This is a post to announce a new Write the Docs meetup for technical writers and anyone else at all with an interest in writing documentation. It will be held in Manchester on 27 June at The Molly House.
I will be hosting this brand new meetup in partnership with the Yorkshire Write the Docs meetup. We aim to bring people interested in documentation together for a cosy chat over tea and beer.
This meetup will be an informal social focused on getting to know some new faces, and talking about our favourite topics to do with documentation. If the Manchester meetup is a success, we might look into making it a bit more regular.
We’re also planning to host a workshop to introduce technical writers to making their first open source contribution on Github. This will take place in September 2018, during National Coding Week. After that, there will be regular meetups for Write the Docs North in different cities around the north of England.
I was first introduced to Write the Docs community through one of my long-term favourite clients, KnowledgeOwl. They’re a supporter of Write the Docs and the company enabled me to visit both Write the Docs conferences in Prague and Portland.
My experience was that this really is an awesome, inclusive community aimed at anyone interested in documentation. It’s a community that actively welcomes different types of people, creates a safe, considerate space and promotes the value of documentation as a discipline.
It’s exciting to help bring the Write the Docs community to the north – especially since they already have meetups in London and Cambridge. I believe there is a wellspring of people interested in a technical writing meetup and now I just need to find them.
I already discovered a closely related meetup called North West Technical Communicators run by David Jones usually held monthly at MadLab, Northern Quarter. In future, we’re planning to see how we can pool our resources in a way that makes the most of this kind of community in Manchester.
I believe Manchester is a little earlier in its tech journey than London, and so there is a lot of opportunity to grow communities that everyone would like to be a part of. In the 1.5 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve discovered some wonderful people, groups and places. I would love to see Write the Docs North take off.
I’m also interested in beginning to offer some professional freelance technical writing services (alongside my usual blogging, content writing and copywriting), so I’m keen to learn a lot from the folks I meet.
In summary, come to Write the Docs North social on 27 June, 6pm at the Molly House! This event is open to technical writers, developers, QA, testers, other types of writers, and – quite simply – anyone interested in learning more about documentation.
