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GSoD Technical Writer Selection Process

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Ayan Sinha Mahapatra edited this page Apr 2, 2024 · 24 revisions

Thank you for your interest in creating technical documentation for aboutcode.org! These are the projects which will be the focus of GSoD 2023:

OUR EXPECTATIONS

Technical Writing Experience

Technical writing experience is a must to participate in Google Season of Docs.

You should have been actively writing technical documentation, and have multiple publicly available samples of your work. They could be:

  • Documentation work for projects/organizations
  • Work samples if you are a technical documentation writer
  • Blog posts on technical topics
  • Other Tutorials/Guides you have authored
  • API documentation authored by you

We also want to know if your skills are aligned to what we are looking for, so here are a few questions to consider and discuss (and provide links for these specifically if you have prior experience in the same, and how this will help you write documentation for aboutcode):

  • Do you have experience writing documentation for specific projects/products?
  • Do you have experience writing user-facing or developer-facing documentation on projects/products?
  • Do you have blogs on technical topics?
  • Do you have articles on technical, educational topics?
  • Have you written tutorials/how-to-guides/reference docs/API documentation previously? DO you understand the differences and our requirements here?

And anything else that can be categorized as technical documentation. Note that GSoD is for reasonably experienced technical writers, so if you are just starting your technical writing or only have a couple of blog posts, you might not be a good fit for this program. Lack of experience lowers your chance of getting selected as all participating organizations typically receive lots of interest from seasoned tech writers. You are still welcome to participate and contribute documentation in our projects anytime. We really appreciate all contributions.

Familiarity with Sphinx, ReadTheDocs, git/GitHub

You should have experience writing documentation in a Sphinx/reStructuredText environment where the documentation is managed side by side with the code in a GitHub project repository. We treat technical documentation like code, tested for successful builds and checked with linters for quality control. We are open to suggestions for process improvements and setting up more org-wide processes for documentation.

Eagerness to learn about and document our projects

We expect you to try out our project(s) and understand the use cases, workflows, output data, UI flows or command-line options, i.e. familiarize yourself with them, and to be eager to learn and document all aspects of them, particularly Reference documentation, How-To Guides and Tutorials.

Here are some suggestions for you to consider as documentation topics:

  • Did you encounter any difficulties installing the project(s) locally? Assuming that you resolved them, can you improve the documentation to help others?
  • Many users of PurlDB would like to have a better understanding of what the tool is, it's components, how they work internally, and how it can be used in their workflows. If you are willing to research that to understand it more deeply, documentation in this area would be greatly appreciated by the community.
  • Did you encounter any difficulties installing and using VulnerableCode locally or from the public instance? Assuming that you resolved them, can you improve the documentation to help others?
  • Do you understand all the data attributes in the ScanCode-Toolkit/ScanCode.io output data format clearly? There are some documentation/doc-strings with the code/attribute definition, can you find and bring them together in one place and generate reference documentation from it?
  • Do you understand all the specific words and concepts used in the AboutCode community? Are there concepts/words which can be better explained with documentation? Will you be interested in taking this up?
  • Do you understand how to interpret and get full value from these applications? How would you document ways to get the most out of these tools?

We use Diataxis - as a design framework for our documentation.

Reach out to us if you have any specific questions on setting up and using these tools locally or in general. Link to Gitter Chat

Bonus Items

These items document what could make you stand out as a prospective technical writer to us, but none of them are required/necessary as these are more advanced and can be acquired after the selection procedure (with help from us).

  • Familiarity with open source software licensing or vulnerabilities
  • Familiarity with Python or Django
  • Ability to read and understand large codebases
  • Small documentation contributions to/about our projects
  • Pointing out and suggesting fixes for gaps in our current documentation

STATEMENT OF INTEREST

Applicants are expected to submit a Statement of Interest to aboutcode, see the [GSoD Official Template] for more information on this. Also go through the tech writer guide to make sure you understand the program and it's requirements.

Please share your statement of interest as a publicly viewable document, preferably in Google Docs, to [email protected] [CC to [email protected] and [email protected]]. This enables us to review and comment on your statement of interest to ask for clarifications or suggest changes. (Make sure we have commenting access).

It should have the following minimum sections:

There are two stages to share a statement of interest:

  1. Before the organization selection announcement, share only your personal/professional info. This is only your draft statement of interest, as we cannot start the process before we get selected as an organization.
  2. After organizations are announced, please update this statement of interest with the project chosen by the AboutCode team, with solution elements, details and a breakdown of the associated tasks with their timeline. (submit before 17 April)

See https://github.com/nexB/aboutcode/wiki/GSOD%E2%80%902024#our-project-ideas for more details on our project ideas.

You don't have to specify the timeline and budget sections, as we have already decided these for our org:
  • Proposed Timeline: May 16 - October 16 (See Technical Writing Timeline section below)
  • Proposed Budget: 7000 USD (Tech Writer gets 6000 USD, 500 USD each for two mentors)

IMPORTANT DATES

Organization Application

  • February 22: Draft Statement of Interest submission to AboutCode starts
  • April 2: Aboutcode submits proposal to Google Season of Docs (publicly available)
  • April 10: Google announces accepted organizations

Technical Writer Hiring

  • April 10 - April 27: More Discussion on AboutCode proposed project
  • April 27: Deadline to submit updated Statement of Interest for the selected AboutCode project
  • April 28 - May 10: Interviews with shortlisted candidates
  • May 13: We announce our technical writer selection
  • May 22: Google Season of Docs Technical Writing Hiring Deadline

Technical Writing Timeline

  • May 13 - May 17: Community bonding period and Project Planning
  • May 17: GSoD project starts
  • June 5 - June 12: First monthly evaluation period
  • July 5 - July 29: Second monthly evaluation period
  • September 5 - September 12: Third monthly evaluation period
  • October 22 - October 29: Fourth monthly evaluation period
  • November 22 - December 10: Orgs submit case study and final evaluation
  • December 13: Results announced by Google

See also the official GSoD timeline

All deadlines here follow GSoD official deadline timings: UTC 18:00.

LINKS

The timeline and other details are subject to change, watch this space and our element chatroom for updates.

http://aboutcode.org/

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