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About Sarah

Leading community-driven, open-source documentation at docs.astro.build

Astro Core Maintainer 🚀 Docs Lead 📑 Technical Writer ✍️ Bird Photographer 🐦

Conference Bio

Sarah Rainsberger leads a large open-source software documentation project with several maintainers and almost 1000 community contributors. She brings a background in high school mathematics education, academic counseling, and curriculum development to her current technical writing and open-source community building. In her spare time, she photographs birds.

Languages/tools/techniques:

Documentation, docs as code, technical writing, community building, open-source maintenance, Astro, HTML/CSS/JS, Markdown/MDX, NWTWWHB (not worse than what we had before)

Talks / Interviews / Appearances

YouTube playlist of all videos

Talks

📺 Stop writing docs; Start helping - ViteConf 2023

📺 Happy Contributors, High Standards: Pick two! Balancing quality and community in open-source documenatation - Write the Docs Australia 2022

📺 Making effecitive contributions to open-source documentation - Distribute Aid, Open Source Explorers 2024

📺 Learning in the Browser - ReactConf 2021

📺 Jamstack in the Browser (Lightning Talk) - TheJam.dev 2022

Interviews / Appearances

🎙️ Kelvin Omereshone’s Twitter Space Jan 2023: Making Documentation Developers Love (listen on YouTube) / (listen on Spotify)

🎙️ GitHub ReadME Podcast: Episode 31: Bridging code and community

📰 GitHub ReadME Project June 2023: Non-code contributions are the secret to open source success - Klint Finley

🎙️ Hanselminutes Podcast September 2023: Episode 911: Documentation as a path to Open Source

📺 ViteConf 2023: Community and Contributors Panel - Sarah Rainsberger, Brittney Postma, Anthony Fu, and Matias Capeletto, with This Dot Labs’ Tracy Lee as host, discuss how to get involved in open source and foster healthier communities.

Open-Source

I am a core maintainer and the Docs Lead for Astro, and open-source web framework. I also write and speak about managing and maintaining community-driven, open-source documentation.

Astro badge contributions

Personal

In my “past life” in Toronto, I helped hundreds of students through high school & university as a private tutor, teacher, academic advisor, school administrator and guidance / university admissions counsellor. I used several stylus-based tablet PCs for taking/making digital math notes long before tablets were a thing. I was also an active volunteer in the Ontario homeschooling and alternative edudation communities: writing, advising, and speaking at conferences.

Now, from our island waterfront home in Atlantic Canada, I enjoy bird photography on our scenic boardwalk and am involved with local community choirs.

Other personal interests include a good cappuccino, a new-to-me gin, watching Toronto Blue Jays baseball on PVR delay so we can skip commercials (no spoilers!), stylus-based gadgets (#ALLtheSamsung, plus many niche devices you’ve probably never heard of), and natural disaster movies where the rogue atmospheric physicist saves the day.

My home is currently Summerside, PEI, Canada / Epekwitk (though I will always be “from Toronto”). My actual physical location could be anywhere in the world as a constant travel companion to my loving husband Joe, with whom the epic “Oshawa vs. Brampton” battle is ongoing.