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Write the Docs Community Update - August 2021

Hey there documentarians!

Eric Holscher here, one of the co-founders of Write the Docs. The newsletter team is taking August off this year, but there’s still plenty going on in the community. This update covers what else is going on behind the scenes while the newsletter team takes a much deserved break.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone online for our virtual Prague on October 3-5 in the CEST timezone. We’re also getting excited about our upcoming virtual Australia & India conference on December 2-3 in the AEDT timezone. The talks were just announced for the Prague conference, and the Australia & India conference CFP is open until August 31 if you have ideas to present.

We also had our second virtual Portland conference in April this year. It was another success with almost 700 people attending from all over the world. The videos from the conference are now available online.

Write the Docs Enhancement Proposals (WEPs)

We have had a WEPs for a little while now, but they haven’t seen a ton of traction in the tumultuous last 18 months. There are a couple of exciting updates to report though.

We have approved our Slack Moderation WEP, which defines the process for moderating Slack much more explicitly. The more formalized process can help grow our moderation team, and reduce confusion about the roles and responsibilities involved. We strive to keep the community friendly and inviting, and moderation is a necessary part of that work.

We have also just launched a new organizational structure and governance WEP, which will help to shape the structure of how Write the Docs operates. This WEP will define all the various teams in the community, as well as how decisions are made at the organizational level. The proposal adds the concept of a Community Council, which will be made up of the team leads of all the community teams. The Community Council will make many decisions around the community, allowing more people to share in the official leadership structure.

We hope that more people in our community will participate in the WEP process, so please read through the proposal and give us feedback.

Write the Docs community shop

We’ve heard from some of the folks in the community that they are missing all the swag we used to give away at our conferences. We always had lots of little goodies to give folks across the years, including stickers, notebooks, shirts, hoodies, and other bigger items in some of our raffle giveaways. We’re excited to be able to bring back a small version of that for those of you who want to wear your documentarian pride on your sleeves :)

The Write the Docs Store is now live with lots of good things. We have stickers, mugs, phone cases, bags, prints, and notebooks with these designs:

We have tried to find a vendor which has reasonable shipping costs so that we can keep the costs down for our community, but it can still add up. We recommend trying to do a group purchase with a meetup or company so that you can reduce the costs involved, and get a few different options of the various items. If you also want a bulk order of stickers or similar swag for a meetup, we can also directly ship them to you for free if you email us at support@writethedocs.org.

Job Board & Newsletter sponsorship pricing updates

We have been seeing great success with our job board and newsletter sponsorships. We’re glad to see that these are so popular and have decided to bring the pricing closer to the value they provide.

Starting in August:

  • The newsletter sponsorship price is $350
  • A featured job posting price is $250
  • A regular job posting price is $100

With the move to virtual events and uncertainty in the world, we’re hoping to be able to use these additional sources of revenue to keep WTD sustainable well into the future.

We do have additional sponsorship options available in the community including virtual conference sponsorships, website sponsorship, and more. We’re also open to new or interesting ways to build sponsorship into the community, so reach out to us at sponsorship@writethedocs.org if you have any fun ideas!

Salary Survey

The annual salary survey, run by the Write the Docs community, aims to gather data about salaries for people working in documentation and related fields around the world. Results of the second survey are available on our website.

We hope that this data can help our community members determine what appropriate salary ranges are, and provide a benchmark for future employment-related decisions and negotiations. Additionally, we’re hoping the results spark discussion of employment-related trends and issues in our industry, including but not limited to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re hoping to launch a 2021 survey here soon, but haven’t put the finishing touches on it quite yet. Watch the newsletter for that in the coming months.

Thanks

Thanks again for subscribing to our newsletter and for being a member of our community. We hope to see you soon at one of our online events, on our Slack, or continue to see you here via this newsletter.

You can always reply to this email if you have any questions or comments. Stay tuned for another newsletter update next month!

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