The handbook is an open, living set of documents that detail the people and processes behind the Athens community. That includes how the Athens application works, how the community can create content and self-organize, and how Athens Research operates as a company. Because we want to build in public, work transparently, and learn as a community along the way, a huge part of the success of Athens is tied up in the success of this handbook.
The handbook has two goals: 1) be the source of truth for the Athens ecosystem, and 2) help users be extremely successful at using Athens.
We're mostly focused on the first goal now. We have to understand exactly what we want to put into the handbook, scope out that work in granular tasks, and then push forward in creating content. I imagine we'll be working on this source of truth goal for another 3-4 months (September-October 2021), especially around anything related to the operations of Athens Research itself. The company is astoundingly new, and we have a ton that we still need to figure out. Product-wise, once we've established the fundamentals, most additional tasks should be related to organizational tweaks, small improvements to existing docs, or documenting new features, and that will be an ongoing process until the end of time.
Next, we'll focus on success. This will be much more exciting, as we'll break out of the product space and into how people use Athens. The type of content changes. It'll be more tutorial-like in nature, showcasing different types of workflows, and information on how to solve very specific types of problems that users might be facing, such as when to use pages vs. blocks, how to use Athens as a researcher, or the difference between taking notes on multiple daily notes versus condensing everything into the same topic page. I also imagine assets like a template gallery being part of this, and maybe some pre-configured graphs with specific workflows already implemented so that new users can just download them and hit the ground running.
It'll take a long time to achieve these goals, and since they're moving targets, we'll always have to optimize and tweak to get things just right.
The handbook is an open, living set of documents that detail the people and processes behind the Athens community. That includes how the Athens application works, how the community can create content and self-organize, and how Athens Research operates as a company. Because we want to build in public, work transparently, and learn as a community along the way, a huge part of the success of Athens is tied up in the success of this handbook.
The handbook has two goals: 1) be the source of truth for the Athens ecosystem, and 2) help users be extremely successful at using Athens.
We're mostly focused on the first goal now. We have to understand exactly what we want to put into the handbook, scope out that work in granular tasks, and then push forward in creating content. I imagine we'll be working on this source of truth goal for another 3-4 months (September-October 2021), especially around anything related to the operations of Athens Research itself. The company is astoundingly new, and we have a ton that we still need to figure out. Product-wise, once we've established the fundamentals, most additional tasks should be related to organizational tweaks, small improvements to existing docs, or documenting new features, and that will be an ongoing process until the end of time.
Next, we'll focus on success. This will be much more exciting, as we'll break out of the product space and into how people use Athens. The type of content changes. It'll be more tutorial-like in nature, showcasing different types of workflows, and information on how to solve very specific types of problems that users might be facing, such as when to use pages vs. blocks, how to use Athens as a researcher, or the difference between taking notes on multiple daily notes versus condensing everything into the same topic page. I also imagine assets like a template gallery being part of this, and maybe some pre-configured graphs with specific workflows already implemented so that new users can just download them and hit the ground running.
It'll take a long time to achieve these goals, and since they're moving targets, we'll always have to optimize and tweak to get things just right.