Application process#

Technical writers interested in participating to GSoD with ArviZ should follow these steps:

  1. Join the dedicated ArviZ Gitter channel for season of docs: https://gitter.im/arviz-devs/season_of_docs

  2. Send an statement of interest to arviz.devs@gmail.com before May 1st. More info about your statement of interest in this same folder. We encourage you to send the statement of interest as early as possible to maximize the chances of getting feedback before the application phase closes and can update the application accordingly.

  3. Send the application requirements (see below) to arviz.devs@gmail before May 1st. You can send this after having sent the statement of interest, also before or together.

  4. Be available for feedback on your proposal.

We will review applications between May 1st and May 10th. We reserve ourselves the week from the 10th to the 17th to coordinate with the selected technical writer and Google Season of Docs to formalize the project.

Application requirements#

Only applications from people who perform the task below will be considered.

The only requirement will be writing a short commentary on one of the pages in our documentation (from sections “Getting Started” or “User Guide”) with some general feedback and some actionable insights (that could be for example eventually converted into issues for the community to fix). The document should have 5000 characters at the very most.

Let us know if you have doubts about what constitutes a page.

Selection criteria#

As ArviZ project we strive to both share statistical ideas to aid the scientific workflow and to provide the code that enables that workflow. We’re looking for someone who shares our interest in communicating those ideas with clear and concise communication.

Required skills#

We believe that these three skills are necessary to be successful in the GSoD project:

  • The ability to provide feedback on technical documentation in all its forms: reference docs, tutorials, case studies…

  • An interest in working collaboratively with the ArviZ devs (and patience in dealing with our current documentation)

  • A willingness to identify and understand the variety of end users of ArviZ

  • Knowledge of a documentation framework

    • By documentation framework we understand any kind of framework, philosophy, system, principle, theory… about writing and organizing documentation. There are many resources available related to this topic, diataxis, the good docs project, write the docs community resources.

Preferred skills#

Things that will help but are not required are:

  • Programming ability (in any language, not only Python or Julia)

  • Knowledge of the basic GitHub workflow, i.e. following our contributing guide and being able to submit PRs without problem

  • Knowledge of Bayesian statistics

  • Prior experience with the PyData or Julia stack

Visualization effectiveness sub-project#

As you can see in the budget, there are $2000 dedicated to “Trained help in helping us understand if our packages plots are indeed effective in communicating the information they’re designed to”. Our initial idea is to wait until the end of the technical writing process to decide how to tackle that, maybe even change that towards related projects like writing dedicated docs on uncertainty communication with ArviZ.

However, if you have training and experience in visual design, information science and uncertainty communication, you can already submit a proposal for a $9000 project tackling all goals. There are two extra points to note. Our current focus is on the technical writing project and may ask you to split the proposal during the feedback round. The focus of the visualization effectiveness is on uncertainty communication.

“Unskills”#

There are also things that we won’t take into account when evaluating the applications.

  • An expectation or consideration of work past the scope of Google Season of Docs

    • Right now (maybe ever) we can’t guarantee anyone that they will be paid to work on ArviZ. We understand that not everyone has the privilege of being able to dedicate their free time to OSS. We want the best person for the project at hand, not the person who will be able to help more once the project finishes. Having said that, from the early application process we will strive to make the whole process an enriching and enjoyable experience for everyone and hope to keep in contact with as many applicants as possible, for future GSoD rounds, punctual contributions, talks, blogs, books.

  • Hourly rate or number of hours worked

    • Our focus will be on the scope of the work proposed and the clarity of the proposal. All we care about is the impact this project will have on ArviZ, and what needs to get done to attain that impact. Your proposal will help us undestand that. So to be clear a statement of number of hours or hourly rate estimate it not needed! In terms of budget the amount allocated to us from Google is roughly 7000 USD. All work needs to occur between the date of hire and November 16, 2021. We hope project based pricing to give you more freedom in organizing your time. You can work full time less months, part time more months, some weeks full time and some weeks part time. We definitely don’t expect you to work full time from May to November though. Propose what works best for you and provides a great result for ArviZ