Write the Docs Community Update - August 2026¶
Eric Holscher here, co-founder of Write the Docs.
I hope you are enjoying the last bits of summer. Every January and August we give the Newsletter team a break, and the Community Board provides an update that zooms out a bit from the day-to-day.
Overall, Write the Docs is doing well. Our conferences have been well attended this year, and our community continues to grow. We’re proud of the work our teams are doing, and the spaces we’re able to create.
However, the industry is in a state of tumult. The hype and rash decisions around AI make everything feel tenuous. At Write the Docs, we’re doing what we’ve always done – lean into the power of community, and find ways to support each other. At conferences, meetups, and online, our goals are to share information and help ground each other.
This post covers how we think about Write the Docs and how we can use our strengths to help the community navigate this moment.
The community core¶
Write the Docs started with a conference 13 years ago. Conferences are the heart of the organization, and where the funding for everything else we do comes from. Our Core Operations team and event producer help organize the Portland and Berlin conferences. Almost everything else is done by volunteers – people who want to build community and connect with others.
We are thrilled with how far the documentarian ethos has traveled. There are conferences on four continents this year, and meetups around the world. We are proud of our Newsletter and Slack – the primary online touch points for the entire community.
Write the Docs is at its best when we convene people, and help them share knowledge and build connections. That is a continuing theme of everything that we do, and we are always looking for other avenues to support the community in that way.
Built by the community¶
This year each of our conferences had some exciting updates:
Portland had almost 600 attendees (400+ in-person and 175+ virtual). We added an Intro to Git workshop, split the Writing Day and Unconference across multiple rooms, and added Sponsor Sessions and an Attendee Lounge.
Kenya just happened a couple weeks ago, their third yearly event, and added roundtable discussions along with the main track.
Berlin is happening again in a couple weeks, and adds a Writing Day for the first time, coming back into a full three-day event like Portland.
Australia is back in Melbourne this year as a hybrid event, after taking a year off. Maintaining the health and excitement of the community is something we think about a lot, and it’s great to see them back with renewed energy.
Kenya and Australia both grew from meetups into larger conferences. There have also been locally produced conferences in London, Vilnius, and Cincinnati over the years. All of these events are chaired by volunteers, and brought together by a dedicated team of documentarians who want to convene their local community.
A similar story has happened with the Newsletter. Back in 2016, someone had the idea of trying to capture the knowledge being lost in our Slack backlog. From that initial start, a team of editors and writers has been keeping that running for the past 10 years. This distillation of community thought is one of the most important artifacts that we have.
Better supporting the community¶
There have been major changes in the industry in the past few years:
AI is changing how we think about content – from who reads the docs, to how people think about writing them. It has also been a constant flood of new concepts and buzzwords, which makes it hard to know what direction to move in.
The Society for Technical Communication closed last year, leaving a more formal gap in the industry. Over the years they engaged in advocacy and government relations, produced publications, and other efforts to professionalize the field.
The funding environment in the industry has also been quite mixed, with massive AI funding and a downturn in other areas. This has led to hiring and growth for documentarians being rougher, as noted in our Salary Survey.
All of these problems require energy and passion to improve. If you want to help us improve these or other aspects of the industry, please let us know. We’d love to help build a working group on government advocacy, add more guide content and tooling around AI, or start a larger hiring initiative beyond our Slack channels. We’re always interested in trying new experiments, and it’s the perfect time to do more.
We’ll be continuing these conversations in person at Berlin in September.
Join us¶
We have a lot going on in the next 6-12 months:
Berlin, September 6-8: Grab a ticket, in person or virtual.
Australia, December 3-4: Submit a talk before the CFP closes on September 11.
Portland, May 2-4, 2027: Save the date! We’re back at Revolution Hall.
Your local meetup, year-round: Find a group near you, or start one if there isn’t one yet.
Our Slack network: Join the conversation, ask questions, and share your knowledge.
Start something new: As I mentioned above, we’re interested in new initiatives around AI, hiring, advocacy, and other areas. Reach out if you want to scheme something!
Thank you¶
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the community this year. From the Meetup organizers hosting events after work, to the folks in Slack posting jobs, and everyone else in between. At our events and online, the community is what we make it. Thanks for keeping it going, and looking out for each other.
And now for something completely different…
From our friends at The Good Docs Project¶
The Good Docs Project is a fellow documentation community, and they have a fun event coming up that we wanted to share:
Introducing The Good Docs Project Blogathon: Be part of the magic
This October, join The Good Docs Project for a first-of-its-kind community event called a blogathon, which will bring together writers from around the world to explore the past, present, and future of documentation. This is a bold, new experiment that will be half hackathon (a fast sprint to build something, but for writers) and half unconference (collaboratively exploring ideas on a specific topic).
In this free 3-hour event, writers from all over the world will meet online to write a blog entry about the future of tech writing. Show up with an idea about something to say, spend some time writing and getting feedback from peers, and leave with a blog post that will get published on The Good Docs Project website for the broader documentation community to engage with. Come write with us!
Get all the details and apply: https://www.thegooddocsproject.dev/blogathon
