BONUS - Sustain our Docs Pilot Episode

Panelists Justin Dorfman Guest Portia Burton · Eric Holscher Show
Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have a bonus episode
for you to listen to, and we’re calling it “Sustain Our Docs.” If
you are looking for your place in open source, then you have found
it. We’ll be sharing with you a new concept around documentation
and sustainability and all that kind of cool stuff. We’re going to
talk about how you can leverage documentation, how you can leverage
content to bring more people, more attention, and more funding to
your products. We will talk to experts who know how to write
content engagingly, interview people who speak about the importance
of content having goals, and talk to people who have successfully
built projects, used excellent documentation and used the content
as the pillar of their success. Our hosts are Portia Burton and
Eric Holscher. Portia is the owner of Document-Write, a technical
documentation agency, and Eric is the co-founder of Read the Docs,
Write the Docs, EthicalAds, and PyCascades. We learn about Portia
and Eric’s backgrounds, businesses, and visions for this podcast.
They also have conversations about the sponsorship model, the
multi-pronged finding model, the meaning of funneling, and the
importance of documentation and sustainability. So go ahead and
download this episode now to find out much more! [00:00:38] We
learn all about the hosts, Portia and Eric. [00:02:05] Portia tells
us why she is super excited to talk about financial sustainability
when it comes to open source projects. [00:05:35] Eric shares his
thoughts on how in the software ecosystem, documentation is a huge
part of how people get involved in projects, and he talks more
about documentation and sustainability. [00:08:09] Portia wonders
what kind of conversation Eric has when talking to a maintainer of
an open source project about economic sustainability and its
connection to documentation. [00:09:18] We learn more about
EthicalAds and the sponsorship model. [00:13:45] Portia goes deeper
into the multi-pronged funding model. [00:17:01] Eric explains more
about what they mean by “funnelling.” [00:18:27] Portia and Eric
explain what this podcast is all about. [00:21:50] We learn from
Portia why money was the most off-putting part about open source
and one of the biggest problems she had with having conversations
about money. [00:24:29] Eric touches on the huge benefits to having
really good documentation and some great teasers are mentioned for
future episodes. Quotes [00:02:58] “I guess you know the vision is
I want to see open source developers get paid.” [00:03:14] “And it
just breaks my heart to see such talented, smart people not know
how to make that next step and to be able to take a little bit of
value or monetize, basically the gifts they put out in the world.”
[00:04:45] “So I think documentation is a form of ethical content
marketing.” [00:07:12] “Yeah, it’s one of those things that really
brings me a lot of joy is seeing success in open source and people
getting paid for the work that they’re doing.” [00:09:44] “And
advertising is one of the ways, but I think developers know all the
issues with online advertising around privacy and everything else.”
[00:10:44 “Sponsorship model is a model that you see in other
industries such as fitness and beauty, and it’s definitely
something that open source projects could emulate as well.”
[00:13:52] “I think we also need to have more conversations in the
open source community about having different revenue streams, as
opposed to depending on one.” [00:17:10] “It’s all the stuff that
the successful projects are already doing.” [00:18:04] “And when
you write documentation, when you write your blog posts, you’re
actively finding your people, and how beautiful is that?”
[00:20:42] “ And I’m just remembering, I ran into this thing in the
Dev Rel World called the “Orbit Model” or something, and I do think
that was a way of rebranding funnels in a way that’s a little bit
less kinda loaded already.” [00:23:28] “I just think about the
person who’s dropped from a bootcamp and they go into the ecosystem
of software or whatever and they’re trying to learn how to be a
developer, and they run into so many terrible documentation sites
and software that they actually think that the problem is them,
when actually the problem is the terrible state of documentation
and in many parts of the ecosystem, and working to improve that
situation is a huge benefit to lots of people.” Links SustainOSS
(https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/) Portia
Burton Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/portialburton) Portia
Burton Twitter (https://twitter.com/agencycecil?lang=en)
DocumentWrite (https://documentwrite.dev/) Eric Holscher Linkedin
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-holscher-2b975111b) Eric Holscher
Twitter
(https://twitter.com/ericholscher?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Eric Holscher Website (https://ericholscher.com/) Read the Docs
(https://readthedocs.org/) Write the Docs
(https://www.writethedocs.org/) Ethical Ads
(https://www.ethicalads.io/) PyCascades
(https://2021.pycascades.com/) Credits Produced by Justin Dorfman
(https://www.justindorfman.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guests: Eric Holscher and Portia Burton.