Write the Docs Berlin 2025 report

Last year was my first year attending a Write the Docs conference. I’m in a European time zone, so I attended the 2024 virtual conference held for the EMEA regions. I enjoyed the conference, but I wondered how it would work in person. Then 2025 came and I got to see for myself.

Write the Docs 2025 took place in Berlin on Monday, October 27 and Tuesday, October 28. It was held in bUm, a cool event-and-coworking space that was originally planned as a Google campus, but got repurposed as a space for community action and events. Sounds good to me!

There were 214 tickets sold and the space was at capacity. I thought this felt like a small number at first; when I arrived at the conference space, it felt a lot more packed. The limited number of attendees meant I had an easier time getting to know people, and getting to see people I had met at FOSDEM earlier this year.

But space and numbers aside, I loved the conference! Here are some highlights:

  1. The atmosphere was great. It felt like everyone there wanted everyone else to succeed.
  2. Everyone’s PowerPoint/presentation level was on point. I haven’t seen this many effective presentations in one place before!
  3. I found there was a good mix of workshops (unconferences), presentations, and general socializing.
  4. On the first night, I walked back to my hotel with someone else. We had a great talk about leadership and how we view our competence… and this person gave a talk the next day!
  5. We got to talk about things other than AI! I learned about leadership, resilience, Jira automation, documentation for the public good, and more.

And finally… I gave a 5-minute lightning talk about how to pick a good French croissant. That lightning talk led to:

Not only do I want to go again in 2026, but I want to try expanding on the croissant theme. I’m sure there are plenty of options…