Our handbooks are a well of great information, and they’ve grown immensely over the years without a lot of editing.
It would be great if we could audit and rework part of the content/information architecture to make them more useful than ever, and plan for future growth.
I propose we form a working group with multiple talents to help our ever-growing group of Community Organisers. We probably will need the help from other teams; it would be a great way to collaborate with different people!
What problem we try to solve
The handbooks have a lot of good content, but it’s hard to find and sometimes confusing for non-native speakers or untrained organizers.
Draft of the roadmap
- Audit the existing content
- We will start with the Meetup Handbook: it gets a lot of views and it’s shorter than the WordCamp one.
- Review past blog posts to see what should be added to the handbooks
- Identify unclear language or passages in the handbooks and edit them for clarity
- Restructure the menus/flow of the handbooks
- Identify design elements where they might be useful (and recruit designers to help with them, and add those designs).
- List the missing content
- Draft it
- Work on a “tone of voice” guide: this will help us unify the style and create a guide for future text
- Publish it
- Maintain the handbooks
Challenges
- No version control >> Work with Meta to find solution
- Handbooks are not the easiest to browse, especially on mobile > Work with Design
- Are our handbooks accessible? Let’s find out >> Audit by the Accessibility Team
- Are the handbooks easily understandable from people whose first language is not American English? >> Let’s work with people with different language backgrounds
Prerequisites
You gotta love to read and write documentation 🙂
- A group of people with basic English knowledge, to test if the material is understandable from everyone
- At a later stage, a group of English native speakers to check the texts.
No prior knowledge of the Community Team procedures is necessary: the point is checking if the material is clear enough so everyone can apply to start more events in their hometown
Time commitment and frame
Between 1 and 2 hours a week, more if you want to!
Ideally the whole process will be done between August and October, with a release date before WordCamp US (goal, last week of October 2019).
Communication and project management
- Bi-weekly meetings in the community-events Slack channel
- Trello
As always with a global team is difficult to find a time that suits everyone: I propose we hold the first meeting at 16:00 UTC on Thursday, August 8th and we go from there.
Who is in?
Please leave you name in the comments before August 7th.
Thank you!