Working groups

Our project mission statement:

The Good Docs Project educates and empowers people to create high-quality documentation by providing them with resources, best practices, and tools to enhance their documentation in open source and beyond.

To bring that mission to life, our community is organized into working groups that meet on a regular basis to work on the template’s key tasks and initiatives. You can join any one of these working groups and start contributing to the project today!

What are working groups?

A working group consists of two or more project contributors who are collaborating together to work on a Good Docs Project initiative or focus area of the project. Working groups are task-based.

Here’s a quick list of our working groups, which you can click to read more details about each individual group:

What are super working groups?

Super working groups are big weekly Zoom meetings where multiple working groups meet together at the same time. We created super working groups at the most popular meeting days and times to give working group members more meeting time flexibility. As you might expect, most people tend to want to meet at roughly the same predictable time windows, so we offer meetings at those times for each time zone region. Super working groups are timezone-based.

Typically, when people join a super working group, the first 5-10 minutes of the meeting might involve greeting the other group members and then listening to any project announcements. Then, the individual working groups members separate out into smaller breakout rooms to meet with their smaller working group and collaborate on working group tasks.

With that in mind, when you’re choosing a super working group to join, pay attention to:

  1. The meeting times based on your general time zone region: APAC, EMEA, AMER. We try to offer at least two super working groups for each region. Be aware that some of our newer working groups don’t have as many meeting times yet.

  2. The specific, smaller working groups that meet at that super working group time.

See the Community Calendar for specific meeting times displayed in your time zone.

This table shows the available super working groups filtered by region:

Region

Super working groups

AMER: North and South America

APAC: Asia and Pacific (Oceania)

EMEA: Europe, Middle East, and Africa

  • Team Dolphin: Templates, Chronologue, Knowledge Base

  • Team Macaw: Templates, Chronologue, and more

  • Team Penguin: UX/Outreach, DocsOps Registry, Template Editorial, Chronologue Canon

This table shows the available super working groups filtered by which specific working groups meet at them:

Working group

Super working groups

Templates

Chronologue

UX and Outreach

  • Team Penguin: AMER and EMEA

  • An additional meeting every other week for AMER and APAC

DocOps Registry

Knowledge Base

Template Editorial

Chronologue Canon

Who can join?

If you are new to The Good Docs Project, begin by filling out the Welcome Wagon registration form to receive an invitation to the project.

After you’ve joined the project, all working groups are open for anyone to join as a general rule. Contributors can belong to as many working groups as they have time for and it’s okay to join a group to observe for a while before contributing. If you are interested in contributing to a working group:

  • Talk to the working group lead(s). See Our Team for information about the current working group leads.

  • Join the working group Slack channel(s).

  • Check the Community Calendar for meeting times and join a meeting.

What is the time commitment?

The various working groups generally meet weekly for an hour. Most community members give about 1-2 hours of their time every week by participating in one of these groups.

Always remember that we’ll take what you can give. You and your family come first, then work, then volunteering. If you can’t keep your working group commitments, that’s okay. Just let your working group leader know.

Which working groups are available?

We have four working groups you can join. Most working groups have meeting times available for all time zone regions, but some of the newer groups do not yet have available times for all regions. We will open up additional meeting times as working group leader availability permits.

Templates Avatar Templates

This is our main working group. This group creates templates and guides to help people write the most common documentation content types. You can explore our templates suite to see some of the templates that have been built so far and think about contributing one of your own!

Join this group if you’re interested in contributing to our core project. This group is especially good for contributors who are experienced technical writers or software engineers.

Chronologue Avatar Chronologue

The Chronologue working group supports the templates working group by showcasing our templates in action. This working group is creating examples of our templates for a fake tool called the Chronologue, which is a special telescope that uses wormhole technology to view astronomical events at different points in time. This group also provides an important quality check for our templates by ensuring they are easy to use in a real documentation project.

Join this group if you enjoy creative writing, science fiction, and have a good sense of humor. This group is good for contributors who are new to technical writing and would like hands-on experience writing documentation. It’s also great for software engineers who are interested in helping us build our fake tool and API.

Chronologue Avatar UX and Outreach

This working group works on mission critical initiatives to support the template user experience and to help us grow our user community. This group conducts user research, helps set the template roadmap, and works on growing our core user base through various communication channels.

Join this group if you would like to develop complementary skills in UX, user research, product management, copywriting, technical marketing, and more.

DocOps Registry Avatar DocOps Registry

This working group empowers doc teams to choose the best tools for their doc system by creating a searchable database of resources for doc tool tech stacks. You can often dramatically increase your impact as a technical writer by developing your ability to create and maintain your own doc tools. This working group helps you develop these skills by connecting you with other doc tools experts.

Join this group if you are interested in the tooling side of documentation and in making a big impact for doc tool maintainers everywhere.

Knowledge Base Avatar Knowledge Base

This working group is working to improve the internal documentation at The Good Docs Project so that our community members can find the content that will help them succeed in the project. They regularly work with project leaders and teams to document the concepts, processes, and changes in the project with the goal of helping improve communication transparency and accessibility to our project members.

Join this group if you are interested in learning more about knowledge management, internal documentation best practices, and community management.

Knowledge Base Avatar Template Editorial Team

The template editorial team is responsible for ensuring template quality. They have three focus areas:

  • Reviewing templates that are nearing completion to ensure the template:

    • Follows best practices for technical writing.

    • Has no major organizational or structural issues.

    • Has no obvious gaps or missing content.

    • Is consistent with our style guide.

  • Resolves style guide decisions as they arise.

  • Creates the template product roadmap.

Join this group if you are an experienced technical writer with a desire to mentor others and improve your ability to give high quality reviews. This group can also accommodate community members who are experienced technical writers that can’t attend a weekly meeting but who can devote 5-10 hours every now and then to review a template project in their area of expertise.

Chronologue Docs Avatar Chronologue Canon Team

Like the template editorial team, the Chronologue canon team helps to ensure Chronologue documentation quality. The Chronologue canon team reviews new Chronologue example proposals to evaluate whether each proposal:

  • Fits in well in the current Chronologue canon and won’t cause conflicts in the world of the Chronologue.

  • Is a good fit for the template being used and the content type being documented. For example, they might help guide the Chronologue member to make the documentation for the right Chronologue publication based on whether that content type would make sense for a commercial or an open source organization.

  • Needs any additional internal documentation in our knowledge base tracking the Chronologue lore.

This team also reviews Chronologue examples as they are nearing completion to make sure that the final documentation still matches the canon and won’t cause conflicts in the Chronologue canon.

Join this group if you are interested if you have a desire to mentor others while also being passionate about science fiction and world-building.

Which super working groups are available?

We have four super working groups you can join.

Alpaca Avatar Team Alpaca

  • Regions: AMER and APAC

  • Working groups at this meeting: Templates and Chronologue

  • Meeting times: Monday night in AMER, Tuesday morning in APAC

Dolphin Avatar Team Dolphin

  • Regions: AMER and EMEA

  • Working groups at this meeting: Templates, Chronologue, Knowledge Base

  • Meeting times: Saturdays: early evenings in EMEA, morning in AMER

Macaw Avatar Team Macaw

  • Regions: APAC and EMEA

  • Working groups at this meeting: Templates and Chronologue

  • Meeting times: Thursdays: evening in APAC, morning in EMEA

Penguin Avatar Team Penguin

  • Regions: AMER and EMEA

  • Working groups at this meeting: UX and Outreach, DocOps Registry, Template Editorial, Chronologue Editorial

  • Meeting times: Thursdays: morning in AMER, early evenings in EMEA

Be aware that UX and Outreach also has a meeting for the APAC and AMER meetings on its own.