Linux.conf.au 2015 – Day 4 – Session 1

8 writers in under 8 months: from zero to a docs team in no time flat – Lana Brindley

  • Co Presenting with Alexandra Settle
  • 8 months ago online 1 documentation person at rackspace
  • Hired a couple people
  • Horrible documentation suite
  • Hired some more
  • 4 in Australia, 4 in the US
  • Building a team fast without a terrible culture
    • Management by MEME – everybody had a meme created for them when they started
    • Not all work and No play. But we still get a lot of work done
    • Use tech to overcome geography
    • Treat people as humans not robots
    • Always stay flexible. Couch time, Gym time
  • Finding the right people
    • Work your network , job is probably not going to be advertise on linkedin, bad for diversity
    • Find great people, and work out how to hire them
    • If you do want a job, network
  • Toolchains and Systems
    • Have a vision and work towards it
    • acknowledge imperfection. If you can’t fix, ack and just move forward anyway
  • You can maintain crazy growth forever. You have to level off.
  • Pair US person with AU person for projects
  • Writers should attend Docs summit and encouraged to attend at least one Openstack summit

 

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