Minimalism Beyond Personas: Slicing Documentation for AI - Discussion with Dawn Stevens

Daniel Kocot (adorsys) joins host Kristof Van Tomme (Pronovix) to brainstorm how enterprise capabilities map across domain boundaries as productized affordances, noting the vital distinction between a technical feature and an affordance. They discuss how modern semantic search over a knowledge graph might breathe new life into the mature concepts of the graph database and the semantic web to help manage enterprise API sprawl.

This episode explores how AI is reshaping technical communication, from documentation structure and markup choices to making content accessible for AI-driven consumption.Host Kristof Van Tomme talks to Dawn Stevens, President of Comtech Services, and they explore what AI-driven consumption means for the way we structure and write documentation, compare the strengths of semantically meaningful markup languages like DITA with lightweight (insider pun intended) formats like Markdown, and discuss the risks of keeping documentation hidden behind firewalls. 

The conversation explores and bridges the external imperative of publishing your API menu for LLM discovery with the internal requirement of defining your organizational capabilities to achieve actual business outcomes.

Contrasting the strict constraints of structured data with the velocity of lightweight formats, and how both prepare content for the future.  Conversation with Paul Coinaud, Senior Manager of Documentation at ANSYS (recently acquired by Synopsys). In this episode we talk about the critical need for LLM-ready content much enriched with structured metadata and discusses how standards like iiRDS and DITA’s semantic tagging enable this. Paul emphasizes that true minimalism isn’t just about the writing framework: it requires deep collaboration with Subject Matter Experts to translate raw knowledge into tailored content for specific audience personas.

Discover how technical writers are using minimalism and DITA architecture to guardrail AI models and reduce hallucinations. This episode explores structuring technical content for LLM intent matching, the fascinating paralels of stigmergy and guiding autonomous AI agents, and some of what Ravi and Deepak are working on: AI style guides and knowledge graphs to optimize AI behavior.

Join host Kristof Van Tomme with Jean Dulau and Julien Rateau from Google Cloud’s Apigee team for a special live episode marking 10 years of our partnership that started with a meeting at APIdays and built up to shaping developer portals and API management worldwide.The conversation then looks forward, exploring the new era of AI and the urgent need for connectivity, governance, and managing complex agent-to-agent communications, and the renewed critical importance of outside-in innovation. Plus, hear the exciting announcement of full MCP support within Apigee, a major step for AI governance.Tune in for insights on our long-term partnership, innovation, and the future of API and AI integration.

Discussing his recent book "Not Artificial, Not Intelligent", Django Beatty cites high failure rates and combinatorial explosion issues. Thoughtful essays like "The Pachinko Machine" and "The Machine Can't Plan" frame AI as a useful cognitive exoskeleton requiring human expertise: can be read as an antidote to extreme views. The episode concludes that the true value of AI lies not in automation, but in figuring out how it systemically reconfigures existing work and value chains.

In this episode, Alicia Miller returns to share exciting insights about her new role as Head of Growth Strategy at Aduna Global.The discussion explores Aduna's mission to accelerate the telco network API market by reducing friction and commercializing APIs that are difficult for individual telcos to manage due to antitrust concerns and technical complexities. About Alicia Miller:Global strategic partnerships and business strategy development leader with 15 years experience across industries, including telco network APIs, ecosystem development, and deal negotiation focused on bringing new technologies to market, including 5G and Mobile Edge Compute. Working with some of the largest companies in the world to forge new partnership models and create first-to-market advantage.

OAI ambassador Erik Wilde explores how new specs like Arazzo and MCP are shaping AI-driven workflows, and why APIs may soon be your last line of defense. 

In this episode, our guest is Michaela Halliwell, Senior Platform Product Manager at HCSS, a key player in the heavy civil construction industry. The discussion emphasizes applying a product management approach to APIs, focusing on solving customer problems and making them consumable. She also discusses the importance of governance starting from day one, balancing flexibility with consistency across legacy systems.