Write for LO’s Blog

Contribute your perspective to our rich community for current and aspiring data analytics leaders. Reach a global audience and evolve the craft of data leadership via the Locally Optimistic blog. 

The Mission

It’s hard to work in data. Locally Optimistic aims to create community for data professionals in the areas of career growth, soft and hard skills, and tools and technology in the space. Our content is focused on specific, actionable insight for practitioners – no fluff and no vendor pitches.

We are committed to promoting diversity and amplifying less frequently heard voices within our events and publications. We actively work with promising writers to take their ideas from good to great.

The Audience

The Locally Optimistic blog is published by and for data professionals at all levels of the organizational chart. Our members include folks seeking their first data role, CTOs, and everyone in between. In addition to the public blog,  LO has a members-only Slack community with community members representing 6 of the 7 continents, where we promote posts and discuss content more in depth. 

What It’s Like to Work With Us

Working with the LO publishing team on this process was a wonderful experience. At every step of the way, folks made sure I knew what to expect and exactly what was needed from me. When I made a change in the draft document, or added a comment looking for guidance, Caitlin and Michael especially were super responsive, encouraging, and helpful. When I needed help with wordsmithing, they came up with suggestions that beautifully refined what I wanted to say. Their feedback was consistently the right mix of positive and constructive. I learned so much from the process, and am already thinking up subjects for future posts.

If you’ve got an idea you’ve been thinking could make a good blog post, but aren’t sure where to start or how to get there, I can’t recommend reaching out to the publishing team here enough. Your idea doesn’t have to be already perfectly formed, or some earth-shatteringly new concept, to be worth writing about. The folks on the publishing team are here to help you take that idea and make it into something you’re proud to see on the LO homepage!

LO Contributor

Editorial Policy

Locally Optimistic welcomes quality original blog post submissions from data industry professionals. Representatives of data vendors or investors are welcome to submit but endorsements of a particular tool or technology will not be accepted. The Locally Optimistic leadership team will review all submissions and provide editorial revision, potentially with support from other editors chosen by the leadership team. Articles must be original, unpublished work and may not be released prior to the publication of the issue. The editorial team at LocallyOptimistic has the final word on what content gets posted. We reserve the right to reject any post for any reason at any time.

At least one week after publishing on Locally Optimistic, you may sindicate the blog post to other publications as long as there is attribution to Locally Optimistic at the top of the other post saying “This blog post was originally posted on Locally Optimistic” with a link back to the original.

Biography/Byline

Authors of Locally Optimistic blog posts receive an author byline. A brief biography appears at the end of the article. The author information should be no more than three sentences and should describe the credentials of the author, the title and firm with city and state, and give the reader contact information. We encourage you to provide a headshot of the author as well.

Honoraria

Locally Optimistic does not offer monetary compensation to contributors for their work. We also do not accept monetary compensation in return for publication.

Getting Started – Write for LO’s Blog

If you have an idea for a post you would like to write, reach out to someone from the editorial team on Slack, and we will add you to an author-specific channel, where we will collaborate with you to prepare your post for publication. Here is the process:

1. Review our licensing policies and ensure you’re comfortable licensing your content under our rules.
   
2. Create a shared Google doc with your content and ask for a review in your author channel. The editorial team at LocallyOptimistic will review your post within one week and request changes.
   We will give critical feedback on your post — but our goal is for you to publish something of super high quality that will be a long term reference for our community. All feedback will be constructive. We can give feedback early in the writing process if you want more structural feedback, or later if you prefer to share a more finished product.
   
3. Once you have made all of the requested changes, we will mutually determine a publish date and will walk you through the process of requesting a custom illustration for the post.
   
4. We will invite you to WordPress as a contributor, where you will create and schedule the final version of your post.

If you want to workshop post ideas, we have a channel for that in the Slack group at #blog. If you have other questions or concerns, please reach out on Slack.

Style

• Left align all text, without justification or hyphenation.
• Spell-check prior to submission.You are welcome to use your local-variation of English.
• Submit text in a Google Doc.
• Please refer to our style guide for additional style guidelines.

Graphics

Locally Optimistic will provide access to an illustrator so that featured visuals are created in the Locally Optimistic guidelines. Additional visual aids within posts are acceptable at the discretion of the editorial team.