I make complex technical systems legible to the people who need to use them. That’s the whole job, whether the audience is developers evaluating your API, operators learning your CLI, or engineers trying to understand your architecture.
I’ve been doing this for thirty years. Six of them at Canonical, as developer advocate for MAAS — Metal as a Service, Canonical’s bare metal provisioning platform. Before that: electronics diagnostics for NASA, IT management for large financial institutions, technical writing across more domains than I can easily list. I write code in Python, bash, C, and a handful of others. I live in Emacs. I think in systems.
What I do
Fractional DevRel — developer advocacy, community engagement, and technical content strategy on a retainer basis. I work best with infrastructure, platform, and API-first companies that need a senior technical voice without the overhead of a full-time hire. Typical engagements: 10–20 hours per week, three-month minimum.
API and SDK documentation sprints — focused engagements to produce or substantially improve reference documentation, tutorials, quickstarts, and conceptual guides. I work from your source, your engineers, and your existing docs. I deliver finished, publishable content.
Technical writing — long-form tutorials, operator guides, architecture explainers, ghostwritten blog posts, training materials. If it needs to be technically accurate and readable by humans, I can write it.
Emacs consulting — configuration, workflow design, org-mode systems, and training. Particularly useful for teams adopting Emacs as a serious tool or individuals who want a setup that actually fits how they work.
Who I work best with
Companies and teams where at least one of these is true:
- Your product is technically deep and your documentation doesn’t do it justice
- You have engineers who know the product cold but no one who can translate it
- You need a developer advocate but aren’t ready to hire one full-time
- Your CLI, API, or SDK needs a walkthrough a real human can follow
- You’re in the bare metal, cloud infrastructure, or platform engineering space
I’m based in south Mississippi (Central time), work async-first, and am comfortable with distributed teams across time zones.
How to get started
The fastest path is a 30-minute intro call. No agenda required — just tell me what you’re working on and I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help.
Or reach me directly at williamowear@gmail.com.
A few things I’ve done
- Wrote and maintained the MAAS CLI documentation for Canonical, including an eight-part hands-on walkthrough that remains a reference resource for MAAS operators
- Produced community show-and-tell sessions that demystified MAAS CLI tooling for a global developer audience
- Designed electronics diagnostic systems for the International Space Station program at Wyle Labs
- Managed large-scale IT infrastructure for major financial institutions
- Written technical documentation, training materials, and ghostwritten content across three decades and more domains than I can list here
The proof of work is on the front page. The about page has the longer story.