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Jen - Want better lefthand navigation and versioning. Find someone who can help us do technical editing. Maybe get someone to do technical writing - get material into order.
Bess - are these the same proposal?
Jen - Maybe we do need a technical editor that we need to pay for. What's the most efficient way for everyone involved? See money as beneficial thing, trying same solution to get overtaxed people to do more work for free, and if we have money from community, we can put toward pilot project we want to do.
Bess - they're not going to give us money for an experiment. Needs to be for A specific thing with A specific outcome.
Jen - Get a specific developer for a specific site. After we have results - maybe get a technical editor to help us wrangle our content.
LaRita - with a technical editor - we get consistency of writing on the site.
Bess - If we want to ask for money, we need to pick a priority and pick that thing.
LaRita - Jeckyll
Lynette - benefit of Jeckyll, no time spent learning Samvera community. Jeckyll is an isolated thing. Comes with a base knowledge right from the start.
Bess - I like that for reassons Lynette said, also a good first place to start. If we're doing interviews or bringing in an outside technical editor if bulit ontop of a clear documented practice around how we're managing documentation.
Jen - Even if we can't get it into a site, we need these problems solved.
Bess - Focus on what we're asking for.Is Tom Johnson the guy who invented Jeckyll?
Lynette - he wrote the theme.
Bess - could you provode some bonafides was asked.
Drew - he may say this is a terrible idea. He may not want to do this. But he is actively developing his theme. Looking at his website, he is a technical writer, according to his GitHub bio. Apparently has some tech savvy. He also seems to be involved with teh Write The Docs Group. I know a guy from Kansas who is super involved with the group. It's like Code4Lib biut for documentation.
Bess - yeah, they have recommendations.
Drew - they have a slack channel. Asking feasability of the two requirements of ours - left nav and non-linear versioning - being distinct between versions of individual pages
Lynette - right we're versioning multiple gems
Drew - I've never seen a doc site that handles that. You usually can look at a complete new site or an old site. Don't usually see anything that documents multiple gems/ versions on same site.
Bess - if we had someone with a background in technical writing and origanzing documentation, maybe he could advise us? Maybe there are patterns we could be following. Love to get his opinion. Would it be worth asking - how much it would cost to do an initital consult? 4 hours of his time? That could help us flesh out a larger proposal.
Drew - I was going to email him at his GitHub, if you want to be CC'd let me know
Jen - could give us casual updates in slack
Drew - I will tell him I ill share this with our group
Jen - if he's in community documentation, he'll be familiar with thsi situation.
Bess: what about an initial ask of a small amount to get a proposal?
Lynette - that's a good idea. A 4 hour investment to increase our knowledge will be very useful.
Drew: 3 layers of left nav?
Everyone: yes.
Lynette - ask "this is why we feel we want 4 layers of indentation" we want to hear his opinion of why or why not to do that