Documentation team as venture capitalists of human capital

The recent influx of new doc team contributors and Kenneth's wiki work caused something to click in my brain. I started thinking about the specific role of quality tech documentation in attracting and retaining contributors.

I would like to establish an image of the documentation team as one of the highest providers of value to the project. We can express this idea with a simple formula: in FOSS projects contributors equal money. A documentation team that provides excellent copywriting and tech docs is equal to an investor. Contributors keep flowing in as long as the doc team is strong in this area.

Now for something concrete, based on feedback received recently. I would like you to take a look at the main LibO website https://www.libreoffice.org/
In the menu bar, do you agree that "Events" should be exchanged with "Get involved" that is currently hiding as a submenu item under "Community"?
Could the intention be conveyed better by changing "Get involved" to something else? "How can I help?" was proposed, but I think we need to be careful not to mislead people seeking help files (and consider translatability).

In the "Get involved" page itself http://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/ should we have a short piece that sells the idea of contributing? Ie. make everything as explicit as possible instead of "here are our teams, you know the rest, right?". There could be a general bit to draw the visitor in and then the individual team entries could be finessed until they are at the absolute peak of comprehensibility.

I am able to edit the page contents and if something in the layout needs changing I can handle it with the admin.

Hi,

luckily, there is already a logo done by Eliane Domingos. Olivier put it on the wiki and I did some edits so it can be displayed in the browser: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:BOTTON.svg

Ok, so far we have these proposed "Get involved" alternatives:

- "How can I help?"
- "Join us"

I will sync with the Marketing team, when we have something ready.

Hi Ilmari

The recent influx of new doc team contributors and Kenneth's wiki work
caused something to click in my brain. I started thinking about the
specific role of quality tech documentation in attracting and retaining
contributors.

I would like to establish an image of the documentation team as one of
the highest providers of value to the project. We can express this idea
with a simple formula: in FOSS projects contributors equal money. A
documentation team that provides excellent copywriting and tech docs is
equal to an investor. Contributors keep flowing in as long as the doc
team is strong in this area.

Good documentation is an asset of the project and a invaluable companion
product of LO (IMHO).

Now for something concrete, based on feedback received recently. I would
like you to take a look at the main LibO website
https://www.libreoffice.org/
In the menu bar, do you agree that "Events" should be exchanged with
"Get involved" that is currently hiding as a submenu item under
"Community"?

Makes sense. Precious page real state.

Could the intention be conveyed better by changing "Get involved" to
something else? "How can I help?" was proposed, but I think we need to
be careful not to mislead people seeking help files (and consider
translatability).

yes.

In the "Get involved" page itself
http://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/ should we have a
short piece that sells the idea of contributing? Ie. make everything as
explicit as possible instead of "here are our teams, you know the rest,
right?". There could be a general bit to draw the visitor in and then
the individual team entries could be finessed until they are at the
absolute peak of comprehensibility.

What about a 30 sec video on each topic of the page?

I am able to edit the page contents and if something in the layout needs
changing I can handle it with the admin.

The liberOffice website contents changes should, IMHO, be in synch with
the Marketing group as well as with connections to the National
Languages projects.

Could the intention be conveyed better by changing "Get involved" to
something else? "How can I help?" was proposed, but I think we need to
be careful not to mislead people seeking help files (and consider
translatability).

yes.

I thought about this some more and I came to the conclusion that we should encourage the translators to think of the best expression fitting their language and cultural context.

Getting back to English, we had
- "How can I help?"
- "Join us" (from Cathy)

Today I got the idea of "Volunteer work". It is a bit long and would need some technical work on the menu styles, but it is unambiguous (plain language). We do want to target volunteer contributors with this, right? It can be read as either a noun or a suggestive verb and in both cases the visitor understands what sort of content is found behind the menu item.

In the "Get involved" page itself
http://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/ should we have a
short piece that sells the idea of contributing? Ie. make everything as
explicit as possible instead of "here are our teams, you know the rest,
right?". There could be a general bit to draw the visitor in and then
the individual team entries could be finessed until they are at the
absolute peak of comprehensibility.

What about a 30 sec video on each topic of the page?

Yeah, in the style of the LibO Animation from 2014 :slight_smile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBdhEVg98eg

I am able to edit the page contents and if something in the layout needs
changing I can handle it with the admin.

The liberOffice website contents changes should, IMHO, be in synch with
the Marketing group as well as with connections to the National
Languages projects.

Yep, it is my intention to talk to marketing before changing stuff.

Ilmari