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# System prepended metadata

title: Conda.org GSOD Case Study

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**Google Season of Docs Case Study - Due November 21 at 18:00 UTC/12:00pm Central US**

# Writing content for the upcoming conda.org

**Organization or Project:** conda

**Organization Description:** The conda organization is an open-source community behind the conda ecosystem. The conda package manager facilitates package, dependency, and environment management for any programming language, helping developers of all kinds manage the packages and libraries necessary for doing their work.

**Authors:** @kathatherine

## Problem Statement
The brand new conda.org needs more content to serve as a useful resource for members of the conda community.

## Proposal Abstract

We want conda.org to be a place users can learn more about conda, make announcements, and participate more easily in conda's open-source community. We can use an extra part-time technical writer to research this content, create FAQ answers, information on community calendars, and at least one blog post.

Proposal - https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-dot-org/discussions/73

## Project Description

### Creating the proposal

Google Season of Docs was brought up as an option for getting extra help for conda.org content by @jaimergp, one of the conda maintainers. He also offered to be a resource during the application phase. @kathatherine wrote the proposal fairly quickly and offered it up to the maintainers for edits. @jezdez and @travishathaway offered edits and ultimately approved the proposal before it was sent to Google.

### Budget

We estimated our budget for a single technical writer working for 10-15 hours a week for the length of the project, May to August, or approximately 17 weeks. The budget for this technical writer came entirely from the GSOD 2023 grant and would equal a good to excellent hourly salary for a technical writer with fewer than 5 years of experience (between 25.00 and 35.00 USD per hour).

### Participants

@kathatherine - administrator
@jaimergp - application help
@asmitbm - application help
@travishathaway - PR edits
@tnabtaf - newsletter assignment and co-writing
@Pinak-Datta - technical writer intern

@jaimergp is a maintainer of several projects under the conda umbrella, while @asmitbm volunteered to help with initial designs for the conda.org website. @travishathaway and @tnabtaf are both contributors to the conda.org project under the conda incubator.

We found applicants entirely through email via our GSOD project proposal. @kathatherine facilitated all those emails and made a spreadsheet, which @asmitbm made so much better, as well as shareable with @jaimerpg. This allowed them both to help select someone based on the requirements we had, as @kathatherine was quickly running out of energy to complete the selection process. @Pinak-Datta was the chosen candidate.

Throughout the project, @kathatherine held video calls with @Pinak-Datta to keep up with his progress and provide solutions to problems or suggestions of where to look for more guidance. Pinak also communicated with the entire conda.org team via our [Element chatroom](https://matrix.to/#/#conda.org:matrix.org).

### Timeline

We anticipated that the work necessary for adding and refining content for conda.org would not be enough to keep a part-time technical writer busy for the entire length of the GSOD project period, so we kept the conda.org project limited to the first four months, added a general audit of the conda docs, and a few blog posts (which would be posted on conda.org).

| Task | Completed by |
| -------- | -------- |
| Onboarding     | May 13     |
| Research | May 21|
| Complete FAQ answers | June 18 |
| Blog #1 | August 13 |
| Conda documentation audit | August 31 |
| Blog #2, if time allowed | August 31 |

### Results

Our FAQ answers were completed, though we decided to do away with a few of the question tickets after rethinking the audience for conda.org. A few of the questions we brainstormed before the project period started were determined to be too centered on the conda package manager and not enough on the conda ecosystem as a whole.

Because of these philosophical changes to the direction of the website, our plans for the Learn page changed and we ended up having it only contain the FAQ for now.

The rest of our tech writer’s time was taken up by learning more about the conda ecosystem, auditing the conda documentation and writing up a friction log of things that could be changed, and working with @tnabtaf to create the first two conda newsletters, which detailed information about various releases and events occurring within the conda community.

Below are many of the PRs Pinak worked on to fill in FAQ answers and write or co-write blog posts:

- How can I start using conda FAQ answer - https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-dot-org/pull/151
- Answers to five more FAQs - https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-dot-org/pull/137
- Exploring conda community spaces blogpost - https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-dot-org/pull/149/files
- Conda Newsletter, Issue #1 - https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-dot-org/pull/146
- Conda Newsletter, Issue #2 - https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-dot-org/pull/161

### Metrics

The metrics we chose to measure the success of the project were:

- conda.org's front page and getting started page presents useful information to first-time visitors that has been approved by the community.
- Most (or all) of the FAQ issues are complete and merged.
- An audit of the existing content in the conda.io documentation is presented and proposes a strategy to populate the Learn page in conda.org.
- The community gives feedback and approval for the Learn content proposal and it is written accordingly.
- Informative content is present about community partners, calendars, and meetings.
- A new blog post is published.

Ultimately most of our metrics were met in that content that didn't exist now exists. The front page, FAQ, and calendar were filled out and our tech writer, Pinak, ended up writing two blog posts for various announcements on conda.org.

We ended up rethinking the Learn page and it didn’t need as much work. The audit of the conda documentation turned into a friction log, which we will use to improve the documentation over time.

### Analysis

Overall, it was helpful to have an outsider perspective on the conda community. It was also helpful to have someone take over some of the grunt work of creating content. We all have a great deal to do, so having someone whose job is to focus on a particular project for a few months allows us to get more done than we normally would have.

The downside of having an entirely new writer in a project is that some amount of time must be spent on onboarding, guidance, and editing. However, this would be the case whether we had a very experienced writer or not. We were glad to be able to give a student some experience working with an open-source project and hope that he comes back to help in a volunteer capacity.

The project was successful in that we were able to add content to conda.org and produce some newsletters for the community.

### Summary

The lengthy application process in order to find a candidate for this project was the most difficult part of the experience. In the future, I would create a Google Form or something similar with required fields for all applicants to fill out. This would minimize the email back and forth and automate some of the more taxing aspects of communicating with over 200 people.

Once an applicant was chosen, he dove right into the process and was communicative and polite with all community members. It also takes time to come up with a framework for an intern to work in and while I think we had some of that for @Pinak-Datta, we were also struggling under the weight of many lofty ideas for what we wanted conda.org to be. Pinak did well with the framework he was given and I hope he truly had a good experience.

### Appendix

Linked below are the blog posts written or co-written by our GSOD tech writing intern:

- Exploring conda community spaces blog - https://conda.org/blog/2023-06-22-conda-spaces-blogpost
- Conda News, Issue 1! - https://conda.org/blog/2023-06-23-newsletter
- Conda Newsletter, Issue 2 - https://conda.org/blog/2023-09-19-newsletter
