Sample email¶

Remember to change the things in [brackets]!

FROM: [your name]

TO: [your employer or manager’s name]

SUBJECT: Professional Development: Documentation Community Conference

I’d like to attend Write the Docs Melbourne, which takes place November 15-16, 2018, in Melbourne, Australia. This two-day event explores the art and science of documentation, and covers a diverse range of topics related to documentation in the software industry.

Write the Docs conferences bring together everyone who writes the docs – Tech Writers, Developers, Developer Relations, Customer Support – making the events an ideal networking opportunity. Each conference successfully combines a number of different event formats to deliver engaging, practical, and timely content.

There is a single track of talks, a parallel unconference event, and hands-on workshops on both days. The sessions from 2017 will give you a good idea of the kinds of topics covered, many of which are relevant to my work.

Costs:

• Conference ticket (includes breakfast and lunch) - $150
• Travel – [fill in with estimate]
• Accommodation – – [fill in with estimate]

Benefits:

• Discovering solutions to problems I’m facing at work
• Exposure to the latest ideas, techniques, and tools for software docs
• Opportunity to learn from the best doc teams in the industry
• Building professional connections with other documentarians

Thanks in advance, [your name]

Resources¶

When discussing how to pitch the conference, a few generally helpful tips emerged:

• Highlight a few specific talks that relate to ongoing projects at work. (This one’s dependent on pitching after the talk line up has been announced).
• If your company is looking to hire another documentarian, networking at the event is an excellent resource.
• Don’t forget that one of the benefits to your attendance is that it raises the visibility of your company in the community. If your team wants a reputation for caring about their docs, having people at Write the Docs is a great way to do that.

In addition, it can be useful to share some info about previous conferences. You can find the websites for previous events on Conferences, and a quick list of last year’s talks down below.

List of talks from 2017¶

• Delivering Documents For All Three Use Cases, by Margaret Fero
• Conversational UI for Writers, by Chris Ward
• How I decided to do this talk, by Laura Bailey
• Writing extensions in Sphinx: supercharge your docs, by Nicola Nye
• Peanuts and Minimalism and Technical Writing, by Brice Fallon