Technical Writing for Sequin

I joined Sequin earlier this year. I joined in part because they promised I could wear many hats; they’re true to their word, and I’m moonlighting in content marketing!

I’m focused on improving two aspects of my technical writing:

• Writing conversationally. My usual written style’s a little stilted, but someone’s more likely to read your marketing blog if you seem, uh, cool.
• Explaining visually. Whimsical is a solid diagram editor; I’m using it outside of work.

See Blogging with TikZ, State Machines via Jorge Luis Borges, and Processing PDFs with Cloud Functions for examples of (loosely) technical writing outside my work.

I’ll keep this list up-to-date instead of cross-posting articles.

What to do without HubSpot Webhooks

Published July 11, 2022.

A review of shortcomings in HubSpot’s CRM Webhooks API. Webhooks should be a neat system for triggering event-driven tasks outside HubSpot, but these have a number of shortcomings. So does HubSpot’s low-code automation system, a commonly-recommended alternative.

Stripe metered billing, simplified

Published August 26, 2022.

Stripe’s metered billing strategy lets you bill customers according to how much they use your product. That should let you tether your billing to the value your product provides, at the cost of requiring you constantly report cusotmer usage to Stripe. Reading Stripe data through Sequin saves an API call in each reporting cycle.