Writing Day¶
Each year we run an event called the Writing Day during the conference. This event is modeled after the concept of sprints, which are common in open-source conferences. The main premise is to get a bunch of interesting people in a room together and have them work towards shared goals.
To make the most out of the Writing Day, we recommend that you either come with a project, or be ready and willing to contribute to someone else’s project.
Here are some examples of projects that you might want to work on:
- Open source software documentation
- General documentation writing
- Best practices manual (For your company, or the world)
- Blog posts
- Tips and tricks
- Great works of fiction
- Love letters
- The Documentarian Manifesto
You get the idea.
All this adds up to a room full of smart people sharing your problems, your passion, and your goals. So be ready to learn some new things and to teach others what you know.
Even if you feel as though you don’t know that much, we know you have a lot to offer. Come surprise yourself with how much you can share.
Documenting a new project?¶
Check out our beginners guide to writing documentation. This should help you get started, and give you some ideas for how you can contribute to a project that you love.
Logistics¶
Please bring a computer or some other mechanism with which to create written words. We’ll be creating and editing content, so make sure that you have the tools you need to contribute.
Schedule¶
- Date & Time: Sunday, September September 9, 9am-6pm, with the conference opening reception in the same space from 17:00.
- Location: Auto Klub, Opletalova 29, Prague. We will be in the main ballroom.
Projects¶
- Write Write the Docs on Writing Day
- Improve IDEA editor
- anything else you fancy
Write Write the Docs on Writing Day¶
This year we’re also running a session where you can help improve your favorite website. Yup, you can brainstorm on improvements, write helpful content and posts, or just magically improve Write the Docs.
If you’re writing text to add to the website, ideally you’ll already be familiar with GitHub and writing in plain text (markdown or restructured text), but we’ll be there to help out if you’re not.
If you’d rather brainstorm on content reorganization in Google Docs, improve our Python scripts or our jinja templates, we’ve got plenty to do there as well.
Here are a few things we’ll be working on on writing day, reach out to @plaindocs if you have any questions or more suggestions.
Brainstorm user-oriented architecture¶
The website is currently organised around meetups, conferences, guides, etc – find ways to introduce user-oriented labels considering audience. Who is coming to the site, why? What are the goals of the site?
- Learn about docs
- Get involved with the community
- Attend conference
- Submit a conference proposal
- Find a video of a talk that I saw
Help develop the Documentation Guide¶
Help reorganize the guide content, or write and edit topics. Check out Documentation guide ahead of time and bring your ideas to the table!
Fix website issues¶
We have a list of issues on GitHub tagged as writingday that includes things like:
- fix broken links (we have a lot of these)
- improve the meetup pages
- make a better video archive
- add list of conference write ups for past conferences
Improve IDEA editor¶
“Long story short, we had a huge documentation section that we reworked. This section with lots of topics contained useless information with which users had problems and often complained that they couldn’t find the needed info. So, we decided to remove a bunch of subsections, rework texts and include the content into one topic.”
