Skip to content
This repository has been archived by the owner on Sep 24, 2022. It is now read-only.

Season of Docs Ideas 2021

Cameron Shorter edited this page Mar 26, 2021 · 2 revisions

Here we collate potential Good Docs Project tasks for a senior technical writer to tackle under the banner of the Google's Season of Docs program.

Background

We aim to create “best practice templates and writing instructions for documenting open source software”.

  • In 2019 we kicked off The Good Docs Project, and release our first set of doctype templates.
  • In 2020:
    • We matured our project processes,
    • We matured our community,
    • We refine our templates, and have been extracting our learnings into a "template for templates", which we call our base template. This is to be used to help template authors write excellent templates.
    • Within Season of Docs 2021, we developed an Information Architecture Guide.
  • In 2021 we hope to:
    • Refine our base template.
    • Incorporate new templates and refine existing ones.
    • Incorporate related material, such as Google's Doc Audit Checklist.

Proposed Season of Docs tasks

The proposed tasks we aim to address under Season of Docs are covered in our Season of Docs 2021 Proposal

Get involved

For the sponsored Season of Docs 2021 writer position, we're looking to select:

  1. Someone who has been working as a senior technical writer, with a cross section of technical writing experience.
  2. Someone who gets involved, (think do-ocracy).
  3. Someone humble, who is quick to share credit with the team around them.
  4. Someone curious, who collaborates with others to research and refine ideas.
  5. Preferably someone with open source experience.

If you just starting in your tech writing career, and are looking for a paid spot, then I suggest looking at one of the other Season of Docs projects rather than this one.

Volunteers welcome

We want to build our depth of senior tech writer experience. Most of us contribute in our spare time. If the possibility of great docs excites you, and you think you can help, then please join us.

If you use our templates in other Season of Docs projects, then please share your experiences and suggested improvements.

We have a little space for junior and aspiring tech writing volunteers, but our capacity to mentor is limited by our access to senior writers.

Contact us

Feel free to reach out to us via our email list, or directly on slack, introducing yourself and noting what you'd like to get involved in.

Further resources

Here we have collected some background reading and links to blogs, and brain dumps of ideas we have collated to date.