Write the Docs 2018 Stats

2018 was another wonderful year for Write the Docs, it marks our 6th year of existence.

Since it’s quiet over the holidays, we normally don’t do a newsletter in January. Instead, we send out a yearly update for the Write the Docs community, filling you in on our progress.

We’re presenting the numbers here without commentary, except where it’s useful for interpreting the numbers, to facilitate comparison across the years. We hope it gives you a sense of the state of the community.

Note

You can also read our posts from 2016 and 2017.

Conferences

  • 450 attendees in Portland (up from 400)
  • 275 attendees in Prague (up from 250)
  • 100 attendees in Australia (up from 50)
  • 50 attendees in Cincinnati (new this year)

Australia went from a one-day to a two-day conference, growing from 50 to 100 attendees. Cincinnati was new this year, in collaboration with OpenHelp, and had 50 attendees.

We also had a full day meetup in London, focused on building a career in documentation.

Slack Network

Newsletter

Meetups

  • 8642 members (up from 5589)
  • 39 meetups (up from 30)
  • 4 continents (same as last year)

Podcast

Website

  • 250,000 sessions (up from 225,000)
  • 450,000 page views (same as last year)
  • guide: 225,000 views
  • conference sites: 120,000 views

This is one place where we haven’t seen a lot of growth. We haven’t added much new content to the guide this past year, which is the primary reason that traffic hasn’t increased.

This would be a great place to get more contributions from the community, if you’re looking for a place to put those writing skills to use!

GitHub

  • 1250 commits to our repository
  • 53 people who contributed to our repository

New this year, we’re keeping track of how many folks are contributing on GitHub. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to keeping our website up to date and adding new content.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who makes this community one of the most open and inviting in the software industry. Here’s to another wonderful year.