Sample email¶

Remember to change the things in [brackets]!

FROM: [your name]

TO: [your employer or manager’s name]

SUBJECT: Professional Development: Documentation Community Conference

I’d like to attend Write the Docs Portland, which takes place April 14-16, 2024. This three-day event explores the art and science of documentation, and covers a diverse range of topics related to documentation in the software industry.

Write the Docs conferences bring together everyone who writes the docs – Tech Writers, Developers, Developer Relations, Customer Support – making the events an ideal networking opportunity. Each conference successfully combines a number of different event formats to deliver engaging, practical, and timely content.

There is a single track of talks, a parallel unconference event, and a community writing day. The sessions from last year will give you a good idea of the kinds of topics covered, many of which are relevant to my work.

Costs:

• Conference ticket - $650

Benefits:

• Discovering solutions to problems I’m facing at work
• Exposure to the latest ideas, techniques, and tools for software docs
• Opportunity to learn from the best doc teams in the industry
• Building professional connections with other documentarians

Thanks in advance, [your name]

Corporate Resources¶

When discussing how to pitch the conference, a few generally helpful tips emerged:

• Highlight a few specific talks that relate to ongoing projects at work. (This one’s dependent on pitching after the talk line up has been announced).
• If your company is looking to hire another documentarian, the job fair and networking at the event are an excellent resource.
• Don’t forget that one of the benefits to your attendance is that it raises the visibility of your company in the community. If your team wants a reputation for caring about their docs, having people at Write the Docs is a great way to do that.

In addition, it can be useful to share some info about previous conferences. View the main page overview explaining what is Write the Docs, history and schedule overview.

Sample email¶

Remember to change the things in [brackets]! You can edit this to work for more casual communication methods, such as Slack, Discord, etc.

FROM: [your name]

TO: [your employer or community lead’s name]

SUBJECT: Docs hackathon: Documentation Community Conference

I’d like to attend Write the Docs Portland, which takes place April 14-16, 2024. This three-day event explores the art and science of documentation, and covers a diverse range of topics related to documentation in the software industry. I am particularly interested in Writing Day, I believe this event can positively impact our project and community.

Writing Day is a community event modeled after the concept of “code sprints” or “hackathons”, which are common in open-source conferences. The idea is to get a bunch of people together and have them work towards a shared goal, in this case the goal is creating or improving documentation or other related projects.

Costs:

• Conference ticket

Writing Day Benefits:

• Introduce our project and community to a new audience and demographic in our industry
• Get highlighted as a project in the conference blog and announcements (Submit online by March 28, 2024 to be included)
• Onboard documentation enthusiasts to increase the likelihood of post-conference contributions
• Strategically tackle documentation tickets and requests
• Update existing documentation
• Peer review new and existing documentation

Conference Benefits:

• Exposure to the latest ideas, techniques, and tools for software docs
• Opportunity to learn from the best doc teams in the industry
• Building professional connections with other documentarians

Bringing our project to Writing Day benefits us as a community. It gives us the opportunity to improve our documentation and create a more inclusive project. Check out the Call for Projects for more information.

Thanks in advance, [your name]

Writing Day Resources¶

When discussing how to pitch Writing Day, a few helpful tips emerged:

• Highlight a few specific projects that attended a previous Writing Day, such as Writing Day, Portland 2023.
• If your community is looking for regular documentation contributions, Writing Day is a great place to onboard potential contributors and editors.
• Don’t forget that one of the benefits to your attendance is that it raises the visibility of your community and/or company in the Write the Docs community. If your project wants a reputation for caring about their docs, having people at Write the Docs is a great way to do that.

You may find it useful to review the tips and tricks for leading a project at Writing Day.

In addition, it can be useful to share some info about previous conferences. View the main page overview explaining what is Write the Docs, history, and schedule overview.