Feat/57/february 2026 newsletter

[SensibleWood]

February 2026 newsletter for community review

[RCheesley]

Just a few small typos/grammar suggestions, great read!

[SensibleWood]

@RCheesley thank you very much for the copy suggestions - much appreciated.

Based on what you are seeing in Outreach and generally in observing OAI here's a question for you: What could this newsletter do better? Is there anything we can include that would help pique engagement in anyway?

Actually that's two questions 🤷

[RCheesley]

Thanks for asking @SensibleWood - happy to give a few thoughts!

General observations / tl;dr as this got a bit long! 😉

• Appropriate use of images could make it more engaging
• Lead with human stories to bring people in, then explore more technical aspects
• Be more direct with calls to action
• Give specific examples of contribution call for volunteers instead of generic 'contributors are needed' statements
• Introduce new features by including why members are excited by them / tie to specific gains made thanks to the feature
• What does analytics say about engagement with the existing content?
• Does it actually get emailed?

Bear in mind, I'm not really sure what the primary goal is of the newsletter but I assume it's both to communicate what's happening within the org, and also as a way of encouraging more members and contributors.

I feel that the newsletter does a great job of informing people about technical progress, and the Jentic spotlight in this one is a great example of showcasing a member in a positive way and showing how they use OpenAPI. Perhaps the newsletter could be restructured a bit to put the most engaging content first - leading with a human story like the Jentic spotlight and introducing the humans as well as the brand, with some images? It's interesting learning about the org, but the humans are the folks that people might encounter in the community/tech ecosystem, it might be good to introduce them too (I noticed in an earlier blog post this was done, so perhaps the thought was to not repeat the info?) Also telling the story of why they became a member to motivate others to follow, or linking back to the earlier newsletter where this is explored, could be beneficial. I appreciate it's a largely technical audience so perhaps leading with the tech stuff is more desirable - just an observation that most newsletters need to capture the attention rapidly and often this is better done through relatable stories of human engagement.

I also think there are opportunities to make the newsletter work better for membership growth and attendance at events, perhaps. Right now it comes across a bit like an internal memo or status update (if it's only intended to update existing members then perhaps disregard that comment!) whereas it could perhaps be considered from a more external perspective as a marketing tool. Does it actually get emailed to folks, or just placed on the website?

I saw you have LF analytics on the site, I'm not sure what info that gives, but perhaps it might be possible to get some access to understand what people are engaging with and how that varies based on persona? Could give some useful insights.

On this email specifically, the membership mention is buried quite near the end so it could easily be missed, and doesn't (imho) really have a compelling reason why an org would join (possibly connected to the not-yet-deployed member benefits work that's ongoing).

I'd probably look at making more of the event coverage and why people should attend / support their team to attend - making much more of the opportunities for professional development in addition to learning about the latest and greatest, and perhaps some quotes from people who attended in the past. Perhaps it's possible to be a bit more direct with the call to actions and why people should attend your events, eg

"DeveloperWeek is 3 weeks away. Register here [link] - if you're working on AI + APIs, you'll want to bookmark Henry's v3.2 update, Sumeet's session on using AI tools to automate all things API design, and the governance session by Kuldeepak and Budha. Last year's attendees said [specific quote/benefit]. Don't miss out on a great opportunity to expand your knowledge and get the latest updates, book your place today!"

I feel like the technical updates could perhaps be made more tangible by explaining what they mean for folks using the specs in production - perhaps you could give examples of members who are excited by the new feature and what it's going to enable them to do? I'm not sure how easy that would be to do, and maybe not for every single feature, but it might add some more colour to the technical explanations and help to spark ideas for innovation amongst readers. Fabulous to see you giving a shoutout to the contributors who have worked on new features - that's often missed in these announcements!

I'd be clearer with calls to action - for example after the part about the Moonwalk SIG, perhaps adding something like:

"Want to help shape how OpenAPI works with LLMs? Join the next Moonwalk call on [date] - no prior experience needed, we'll get you oriented. [Link to join]"

I'd suggest being really specific about contribution opportunities - rather than 'they need contributors' making specific reference to the kinds of roles/tasks and time commitment required, or at least pointing to where folks can find those. Maybe you could even showcase/feature onboarding mentors who are there to help people get started. It always helps, I've found, to give personal/human contact points, rather than 'contribute to this project, it will be fun'.

Happy to talk through ideas for how that might be implemented, hope some of this might be helpful!

[SensibleWood]

hope some of this might be helpful!

@RCheesley sure does! The focus on tone, calls to action, and engagement in your suggestions are fantastic. I'll do some refactoring!

[lornajane]

Minor wording suggestion

[handrews]

To build on @RCheesley 's "call to action" thoughts, the two areas we're focusing on are LLMs/AI agents (mostly for Moonwalk (Tuesday call), so you've got a section for that already) and authentication/authorization (OAuth2 including FAPI, OIDC, OID AuthZEN). The auth stuff will apply to both 3.x and Moonwalk, but we'll probably be focusing on improving 3.x (Thursday call) first. So we are looking for input from folks with expertise in those areas.

As a bit of an aside, we had some auth contributions for 3.2 but not enough bandwith to shepherd them through the process. So we're making a conscious effort to be available to help move ideas to PRs (and yes, @SensibleWood , I plan to follow up with you on some of your proposals this year).

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It might also be good to highlight that we're starting to hear back as people implement OAS v3.2, and people are very pleased with how easy it is to update from 3.1. This is important, as our only previous minor release, 3.1, was actually very difficult to implement on top of 3.0. It's important to assuage people's fears that 3.2 will be another difficult upgrade. @hellobudha might have some specifics on the feedback, I just know we're getting positive feedback on upgrading.