Julia Documentation Project
May 13, 2021
This is a sample document that illustrates how I audited, developed, and presented a proposal for the Julia Language project for the Google Season of Docs 2021 edition
The Julia Language Proposal for Season of Docs 2021
I would like to express my interest in participating in the project named Create a Comprehensive Julia Contributing Guide that is taking part in the Google Season of Docs 2021. Currently, I am looking for opportunities to contribute and sum efforts to the open-source software (OSS) community. I think we can be a good fit because of the following reasons.
I am a data enthusiast. Six months ago, I started improving my Python programming skills and gaining more knowledge about data analytics through the Data Engineering Program from Udacity.
A few months ago, I worked with a development team of 15 engineers to define a documentation strategy. This strategy followed a docs-like-code approach where the engineers had specific guidelines to contribute to documentation fostering consistency and collaboration. You can have a look at some of the procedures we followed in this README.
As part of my daily role, I am familiar with gathering information from subject matter experts (SMEs) ranging from end-users and stakeholders to developers, data engineers, and solution architects. This experience will be valuable when collecting information from users of the Julia ecosystem. Besides, I have over ten years of experience in Academia, where teaching, mentoring undergraduate students, and publishing journals were some tasks I carried on. This experience can be beneficial to identify the primary audiences of the Julia community and define the most suitable learning pathways to drive them into action. If we understand Julia´s personas, it would be easier to set the right tone and voice for providing instructions.
My proposal consists of three main stages. I provide my estimates in terms of effort (strong, medium, small). Once I have a better understanding of the content, credentials, and dependencies, we can all together establish a timeframe.
- Gather feedback (medium) Julia’s contributor guide is for the community, and therefore they can provide us the best insights to improve it. For this stage, I suggest conducting a survey introducing questions that can help us identify the background of the end-users such as students, professors, enthusiasts, or OSS developers. The aim is to understand how they start working on a project and how they interact with the community and maintainers.
- Identify the primary audiences and define the learning pathways (strong) In this stage, I will perform analytics to gather insights from the collected data. Based on the identified audiences, I will define their learning pathways and structure different sections in the contributor guide focused on each audience. I will reuse the existing material from Julia’s contributors, as is the PR guide.
- Define the best approach to measure the project’s success (medium) This stage consists of helping define the best strategy to measure success in terms of page views, number of PRs, or metrics based on mentions of the contributor guide.
Looking forward to contributing to the Julia language.
Salomon Marquez