[SeasonOfDocs] WtD and tGDP, WAS Re: introduction

[Jennifer Rondeau]

Hi Jo and all,

Replying to the list in hopes that others are also interested in the
question. This is my take on the differences between the two; I'm sure
other WtD community members would have different viewpoints.

TL;DR: WtD is a community; tGDP is a project.

But that's hardly a satisfying response. Let me elaborate, with an
invitation also for anyone who hasn't read it to take a look at the Write
the Doc origin story <https://www.writethedocs.org/origin-story/> Spoiler:
WtD started as a conference whose success startled the founders, and has
since grown into a global community organized around conferences, meetups,
and a Slack workspace. (There are other bits, too -- for more detail,
explore the website.)

There's a WtD GH repo, but it exists to power the WtD website, which in the
beginning existed only to promote the conference. Insofar as WtD provides
resources akin to what I see tGDP wanting to develop, there's the guide,
which has languished untended for quite a while now, and the video archive
and the newsletter. The newsletter grew out of community frustrations with
the limitations of the free Slack plan -- members can tag conversations
with the newsletter emoji, our capable newsletter editor copies them out
into dropbox, and once a month a small group of us chooses the meatiest
conversations and writes them up for a newsletter that you can subscribe to
or read on the website. The latest editor has also established the index,
which makes it a truly useful long-term resource; there's been some
discussion around indexing the video archive against the same list, and
turning the whole thing into a replacement for the guide.

Organization in/with/at WtD is still fairly ad hoc and free form. There
have been some conversations around formalizing governance and process, but
we're still at the figuring out how to proceed stage of things.

tGDP on the other hand seems to me as a newcomer like a project that wants
to develop a specific set of resources for OSS documentation. That's a
pretty different focus from WtD's -- it seems to me there's quite a bit of
overlap, but also quite a lot of difference. WtD is centered around people
coming together, whether in person or virtually, to discuss any and all
issues related to software documentation. tGDP seems to want to create a
product -- for certain very loose values of "product". Insofar as tGDP
wants to create community around its project, there's quite a lot in common
with WtD. Insofar as it wants to define and make a specific thing, there's
quite a lot of difference.

This message has gotten long, so I'd better stop for now. Happy to discuss
further -- and if people here want to continue this conversation, I might
invite a couple of WtD's founders in to share their views. Mine is only
one, don't forget!

Cheers, and hope it helps,

Jennifer

On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 9:01 AM Jo Cook <jo.k.cook at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jennifer,
>
> Welcome! It would be great if you could elaborate on what you perceive the
> differences between WtD and tGDP- as it's a question that has been
> bothering me as we get it set up.
>
> I probably won't be at the call today, so an email discussion about it
> would be great.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jo
>
> On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 1:49 PM Jennifer Rondeau <
> jennifer.rondeau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've just joined the list by invitation from Cameron, and am very pleased
>> to be here. I'll be joining the intro planning meeting too.
>>
>> I'm Jennifer (she/her, they/them), and I heard about the GoodDocsProject
>> through Write the Docs, where I'm a pretty active community
>> member/manager/organizer, and the nominal lead of the WtD Guide -- although
>> it's languished pretty unattended for a while. I can say more about that
>> project if y'all are interested, but I'll save it for a separate message.
>> (TL;DR: I've looked at some of the list archive discussion about where to
>> host GoodDocsProject, and I'm not sure the WtD guide is a good fit. But
>> y'all should take a look at
>> https://www.writethedocs.org/newsletter/#index-of-newsletter-topics if
>> you're not already familiar. It's also not a good home for GDP -- oh lord
>> what an acronym! -- but it's a related WtD resource.)
>>
>> I'm also one of three leads for the Kubernetes docs, and am pretty
>> involved with that OSS community also.
>>
>> The GoodDocsProject is close to my own interests for a third reason, too:
>> about a year ago, I halfheartedly started a conversation between people I
>> knew who were involved in creating OSS docs guidelines at a few major
>> companies (Google, Twitter, Red Hat), with the idea of encouraging
>> collaboration across projects instead of forging ahead with independent
>> sets of guidelines. I evidently didn't follow through -- but now here y'all
>> are making such a thing really happen, and it's lovely to see and inspiring
>> to be involved.
>>
>> And last but not least -- I'm a tech writer at Stripe. I'm  joining this
>> project on my own, but I'll be talking to my manager about Stripe support
>> as well, because it's aligned with some internal goals and initiatives that
>> we've been discussing.
>>
>> Looking forward to learning more and discussing further and generally
>> helping out however I can!
>>
>> Jennifer
>> _______________________________________________
>> SeasonOfDocs mailing list
>> SeasonOfDocs at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
>>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------
> http://about.me/jocook
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/seasonofdocs/attachments/20190701/280c78f5/attachment-0001.html>