Meet the Team¶
Our conference is organized by a dedicated team, many of whom are volunteers and give their time to bring the community together around documentation! This page outlines these folks and what their roles are.
Eric Holscher (he/him)¶
Conference Chair¶
Eric is one of the co-founders of Write the Docs, and also one of the co-founders of the Read the Docs documentation platform. He is the primary chair of the Portland conference, and loves to talk all things docs.
Sam Wright (he/him)¶
Speaker Coordinator¶
Sam writes docs for developers. He is into making computers do the boring bits of writing so he can work on the fun bits. Sam has been organizing Write the Docs conferences for more than a few years now. He lives in Berlin unless he’s off to a conference or death metal festival somewhere.
Katie Janovec (she/her)¶
Executive Producer¶
Katie Janovec is an Event Producer and Project Manager based in Portland, Oregon. She enjoys organizing a variety of events, including conferences, galas, dance and music events, motorcycle shows, beer competitions, sports events, and more. Katie is excited to collaborate with the Write the Docs team for her third year at the conference.
Alicia Lewis (she/her)¶
Welcome Wagon Coordinator¶
Alicia loves to explain complex things in easy-to-understand ways and is passionate about harnessing the talent and collaborative spirit of others. She is currently Principal Technical Writer at Digi International, Inc., where she works closely (and remotely) with her internationally distributed development teams to document embedded Linux systems. She tends to be a human common denominator, bridging personalities and differences to bring people together.
Brooke Wayne (she/her)¶
Welcome Wagon Coordinator¶
Brooke, also known as Batman, is a long time attendee of Write the Docs in Portland and part of the Welcome Wagon since 2024. Hailing from Toronto, Ontario in Canada, Brooke works at FreshBooks in a documentarian role she created on her own. When Brooke’s not writing, she’s playing competitive dodgeball, reading voraciously, or camping in the backcountry.
David Bastedo (he/him)¶
Welcome Wagon Coordinator¶
David is a support operations program manager based in Portland, Oregon. He works with support knowledge bases, documentation analytics, and customer help centers. David has attended Write the Docs since 2016 and has been a part of the Welcome Wagon since 2019.
Janine Chan (she/her)¶
Communications Coordinator¶
Janine is a documentation nerd up in Canada. She feels so lucky to help organize at Write the Docs so she can nerd out in Portland too! She spends her time putting a lot of effort into complex documentation to make it look like it was easy all along, thinking about making inclusion efforts concrete, running unimpressive distances at unimpressive speeds, hiking, knitting, and swing dancing, albeit non-simultaneously. Her cat remains staunchly uninterested in all of this.
Jennifer Rondeau (she/her)¶
Unconference Co-coordinator¶
Jennifer helps write docs and microcopy for MinIO (object storage). She’s been helping out in the Write the Docs community off and on ever since she attended her first conference in 2014, and is happy to be back behind the scenes. When she manages to resist the allure of docs content, tooling, and community, she dances argentine tango and works with local women’s health initiatives.
Jerome Villegas (he/him)¶
Emcee¶
Jerome is a technical writer from Seattle and happy to be MC again at Write the Docs! He transitioned from education years ago and has experience working with organizations from open source, start ups, medium-sized companies, and consulting for large enterprises. He’s typically busy spending time with his family, continuing ongoing fixes to their century home, and rotating through his numerous hobbies.
Jodie Putrino (she/her)¶
Emcee¶
Jodie manages the NGINX DocOps team at F5. A longtime attendee of Write the Docs, she loves being able to give back to the community that has given her so much. Outside of work and the wild world of conference organization, Jodie can be found playing in the Colorado mountains, making tasty food, or enjoying live music with her family.
Mo Nishiyama¶
Welcome Wagon Coordinator, Social Media Coordinator¶
Mo is a Technical Writer based in the Portland, Oregon area. He works in the Information Technology Group at Oregon Health & Science University, and loves transforming complex technical documents into impactful, accessible contents. Mo has attended Write the Docs’ Portland-based conferences since 2013, and joined the organizer team in 2015. His various interests include injecting 80s song lyrics into business conversations, bonding with cats, and promoting the use of Oxford commas.
Rose Williams¶
Writing Day Coordinator, Lightning Talks Coordinator¶
Rose is a documentation advocate, Meetup organizer, and Write the Docs community board member. She currently resides in Florida. She has had the pleasure of organizing WTD Meetup groups up and down the east and west coasts due to her frequent moves. Her board position focuses on supporting Meetup organizers and their events.
Ryan Macklin (he/they)¶
Unconference Co-coordinator¶
Ryan splits his cerebral time between being tech writing, UXing, coding, and occasionally game design. By day, Ryan writes and edits software and hardware requirements. Otherwise, he works on game or tooling projects, some light woodworking, and land improvement projects on his homestead in southern Michigan. Warning: Ask him about UX in games, and he may talk your ear off.
Joe Meersman (he/him)¶
Pre-conference Panel Discussion Host¶
Joe has been a Designer, Researcher, Principal, Manager, and Director of Design. He is currently a Partner at The Collective and has been an Adjunct Professor at UT Austin for over five years, teaching Visual Communication, Research, and Prototyping. He presents at conferences on topics ranging from Design Thinking, User Experience, Artificial Intelligence, and Creative Career Paths. He loves knowing “Texas” is a slang term for “Crazy” in Norway.
Mikey Ariel (she/her)¶
Brand Coordinator¶
Mikey is one of the original Write the Docs Prague conference organizers, and since the beginning of 2023 she has been serving as the chairperson of the global community board. She is an avid singer as well as a dancer, and has probably traveled across more of Europe than you have. Mikey is a content strategist and former technical writer at Red Hat, living in Prague.
Sasha Romijn (she/her)¶
Grant Coordinator¶
Sasha is an independent developer and community organiser, mainly working on Python projects, many of them relating to internet routing. She has organised various conferences, first joining the Write the Docs organising team in 2017. Among other things, she works on support tickets, the website, and is chair of the Atlantic conference.
Get involved¶
You can further read descriptions of all the roles in our Event Roles doc.
Interested in being a part of the future team or volunteering? Email us at portland@writethedocs.org.
