Q1-2025 community board blog post (#2314)

* Q1-2025 community board blog post

* Update docs/blog/2025-Q1-community-board.rst

Co-authored-by: Aaron Collier <[email protected]>

* Update docs/blog/2025-Q1-community-board.rst

---------

Co-authored-by: Aaron Collier <[email protected]>

docs/blog/2025-Q1-community-board.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+.. post:: Jan 17, 2025
+   :tags: community board, news, report
+   :author: Mikey Ariel
+
+Write the Docs Community Board Quarterly Update Q1-2025
+=======================================================
+
+Greetings, documentarians! Mikey Ariel here, chairperson of the WTD community board. I'm happy to share our first quarterly update for 2025 with you. 
+
+To catch up on previous quarterly updates, check out the `community board blog posts <https://www.writethedocs.org/blog/archive/tag/community-board/>`_ archive. 
+
+Q1-2025 quarterly meeting highlights
+------------------------------------
+
+Our first meeting of the year included an informal retrospective of the previous year and a look-ahead at our events and activities for the upcoming year: 
+
+**The tech industry is a-changing**
+    The past year has given our community much to celebrate but also made it clear that the technology industries are still in flux, and people and organizations are changing their professional or personal priorities. Looking back at our event attendance, sponsorships, and traffic across all of our community spaces, we understand that we can't always rely on the same infrastructure and practices that served us in previous years. 
+
+    While our conferences continue to draw attendees both in person and virtually, both the content and vibe have been changing and this reflects the state of the professional and enthusiast communities. We've seen these changes across the board, from presentation topics to sponsor goals, and we would love to keep evolving with our documentarians and support our community in the way that it needs to be supported at this current time. 
+
+**Meetups are changing**
+    The most affected space for us this year was our meetup network. In the past, we would hear from local organizers that they're overloaded with companies looking to hire employee and with professional experts seeking to share their knowledge with their peers. However, throughout the past year we've heard that many meetups have seen not only a decline in those offerings but also a rise in people looking for work or training, but the "networking fatigue" effect has been increasingly felt among attendees and organizers. We've heard similar sentiments from our friends at developer meetup communities, so this is an unfortunate broader trend.
+
+    Our meetups team will be checking out possible activities or initiatives that we could launch to help our community members find their next passion and boost their motivation to keep learning and developing. As a community that prides itself on knowledge-sharing, we would love to get the community's input on makes you excited about the future of documentation, where you'd like to see yourself in it, and what can our community spaces and events offer to support you on your journey. 
+
+**Virtual conferences are changing** 
+    The other areas that we're going to be scoping for possible changes are the virtual conference format and timing. Although the Atlantic virtual conference was successful, we still feel that it could be further tweaked to appeal to more time zones. Also, the Australia in-person conference was smaller than expected due to the economic situation in the region, so the teams are going to put their heads together and investigate options for creating one or more virtual events that would allow us to reuse some of the infrastructure and content without losing the attendee experience of a real-time virtual gathering. 
+
+    We're still aiming to hold these events in the autumn or early winter, and we're still keeping accessibility at the top of our priority list. Our organizing teams for both conferences are already hard at work brainstorming ideas, and we'll be sharing more news in the coming weeks. 
+
+**The community is changing**
+    While many of the changes in the world have been felt to a certain extent in our community, we're fortunate to still have a strong foundation in our community members, volunteers, staff, and sponsors. We would like to once again express our gratitude to all of our conferences, meetup, Slack, and infrastructure teams for their dedication to the community, and to our documentarians - we appreciate your enthusiasm and flexibility as we continue to experiment and improve our events and resources. 
+
+As always, the board continues to review the community backlog to determine what are the most valuable efforts for the community in the short and long term. 
+
+What is the community board
+---------------------------
+
+The `Community Board <https://www.writethedocs.org/team/#community-board>`_ exists to curate the overall strategic direction of the community teams.
+
+The board members are team leads for each WTD team, as well as the conference chairs of our various conferences:
+
+* Mikey Ariel (CoreOps, brand and design, board chair)
+* Eric Holscher (CoreOps, Portland chair)
+* Samuel Wright (CoreOps, infrastructure)
+* Sasha Romijn (CoreOps, support, Atlantic chair)
+* Rose Williams (meetups)
+* Janine Chan (Slack moderation)
+* Aaron Collier (newsletter)
+* Swapnil Ogale (Australia chair)
+
+The community board meets quarterly in real-time, and provides monthly asynchronous status updates. Board members can share the status of what they're working on and request any help to keep the various teams functioning effectively.
+
+Thank you 
+---------
+
+Thanks again to the team leads that participate in the community board, and to all the team members (mostly volunteers!) who work diligently to support the community and each other. If you want to join any of the WTD community teams, check out the `Team page <https://www.writethedocs.org/team/>`_ for team descriptions and contacts. 
+
+See you in the next update, and wishing everyone a joyous and productive 2025!
+
+Mikey and the community board