Blog - Posts tagged australia-2020

Conference highlights and thanks to the community!

2020-12-14T00:00:00Z

G’day everyone,

The Write the Docs Australia and India team is now emerging from the post-conference recovery period, and we wanted to send out a quick message to thank everyone for helping to make our joint Australia and India online conference such a success. We’re happy to share some of the highlights with you.

Conference recap

At over 125 people, this year’s conference was our biggest yet! We had the usual mix of main stage and lightning talks, and social events. Learning from our Portland and Prague events, we were very happy with how well all of our events transitioned to our new online format. We loved how the spirit of the community was so palpable even in an online event, which was even more special given the year we’ve all had.

Overall, we were excited with how our awesome community came together in our new virtual venue. Lots of knowledge was shared, and we had a great time.

Videos

Videos of the talks and lightning talks are now available on our YouTube playlist. We also included the Q&A recordings for the main talks.

Thanks again to Bart at Work for doing such a great job with these. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any future content!

Sketchnotes

One of our fantastic volunteers from the conference did some amazing sketchnotes of all the talks at the conference, as a takeaway for attendees. These sketchnotes are now available for everyone at WTD AU and India 2020 sketchnotes.

Shirts still on sale

If you want a souvenir from this year’s conference, our Write the Docs Australia 2020 Pop-Up Shop is still open! We have loose and fitted options from different fabrics, and you can choose exactly the size and cut you want.

The campaign will run in 3-day batches until January 10th 2021. Shipping is available from the USA or Europe.

Code of Conduct transparency report

As with any Write the Docs event, this conference was covered by our community Code of Conduct. We aim to be as transparent with CoC incidents and enforcement as we can.

To ensure that our CoC was visible and accessible, we took a number of specific steps:

Every participant agreed to the Code of Conduct in advance during registration.
The CoC, or a summary, was included on the conference website and Hopin Reception
The CoC was repeatedly mentioned in our conference introduction and announcements.
We specifically stressed that the CoC applies to all conference spaces including the social event.
We encouraged all attendees to report any incident, even if they were not sure whether it was a violation.

None of our organizers were approached about any CoC concerns at this event. We know that this is, in part, a reflection of the thoughtful and inclusive community that we’re so lucky to have.

That being said, we’re also very conscious of the fact that just because nothing was reported doesn’t mean nothing happened. If there was any personal conduct or other aspect of the conference experience that did not meet the expectations of behaviour set out in the CoC, please email us at conduct@writethedocs.org.

Ready for more?

We are already talking 2021 folks! Our Portland conference has announced its dates for 25-27 April and CFPs are now open. You can submit a talk for the Portland conference until midnight Pacific time 25 January 2021. This conference is also virtual next year, so you can attend or present from anywhere.

Our Slack network has expanded yet again this year. Our #general Slack channel has been extra busy in the days and weeks leading up to the conference, and we hope that you will continue the conversations throughout the year. If you haven’t joined, now’s the time! Check out the Write the Docs Slack.

We’re also looking for more sponsors to make our other events just as magical as this year’s Australia and India event. You can see all our sponsorship options on our website.

Thanks again

We’re so grateful to our sponsors, speakers, volunteers, and attendees for making this conference possible. Whether you were able to come out this time or not, we hope to see you again next year – or even sooner at one of our other events!

Ticket Sales Closing Soon and Welcome Wagon Guide

2020-11-24T00:00:00Z

G’day everyone!

We’re just over a week away from the start of the conference, and we’re getting excited to invite you into our online venue for 2 days of content, collaboration, and conversation. We will be closing ticket sales this Friday, 27th November, so if you’ve been on the fence, now is the time to buy one!

If you were hoping to come to this years event, we recommend that you get your tickets soon.

We have done our internal testing of the platform, and we’re getting everything ready for prime time. As part of our internal testing, we’ve built out the Welcome Wagon Guide. This guide is our attempt to make sure that you get the most out of our events, and we’ve totally rewritten it for our online event.

Welcome Wagon Guide

Each year we create a guide to help our attendees get the most out of the conference. This year, we’re all first-timers at an online event, so we’ve totally rewritten our Welcome Wagon guide to help you get the most out of our event this year.

We have a lot of information about how to use Hopin, and lots of tips and tricks for the best way to plan your days.

We’ve taken all the transit and travel information out, but please do plan to spend a large part of your day with us from the comfort of your own home.

Access to online platform

Once we close out our tickets, we plan to send everyone a link to access the Hopin event. We plan to send this out by this weekend, to give everyone a few days to work through any troubleshooting issues that you might encounter. The Hopin access links will be sent to all Ti.to ticketholders, so monitor your inbox later this week for a message.

If you don’t get an email from us by the early next week, please email us and we’ll help you out! Once you’ve got your Hopin ticket, you will be ready to get started on Thursday morning!

Thanks so much to all our sponsors

We are so grateful to have our sponsors help in bringing these events to life every year.

Thanks so much to the following companies for supporting the Australia and India conference this year:

Redocly

Google

Red Hat

KnowledgeOwl

We’re excited to see all of you soon, and can’t wait to share a wonderful few days with you in our online space.

The Write the Docs team

Announcing the full conference schedule

2020-10-11T00:00:00Z

Hello folks!

We’re less than two months away from the first online Australia and India conference and we’re working hard to make sure it’ll be as welcoming and as fun as the in-person event you’re probably familiar with.

Today, we’re announcing the full presentation schedule and the platform we’ll be hosting the conference on. We are working on more details for a few more activities during the conference, so keep an eye out for more information in our next mailing.

Conference platform

The conference will be held on https://hopin.to/. This platform not only provides a stage for our amazing speakers, but also has integrated chat, unconference rooms with breakout calls, expo booths, and even a virtual hallway. We’re updating our Welcome Wagon guide, to be released soon, so it’ll all feel familiar before you’ve even “hopped in” (pun unintended).

IMPORTANT: Please watch your inboxes during the next weeks for an email with a registration link to Hopin. We recommend that you register for the platform in advance, to avoid any last minute snafus.

Full presentation schedule

The conference website is now updated with the talk schedule for the main stage presentations, so you can start planning your time (and getting excited!) for the conference. We’re excited to have live Q&A after most talks, which will come from your questions but be moderated by an MC.

All our events and activities

Write the Docs is more than a conference. Every year we make sure to have a variety of activities that our attendees can enjoy, whether you want to learn something, meet new people, or share knowledge. And even though this years conference is held online, we’re holding to that plan.

Lightning Talks. We’ll have lightning talks each day after lunch. These are 5 minute presentations and a lot of fun. They can be about anything you want, this is your chance to share something you are passionate about with the audience. Slides are not required.
Unconference. We’ll be running the Unconference all day Monday and on Tuesday afternoon. Want to chat with like-minded folks about a specific thing? This is the place.
Social event. On Thursday night the conference platform will become the social event space. The main stage will be closed and the focus will be on attendee-created sessions. You’re welcome to create sessions for board games, trivia quizzes, karaoke, or any other social activity that you want to share with your fellow documentarians.
Conference Help Desk. If you have any questions about navigating the virtual event, we’ll be running the Write the Docs Helpdesk booth, where you can chat with one of the organizers and the Welcome Wagon team.

The Schedule page has the latest and most complete information about all our events. This is where we will also update any changes/cancellations if they should occur.

Thanks so much for all your support and enthusiasm so far – we’re so excited to see you all in December!

The Write the Docs team

Announcing speakers

2020-09-30T00:00:00Z

Hello! We are here with an update on the online Australia and India conference!

To start off, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve finalised our speakers for the event! Every year, talk selection gets more and more difficult as we get a larger, stronger batch of submissions. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to send us a proposal – we literally wouldn’t have an event without you!

Full speaker line-up

Every year, we look to bring a wide range of voices to the Write the Docs stage. Because the role of “documentarian” looks so different to each of us, we aim for a line-up that spans a good mix of practical, philosophical, and technical topics – with the odd whimsical one thrown in for good measure. We’re really excited about the presentations we’ve got this year – we hope you are too!

Kenzie Woodbridge – Everyone’s a player (in a mid-90s MUD)

Sayraphim Lothian – How (and why) to make awesome video tutorials

Ankita Tripathi – Overcoming the Plight of Lone Writers

Marcelina Haftka – Legacy content from various perspectives

Andrea Szöllössi – 5 things I learned from my first open source contribution

Marika Vertzonis – A treasure map for the doc – Exploring the discoverability of documentation

Lana Brindley – When Agile Fails: Working on Large Documentation Projects

Michael Belton – Onboard yourself: How to get set-up for success in a new role

Chris Ward – An introduction to developer experience, and the role of a documentarian

Sam Irons – Content strategy in practice: a case study

Scott DeLoach – Microcontent: Designing & Developing Reusable Content

Yael Ben-David – Little words, big ideas: How to write microcopy that works

Akshay Iyer – Storytelling for Technical Products - What We Can Learn from Lego and Pixar

Vikram Mulay – Influence your customer outreach with best practices for internationalization

Matt Reiner – The Pains of Composition: How to write your best documentation in a collaborative world

Head over to the Speakers page to see the full abstracts. We hope there’s something there for everyone to enjoy, and also something that will broaden your horizons a bit.

Tickets are going fast!

If you don’t have your ticket yet, now’s a great time to snap one up. Conference tickets have sold out for the last several years, and they go faster along with the speaker announcement, so if you’re planning to come, don’t leave it to the last minute.

Buy your tickets here!

Our Opportunity Grant program is still open until November 1, 2020. If buying a ticket is difficult for you, please don’t hesitate to apply to the grant program.

Meetup organiser discount: As a thanks to our meetup organisers, we’re happy to offer you a 50% discount on your tickets. Please email us at australia@writethedocs.org, tell us which meetup you organise, and we will send you receive registration instructions.

Thanks to our sponsors

We are so grateful to have our sponsors help in bringing these events to life every year. Thanks sincerely to the following companies for supporting the Write the Docs community:

Redocly

Google

Red Hat

KnowledgeOwl

Head over to our sponsorship prospectus for details on how your company can get involved! We have several types of sponsorship available.

And that’s the latest on the Australia and India conference. We hope you’re all getting as excited as we are! Stay tuned for more details.

The Write the Docs Team

Call for Proposals Extended

2020-08-27T00:00:00Z

Greetings fellow documentarians!

The conference is now just under four months away, and we hope you’re already planning for this year’s remote installment of Write the Docs Australia and India conference.

New deadline to submit your proposal is 14th Sept

The Call for Proposals is now extended until 14th Sept 2020 at Midnight AEST – We added two extra weeks to the deadline because there are enough things to worry about this year, and we wanted to give as many of you the opportunity to prepare your submissions. Make sure to get your talk in before the new deadline; we already have a lot of great proposals coming in, but we wanted to give everyone a chance to submit their ideas.

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Check out the Call for Proposals page for tips and examples to help inspire you. And if you’ve got an idea but aren’t sure what to do with it, feel free to ask for feedback on Slack. Your fellow documentarians will be happy to help!

We will send out the decision emails to all who submitted by end of September, and the final talks will be published by early October.

Announcing Call for Proposals and Ticket Sales

2020-07-24T00:00:00Z

Today we are announcing our Call for Proposals and ticket sales.

The Call for Proposals will be open for five weeks. We know that it hasn’t been an easy year. Nevertheless we’d love to see you on our online stage in December, to share your ideas with our inspiring community of documentarians.

If there is something you’d really like to see a talk about this year, submit a proposal for it or refer someone else who would be good!

Call for Proposals

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Every year, Write the Docs invites people from all across our community to come up on stage to share their insights and experience. We’re looking for ideas and use-cases from all disciplines and roles, so whether you’re a technical writer, editor, developer, UX designer, community manager, or support professional who cares about content and communication, we want to hear from you!

We’re hoping that folks who would not be able to travel will be able to join us this time round, both as attendees and as speakers! If you’ve always wanted to talk about documentation but not been able to travel for whatever reason, now is the time.

You can read our full Call for Proposals on the website. The Call for Proposals will be open until Midnight AEDT on August 31, 2020.

Tickets

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Tickets are now on sale! Take a look at the new prices for the online conference on our Tickets page.

Opportunity Grants

Our grant program offers tickets to people who would otherwise not be able to attend. We’re excited to be able to offer free tickets to a larger number of people this year, since there are now minimal other costs to attend the event.

You can apply until October 1, 2020, Midnight AEST on our website.

Stay updated

Want to find out what’s happening with the conference, or enjoy our monthly global community newsletter? Sign up to one or more of our mailing lists. Your information will never be shared with any third-parties, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want to connect with other documentarians in real-time? Join our Slack.

We hope you will join us for a new online Write the Docs conference.

Announcing virtual conference dates

2020-07-10T00:00:00Z

Write the Docs Australia 2020 will be a virtual conference. For the first time we are partnering with Write the Docs India for 2 days of Asia Pacific documentation goodness!

We’re holding the conference in December, to allow for enough time after the new Prague conference dates in October. The main conference days will be on Thursday, December 3, 11:00-21:00 AEDT, and the Friday, December 4, 11:00-21:00 AEDT. Essentially, these times will cover timezones to cater for our community from either coast of Australia to the Indian subcontinent later in the day.

We would love to see documentarians from other parts of the Asia Pacific region join us in this APAC timezone friendly conference.

Ticket sales will open end of July. Check out the tickets page for prices. Your virtual ticket includes:

Live streaming of all talks
Q&A with speakers after each talk (may not be available for all speakers)
Access to the conference chat with all other attendees, speakers and sponsors

Support our community by sponsoring

Every year we are fortunate to have the support of like-minded organisations and communities, who believe in the collaborative and welcoming community spirit and help us make our events great.

We have drafted a new sponsorship prospectus for the conference, and are open for new sponsorship inquiries.

The Write the Docs Australia and India Team