[okfn-labs] Aspiring tech writer at your service

Mon Jan 14 21:45:44 UTC 2013

Hello everyone,

My fellow refugee from academia and linguistics Kate McCurdy (http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2012-December/000544.html) has inspired me to introduce myself to you all and to offer you my services as a volunteer technical writer.

My name is Neil, and I'm a computational linguist seeking technical writing work as of the end of this academic year. I currently lack a real tech writing portfolio, and so I'm very eager to pick up some writing projects. The Open Knowledge Foundation's work has been a source of great excitement for me—so if any of you need someone to write your docs, I would love to help.

I'm still in the process of assembling a proper digital resume, but for some samples of my writing and editing abilities, please consult:

-my posts on the linguistics blog I share with @davidelutz, where you will see some evidence of my literacy in Clojure, Javascript, Python, and D3 (http://www.speechlike.org/author/nmashton/)
-my recent EACL proceedings publication, evidence of my competence with LaTeX (http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W12-08#page=41)
-the 21st volume of the SALT proceedings, which I edited, evidence of my ability to edit truly abstruse technical prose (http://elanguage.net/journals/salt/issue/view/324)

Please let me know if there is any way I can be of assistance!

Best,
—Neil Ashton