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 Prague, which takes place September 9-11, 2018, in Prague, Czech Republic. This three-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 a community writing day. The sessions from last year 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) - €250
• 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, the job fair and networking at the event are 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. But perhaps more useful might be some of the info in our Press Kit, which includes community testimonials, photos, and more.

List of talks from 2017¶

• Even Naming This Talk Is Hard by Ruthie BenDor
• “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”: writing great “getting started” documentation by Tim Rogers
• Finally! Trustworthy and Sensible API Documentation with GraphQL by Garen Torikian
• Telling a Great Story on GitHub by Lauri Apple
• The four kinds of documentation, and why you need to understand what they are by Daniele Procida
• Sticks & Stones… Microaggressions & Inclusive Language at Work by Cory Williamson-Cardneau
• Manage your docs like an archivist by Kathleen De Roo
• Managing community-driven documentation - how to herd doc-writing cats through motivation and a pinch of automation by Floriana Pagano
• Aw Snap! The Docs, They Are A-Changin’ (with apologies to Bob Dylan) by Kate Wilcox
• Writing a book in 2017 by Thomas Parisot
• Requirements that you didn’t know were there by Lesia Zasadna
• Documentation beyond words by Chris Ward
• An Alien Looking From the Outside In: Main Takeaways After One Year in Documentation by Meike Chabowski
• Deprecate and destroy: documenting your software’s last days by Daniel D. Beck
• Tech Writers Without Borders: Making the world a better place, one (numbered) step at a time by Stuart Culshaw
• One-on-One 101 by Ed Stenson
• Hi, my name is README! by Raphael Pierzina
• A content manager’s guide to crowdsourcing the docs by Becky Todd
• You have already succeeded: Design critique guidelines make feedback easier 2.0 by Christy Lutz