Google Season of Docs allows open source organizations to apply for a grant of between and  $5,000 - $15,000 USD to help improve their documentation. Selected organizations use their grant to directly hire a technical writer to complete their documentation project.

The aim of Season of Docs is to improve the overall quality of open source documentation by bringing more technical writers into open source through funding their work with open source projects.  

When it was inaugurated in 2019 Google Season of Docs worked by Google pairing technical writers with open source projects but for the third season a new format was introduced giving more responsibility and more control to open source projects, see Changed Format For Season of Docs 2021.

As far as technical writers are concerned, Season of Docs continues to be a good opportunity to gain paid experience in contributing to open source projects and to learn about open source code.

Organizations have up to six months to complete their documentation project and will be expected to fill out monthly status reports and also a final report and case study at its end, in which attention needs to be paid to the metrics proposed and used for evaluation the success of the project. All project case studies are published on the Season of Docs site at the end of the program.

Open source organizations can start to to apply for Google Season of Docs on February 15 for the 2023 cycle and the deadline is March 24. Technical Writers, who need to be able to devote between 5 to 30 hours per week over the six-month Doc Development phase that starts on March 31st 2023 can share their contact information now via the Google Season of Docs GitHub repository or reach out directly to open source organizations.

The project team says that organizations wanting to take part in Season of Docs should take the time to complete the steps in the exploration phase before the application process begins. The steps include creating a project page to gauge community and technical writer participant interest, adding the project to Google's list of interested projects on GitHub, and putting together the requirements for technical writers to work on the project.

Reading through last year's case studies  is a good way for technical writers to get an idea of the kinds of projects that have been accepted and what organizations expect from the,

All the details, including when and how grants will be paid is on the Season of Docs website.

More Information

Season of Docs

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