Write the Docs Community Board Quarterly Update Q2-2025¶
Greetings, documentarians! Mikey Ariel here, chairperson of the WTD community board. I’m happy to share our second quarterly update for 2025 with you.
To catch up on previous quarterly updates, check out the community board blog posts archive.
Q2-2025 quarterly meeting highlights¶
Our second meeting of the year focused mainly on the newly-announced Write the Docs Berlin 2025 conference, which is our first in-person official conference in Europe since 2019.
We’re grateful to everyone who participated and supported these virtual conferences during the past few years, and look forward to combining the in-person and virtual experience so that our documentarians can choose to attend in the way that best fits their needs.
Here are the highlights from the meeting:
- Next stop - Berlin
Over the past few months, the board has been discussing the possibility of returning to in-person conferences in Europe. Ever since we moved to virtual conferences, we’ve been monitoring the community and industry trends in Europe as well as attendance data and feedback on our virtual conferences (first for Portland and later on for Atlantic).
Although we were confident in our virtual presence for Atlantic, we realized that the community is now ready to meet again in person, and thanks to our local contacts in Berlin led by Samuel Wright and the willingness of the Atlantic conference chair Sasha Romijn, we were able to make the decision to hold the conference in Berlin.
The success of the updated format in Portland over the past two conferences also gave us a great view into how our attendees experience WTD events in a post-pandemic environment, so we are able to leverage those findings and apply them to the upcoming event.
- Location and format selection
The conference dates were selected based on various holiday calendars as well as other conference dates. In addition, we also decided to forgo an official Writing Day on Sunday, to reduce expenses and travel burdens for staff and attendees. The venue we have chosen is well-known for local community events, and we hope that our attendees will have a great experience there.
Speaking of traveling, we also were happy to see that the Portland virtual tickets were very well received, so we will be including a virtual component with the Berlin conference using the same platform and format as the Portland conference. This way, folks can choose to attend in person or virtually based on their needs, abilities, and preferences.
Post-meeting update: After we held our meeting, Sasha and Sam got right to work and finalized the venue bookings and conference budget, and the landing page has been published (CFP and ticket sales will open soon): Write the Docs Berlin 2025
If you want to volunteer or contribute to the event, please reach out to berlin@writethedocs.org or ping us on Slack. On a personal note, I haven’t been able to travel to Portland since we went back to in-person, so I’m especially excited to be reunited with my WTD family in Berlin!
- Australia conference will be virtual this year
The Australia team, led by Swapnil Ogale, have decided to run the conference virtual-only this year, in order to preserve accessibility and relieve travel burden for attendees and staff. They were very happy with the in-person conference last year; however, the virtual was deemed a more prudent and more streamlined option for the region at this time. We hope to see many folks attend worldwide if you are in the APAC time zone.
- Meetups updates
Besides getting excited about the Berlin conference, Rose Williams has been working to streamline the workflows for monitoring inactive meetups, supporting new ones, and building up virtual meetup presence. She’s been working on a website update on the meetup organizer guide and support guide, so stay tuned for new content soon.
As always, the board continues to review the community backlog to determine what are the most valuable efforts for the community in the short and long term.
What is the community board¶
The Community Board exists to curate the overall strategic direction of the community teams.
The board members are team leads for each WTD team, as well as the conference chairs of our various conferences:
Mikey Ariel (CoreOps, brand and design, board chair)
Eric Holscher (CoreOps, Portland chair)
Samuel Wright (CoreOps, infrastructure)
Sasha Romijn (CoreOps, support, Atlantic chair)
Rose Williams (meetups)
Janine Chan (Slack moderation)
Aaron Collier (newsletter)
Swapnil Ogale (Australia chair)
The community board meets quarterly in real-time, and provides monthly asynchronous status updates. Board members can share the status of what they’re working on and request any help to keep the various teams functioning effectively.
Thank you¶
Thanks again to the team leads that participate in the community board, and to all the team members (mostly volunteers!) who work diligently to support the community and each other. If you want to join any of the WTD community teams, check out the Team page for team descriptions and contacts.
See you in the next update, and wishing everyone a joyous and productive 2025!
Mikey and the community board
