using it with our own Toolset plugins because it allows me to build whole sites inside the WordPress‘ own editor, which is honestly, amazing. And in writing documentation, I really like it because it’s more visual and I don’t have to type any HTML anymore. Also, copy-pasting from Google Docs finally works seamlessly. So, yes, I like it and the more I use it, the more I see how outdated the old editor was.
For how long have you been using WordPress? And why you’ve chosen WordPress?
I started out as a freelance web developer and basically, from the start I used WordPress. Mind you, that was back in 2007 when WordPress didn’t have all the fancy features it does now. But still, it was the easiest and best tool for me to use, and it remained so as well.
How do you feel about the WordPress community? Did you get involved in it?
It’s a great thing, it’s special, it’s different. But as I mentioned above, we should be careful not to stifle it with too many rules and limitations. I also think that overseeing should be regional and not global. Like, you get an overseer for your meetup, and they’re from across the globe. It’s a nice idea in theory, but the problems can arise when they don’t know or understand the local culture and life, so this can sometimes backfire. My current involvement is in attending as many meetups and WordCamps I can and sharing my experience through human interaction and talks.
What is your favorite tool related to WordPress?
I (honestly) love the new Toolset Blocks plugin even though we made it so I could get in trouble for doing self-promotion. 🙂 Besides that, I always use the Yoast SEO plugin because it’s simple and feature-full.
What makes you smile/happy?
My family and music, so love in general. 🙂