[FM Discuss] Report from Writing Open Source

[Janet Swisher]

I have day-by-day accounts of the Writing Open Source conference on my blog:

Day 1: http://www.janetswisher.com/?itemid=214
Day 2: http://www.janetswisher.com/?itemid=215
Day 3: http://www.janetswisher.com/?itemid=216

"Conference" is a bit of a grandiose term for a meeting of 15 people.
However, the small size made for an intimate gathering, with lots of
sharing and cross-pollination, and allowed a sense of cohesion to
emerge by the end of the weekend (much like a book sprint!). The
conference website (http://www.writingopensource.com/) has been
converted to a community site for ongoing discussion and
resource-sharing for doc teams across open source projects.

I was referred to as the "sprinting expert", so FLOSS Manuals is
building a reputation as a leader in the book sprint methodology. I
think a key insight that folks got from the idea of a "book sprint" as
opposed to  the typical "doc sprint" is the importance of having a
tangible goal, achieving it, and celebrating it. Too many doc sprints
are much like code sprints, in that they chip away at a huge pile of
outstanding tasks, but the pile doesn't seem to get any smaller, so
there is little sense of achievement.

If you want to see the history of tweets from the conference in
Twitter or identi.ca, search for #woscon09. For discussion going
forward, we're using #wosdocs. There is also a !wosdocs group on
identi.ca.

--Janet