Why Documentation matters & how to do it?

Before diving into how-to document & prepare reports, let’s understand why-to document stuff.

Consider you are a member of your college event or organizing an event. Most of times you have a “marketing team” in your organizing team who looks out for sponsorship / partnerships with other organizations. The organizations support your event with the only goal of getting a good ROI (Return on Investment). And how does that happen? It’s the ‘trust’ you give them by providing the stats in form of a proposal or a report of earlier years.

An another example could be, creating a process or documenting your projects in a portfolio or a resume. Whether its the readability while someone else refers to the code of your website or its a new employee who has joined your organization and wants to understand the processes, so they can work efficiently.

In either of the cases, the purpose remains same of achieving something for their own ‘profit’.

Let’s do a quick exercise on how well can you read a photo:

Are you able to identify data by just viewing the above photos?

Left Photo: Group Discussion, Mentoring Session, Pitching Session, Formal Meeting

Right Photo: Photo Booth, Installation to engage attendees, Group of female friends having fun

These observations you made from the photo are the “data points”. The gold lies in these Data Points. More the data you are able to capture, identify & include in your reports, more the possibility of achieving your goal.

Now, you understand why each photo & data point is important.

Tip: Capture every unique moment you see in the form of photos & add it in your reports.

You can document data in various formats as per requirement. Let’s say:

1. You can write an email for sharing insights of your event / organization in short.
2. You can create a sponsorship / partnership proposal with statistical data & impact created.
3. You can create creative infographics to share with your followers on social media.
4. You can raise funds for your startup / brand by adding data in your pitch deck.

BONUS: I have created templates for each of the mentioned point & sharing it over here: Check Templates

Moving forward, taking few of your moments to introduce myself.

Back in school, I worked on two year-long research projects in botany where I first learnt the importance of documentation. We created log books of daily observations of plants & at the end of every month created and analyzed the graphs. With a very good documentation of our project in the form of research book, our team was selected to present the project at IRIS National Science Fair organized by Intel, CII and DST, Govt of India in 2010.

Stepping into college, I started actively participating in community events like Maker Mela, Darwin, Facebook Developer Circle Mumbai & so on. I used to capture every relevant data point, created reports from it and shared with the community members. This landed me with a sponsored trip to Facebook Singapore HQ & later in 2019 a spot to speak at the Developer Circles from Facebook India Leads Summit on “Documentation”. And the appreciation letter from Developer Circles from Facebook team was a cherry on the cake which mentions my strength on capturing the right information is highly commendable!

The BEST examples of documentation:

1. Instructables: It encourages people to document their projects in step-by-step format and rewarding the best through various contests & challenges.
2. Materiom: Its an online portal where all over the globe, researchers can share their Biomaterials recipes & can exchange knowledge through a detailed structured documentation.
3. Instagram: Though a social networking platform, some may use it for documenting their memories. For instance, I have created a page on Instagram — Nature Explorer which has all the photos I have clicked over the years with captions. This is a wonderful platform to store memories (photos along with captions) instead of storing on Drive.

Here are a couple of Platforms & Tools to document better:

Platforms:

1. Airtable: For easier data management -

• To gather feedback from event participants.
• To gather data points of attendees registrations.
• To analyze various data points of an organization for fundraising / collaborations.
• To create structured event plans / social media plans.

2. Facebook Groups: For content repository -

• You can create individual “Units / Guides” for your Online Training series including photos / videos / text posts / documents and share a single link of the particular unit.
• You can add individual event reports / new job openings JD in the “Files” tab for easier access to community members.
• You can add one-time posts of program details / timeline of on-going programs in the “Announcement” section which always remains pinned at top of the group for ease of access.

3. Microsoft PowerPoint: To create infographics

BONUS: Sharing a bunch of free editable templates in ppt format to create infographics for your reports & to share on social media.

Tools:

1. Screely: You can create website mockups instantly online for any of your virtual event screenshots, which can beautify your reports / proposals.
2. InShot: A mobile app to edit photos & videos. You can change the ratio of your photo/video to fit on social media or add captions & music to your videos.

In all, you have gained immense value today of a very basic thing which many of us ignore while focusing only on the actual project / event, don’t we? What tools do you use to document? Let me know in comments.