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Organizer Guide

Welcome! This guide aims to help anyone who wants to start a local Write the Docs meetup or a regional conference. Our community is growing quickly and we want to provide resources, guidelines, and tips on how to build and maintain events no matter where you are in the world.

All the content in this guide and in the resources repository is open source, and we welcome contributions and suggestions! Feel free to communicate and share ideas with your fellow documentarians on Slack or by creating issues and pull requests in the GitHub repository.

Note

There are a number of topics that aren’t written yet. That means that you can write them! Please submit your thoughts and ideas, and you can contribute to making this guide better.

You should also look at the Team page to see more information about who is currently filling these roles.

If you’re interested in helping start or organize a Write the Docs conference, send us email at support@writethedocs.org.

Meetups

Information about the global Write the Docs Meetups.

• Meetups and COVID-19
• Many Countries Have Temporarily Banned All “In-Person” Meetups
• Interim Guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Starting a Meetup
  • Write the Docs Worldview
  • Launch your Group
  • Find a Place to Meet
  • Find attendees, speakers, and topics
  • Starting and Running the Meetup
  • Meetup Logistics
  • Meetup Day Checklist:
  • Troubleshooting
  • After Your Meetup
• Meetups FAQ
  • Does Write the Docs cover the Meetup.com fees?
  • Can a company sponsor a local meetup?
  • Meetup organizer benefits
  • Sharing meetup duties
• Make your meetups more sustainable
  • Minimal Viable Meetup checklist
  • Nice-to-haves
• Livestream or record a Meetup
  • YouTube permissions
  • Record a Meetup presentation
  • Stream a Meetup presentation
  • Download from a personal account
• Write the Docs Meetup Quorum
  • Current coordinators
  • Meetup links
  • Meetup schedules
  • Meeting agenda and times
  • Quorum meetup event publicity
  • Advantages of participating
  • Responsibilities of participating meetups
  • How to participate in Quorum
  • Will Quorum meetups continue after in-person events resume?
• Organizing a Quorum meetup
  • Planning the meetup
  • Confirm details
  • Create event
  • Publicize event
  • Practice emcee-ing
  • Tips for the day of your meetup
• Emcee script
  • Before the meetup starts
  • Before the presentation
  • At presentation starting time
  • During the presentation
  • Question and answer time
  • After the presentation
• Quorum meetup roles

Newsletter

The nitty-gritty about creating our hand-crafted newsletter.

• Editorial guidelines
• Write the Docs newsletter
  • Collect stories from Slack (throughout the month)
  • Assign stories (7-10 days before shipping)
  • Assemble & review the newsletter (2-3 days before shipping)
  • Ship the newsletter (0 days before shipping)
  • Tweet about it (0 days before shipping)

Conferences

Information about our regional Write the Docs conferences.

• I want to run a Write the Docs conference, now what?
  • Credits
• Step-by-Step Checklist
  • 5-6 months before
  • 3-4 months before
  • 2 months before
  • 1 month before
  • 2 weeks before
  • 1 week before
• Event Roles
  • Primary Roles
  • Other Important Roles to Remember
• Speakers and Call for Proposals
  • CFP timeline
  • How to write a CFP?
  • Talk review and selection
  • Sharing proposal decisions
  • Building a Schedule
  • Biases
  • Speaker Mentoring
• Communications
  • Emails to send
  • Email content
  • How to send email
• Volunteers coordination
  • Call for Volunteers
  • Scheduling
  • During the conference
  • After the conference
  • Emails to send
• Volunteer roles
  • Room setup
  • Writing day
  • Registration/info
  • Speaker coordinator
  • Talk timing
  • Floaters
  • Unconference / Job fair
  • Social event
• On-site conference registration
  • Registration setup
  • Lanyards
  • Tasks of the on-site registration manager
  • Registration process for volunteers
• Welcome Wagon
  • What is the Welcome Wagon?
  • Who Runs the Welcome Wagon?
  • Events
  • What do I need to do before the conference?
  • What do I need to do during the conference?
• Community-Run Events
  • Types of Events
  • Requirements
• Conference websites
  • File locations
  • Typical conference workflow
  • General conference config file
  • Sessions file
  • Schedule file

We also recommend reading the DevOps Days organizer guide. They have very similar philosophies and have a great guide as well:

https://devopsdays.org/organizing/

Community Spotlight

Information about contributing interview content for the community.

• Community spotlight interviewing guide
  • Community spotlight goals
  • Conference speaker interview recommendations

Salary Surveys

• Salary Surveys
  • Convert from Google Doc to ReStructuredText

Credits

This guide draws much inspiration from the Django Girls Organizer’s Guide.