[FM Discuss] Firefox mini-sprint

[Clytie Siddall]

I'd also suggest, since people need more notice, that there are regular reminders building up to the sprint. Each one could have a teaser, e.g. "Did you know Firefox could do X?" or "Browse a lot? We need your experience!"

There's also a need for timeslots which allow more people to participate. Should we have "phases" or "chapters" of each sprint for different timezones? Or should we choose a timeslot which works for the maximum number of people who have expressed interest prior to the sprint?

I was unable to participate in this mini-sprint because it started well after midnight in my timezone. However, when we've setup IRC meetings in other projects, we've been able to find timeslots which work simultaneously for people living in Asia, Europe and America. It's takes a bit of arranging, but it pays off in the number of participants.

from Clytie 
Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team

On 15/04/2010, at 6:03 AM, David Tenser wrote:

> Thanks for this summary, Janet, and for organizing the event. I also blogged about this sprint when I found out about it on the SUMO blog (mostly a quote from your contributor forum post: http://blog.mozilla.com/sumo/2010/04/09/help-us-update-the-firefox-manual-to-3-6/).
> 
> I will forward this info to the team and figure out how we can help finish this work. We would have loved to help out more (obviously), but since this came up last minute, we weren't able to build up some excitement among our community volunteers. I'm glad Michael Verdi was able to help out at least.
> 
> - David
> 
> On 2010-04-14 20:17, Janet Swisher wrote:
>> In connection with the Texas Linux Fest, I organized a mini-sprint to
>> update the Firefox book to version 3.6.
>> 
>> The idea of doing a mini-sprint after TXLF came from Joe 'Zonker'
>> Brockmeier, who gave the opening keynote. He's a technology journalist
>> and until recently was a community manager for openSUSE. I picked the
>> Firefox update as a smallish chunk of work that could potentially be
>> done in a day.
>> 
>> I announced the sprint here, on my blog, on the TXLF mailing list, and
>> on the Mozilla Support Contributors Forum
>> <http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/3/645246?>. Zonker mentioned
>> it during his keynote, and I had mini-flyers at the FM table with the
>> details. I had no idea who would show up besides Zonker and me.
>> 
>> We had two additional people come to the coffeehouse to help with the
>> sprint, and two remote contributors. I got email from one person who
>> looked for us at the coffeehouse and didn't see us :-( and there was
>> one person who came to hang out and sprint on a different project (I
>> had extended that invitation in the TXLF announcements).
>> 
>> I didn't have much time to prepare for the sprint, since I was also
>> preparing for my talks (besides the one with Anne, I gave one with
>> David Cramer on collaborating with non-programmers). So my first task
>> during the sprint was to go through the list of new features in
>> Firefox 3.6 and identify where that info needed to be added to the FM
>> manual. I found about 15 tasks, which I listed in a chapter called
>> "ScratchNotes"<http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Firefox/Introduction?topic=ScratchNotes>.
>> About one third of those have been done.
>> 
>> So, we have some more work to do before the Firefox manual is up to
>> date. If you're interested, please take a look at the ScratchNotes
>> page, pick something to update, and then mark it done when you're
>> done.
>> 
>> I think the sprint worked out reasonably well, given that it was
>> organized at pretty much the last minute (e.g., after out-of-towners
>> had made their travel plans). With more advance notice, we might have
>> gotten more people. But at least a few people got a chance to try out
>> our tools and process.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Janet