Google Season of Docs 2021

[jolanglinais]

Discussion 🗣

Proposal for Accord Project to participate in Google Season of Docs 2021

Context

The Season of Docs Program

• Gives open source projects an opportunity to improve their documentation.
• Gives technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in open source.
• Creates a better understanding of metrics and best practices in open source documentation.

The application form is available in the organization administrator guide during the organization application phase.

Our project proposal should be publicly available. We will include the link to our project proposal in the application form. We will use the project proposal template to help create our project proposal.

After submitting the form, we can continue updating the information on the form until the end of the organization application phase (March 26, 2021).

In addition to the content of the organization's application, the Google program administrators take the following factors into account when selecting organizations:

• Open source projects should be active. For example, the Google program administrators may look at the number of contributors and the contribution trends on GitHub.
• Season of Docs aims for a diversity of projects. The Google program administrators examine the set of candidate organizations and make a balanced selection to ensure that there's a range of organization types, industries, geographical areas, product types, and organization sizes.
• Season of Docs can only accept a certain number of projects. The number of projects accepted depends on the total budget requests of all applying projects.
• The open source organization must be eligible to participate in Season of Docs, as described in the program rules.

Detailed Description

If we are interested in having Accord Project participate in Season of Docs, we must first familiarize ourselves with the organization administrator guide and the organization administrator responsibilities.

The following questions will help us understand whether our open source project or organization should participate in Season of Docs. Does our organization or project:

• [ ] Believe new or updated documentation would help achieve a goal or solve a problem in your project or community?
• [ ] Have an initial understanding of or hypothesis for how you would measure the success of your documentation project?
• [ ] Have community members willing to help recruit, evaluate, and onboard a technical writer, and who would be available to answer questions and provide other support during the project (6-8 months, including the application period)?
• [ ] Have a community member willing to serve as the organization administrator and coordinate creating the application, responding to questions from the program administrators, and submitting monthly evaluations and the final report and case study? The organization administrator should also be willing to answer followup surveys after the completion of the 2021 Season of Docs.

Organization Application Process

Exploration Phase

• Create a project proposal page. The proposal page includes a list of key needs, goals, or problems, possible documentation solutions, and possible metrics. This page should be public, and allow for community contribution and discussion. Include information for technical writers who would like to participate—where should they ask questions, express interest, or go learn more about your project? (See the project ideas list for examples.)
• Publicize your proposal page in your community channels and add your organization to the list of interested organizations in the Season of Docs GitHub repository. You may also want to share your link in the #season-of-docs channel in the Write The Docs Slack. The promotion and press page includes logos and other content that you can use when talking about Season of Docs.
• For each documentation idea, consider what experience and qualifications a technical writer would need to work successfully with your community and organization. What skills would your community be able to help a technical writer develop (for example, using GitHub or your docs toolchain)? (See the guide for working with technical writers)
• Ask for volunteers to help answer questions from interested technical writers.
• Begin reviewing any submitted statements of interest from technical writers interested in working with your project.

Application phase

• Choose the most promising idea from your proposal page. Each organization may only submit one proposal. Some things to consider:
  • Which idea has received the most interest from technical writers?
  • Which idea will help solve your project’s biggest problem? It’s better to choose a riskier idea that would have a bigger impact than an idea for a documentation project that is more likely to be completed but won’t make a significant difference to your project.
  • Does the idea require participation by specific members of your community? Do they have the time to participate?
• Create your proposal, using the proposal template. Make sure you understand and include:
  • The problem you want to address
  • The scope of the documentation you want to improve or create
  • How you will measure the success of your documentation Your proposal must also include a budget. Incomplete proposals will not be considered.
• Submit the Application Form by the application deadline March 26, 2021 at 18:00 UTC. Accepted proposals will be announced on April 16, 2021.

[jolanglinais]

I think this should be closed now.