I took an inspiration from ‘study buddies’ that became popular during lockdown period among students in the UK and some part of Asia.
I also tweaked an idea propped up from a casual chat in documentation room with @pboy@py0xc3 that Docs team could schedule a video call from time to time.
My idea is to meet halfway between social hour and formal onboarding/mentoring session.
Before we formalize this, I wonder if we could try it out and see how people think.
Here is how ‘Write together virtually’ can do.
brief introductions: ice breaker
an hour of focused writing: be it your PhD thesis (wink wink), pipeline script, technical review on server docs, course material, or work stuff, just write.
a final check-in to share the hour’s progress: this isn’t meant to be technical review, proofreading or mentoring. You can share what you achieved and what you could have done.
A while back, shortly after our 2018 Docs hackfest, we started a recurring hour block with time to write. I found these useful at the time because they helped me give focused time for my writing.
I like the idea of keeping them interactive at the start and finish of the hour. I think the reason we stopped doing these before was because folks interacted too little, and so the sessions lost steam.
Flexibility will be the key to keep people interested. If new comers are looking for guidance on review process or tooling interactively, we could share screen and give a quick walk-through.
Spontaneity also takes away pressure to provide coaching or tutorial in every session.
What I envision from ‘write together’ event is bring teamwork in documentation writing, which shouldn’t be solitary pursuit.
I also took an inspiration from weekend sports events.
Meetup, information sharing, coffee and warming up
Riding
Warming down and check-in about experience (route, weather, chitchat)
Following on from the F38 release party presentation made by @pboy and me, I’m hoping to get the message out in advance and ask your opinion on how to organize the virtual event.
When does it start?: First or second week of Sep 2023
How to communicate: Fedora Community Blog, Mastodon, and Fedora Matrix room (probably, the most active one)
Sign-up process: I was thinking of both drop-in session (office hour) and sign-up form.
– Option 1. Drop-in: no sign-up required
– Option 2. Sign-up form: Share Meetup or Eventbrite (or anything similar) link for planning purpose. We can also ask what people want to know and learn about. If there is any event management platform used by Fedora project, please let me know.
Frequency: Once a month
Program agenda: one topic at a time depending on interest of attendees.
– Option 1. Introduction: What Docs team is all about? What role will interest you?
– Option 2. Topic-based workshop: Technical review. Git workshop. AsciiDoc template and attributes. How to use local buiid and preview script. How to test documentation?
Screen sharing and interactive training platform: [Edited] Jitsi Moderated Meetings
Timeline
– Get feedback: by 11 August - here and from Flock
– Comms draft: by 18 August
– Comms release: week starting 21 August
Please let me know your thoughts about communication method, sign-up process, agenda and screen sharing tool. Thanks!
Communication: the Magazine
– Lessons or ‘hallway’ feedback from Flock Docs session
– Write up proposal: could anyone want to co-author the article with me?
Scheduling: to know how many are interested in this event and preferred time, I’m going to send out WhenIsGood link.
Co-host: could anyone want to join me to run the event?
Agenda: what do you want to hear from this event and learn from it?
Please leave your comments here so I can organize the event that fits to your requirements. Cheers!
Timeline
– Get feedback: by 11 August - here and from Flock
– Comms draft: by 18 August
– Comms release: week starting 21 August
On that Friday of Flock, I was fully tied-up with the Fedora Mentor Summit track, so I was not able to make the Docs workshop. I did come by to peek inside the room and saw @pboy working with folks there, so he might have more feedback to share there.
EDIT: I see that Peter already did give more context in a different topic:
I love this. The only change I could do is the communication channel, I think CommBlog suits bets. I remember the writing hour was a great success at the beggining. It started to fade with time, but I think that making it video-based instead of text-based would keep it longer than it was the writing hour.
Thanks for sharing your ideas @x3mboy . Did you participate in the writing hour?
I’m inspired by the Fedora Podcast and local writing groups in London. If you’re interested, I’d be pleased to have you on the workshop.
I’m waiting for feedback from @pboy on the content. The article could be posted to both, depending on what @pboy suggests. To reach people outside Fedora community, the Magazine is more suitable than CommBlog. For a selfish reason, I’m used to the Magazine workflow from day 1 when I started to lurk around the community in 2021.
If I remember correctly, I have already reported briefly about the workshop, but I can’t find it again right now.
In any case, just the fact that we were able to sit together and exchange ideas while working on a text was very beneficial and motivating for me and all the participants. If it is possible to establish a joint writing process like this, it could actually develop into a new core of a docs team. In my opinion, what is really important is a spontaneous communicative exchange, i.e. in the form of a video meeting where you can see each other and simply talk spontaneously. And I think it’s also important to deepen that from time to time in a face-to-face meeting. Flock next year would be a possibility, but maybe also local meetings, where something like that either already exists or can be organized.
Otherwise, a few minor points in our Contributor documentation have become apparent, partly simple errors or inaccuracies, partly a need for more clarity. I have already fixed some of them, others are at least on my To-Do list.
Thanks for sharing your view! Hopefully, we can launch such spontaneous collaborative session in a video meeting in 2023.
For me, local meetings are an opportunity that we can tap into more regularly and frequently. As our collaboration deepens virtually, we can make local meetings organized as well, and connect with Fedora Docs community virtually.
My pleasure. F38 release party video is here for you to understand where Docs team hatched a plot to revive the Docs hackfest. We are going to cover a lot of newbie-friendly content. See you in September (it is likely to be end September, not early) due to some backlog in communication during August holiday season.
Based on responses to when-is-good scheduler, there are two popular timeslots that will work for most of timezones.
UTC 12:00: US/Canada East, LATAM, EMEA, APAC
UTC 18-19:00: US/Canada Mid-West, LATAM, EMEA
Maybe, alternating two timeslots like the Fedora Social Hour could facilitate more participants to join the workshop. Track 1 (onboarding) could be split into two 30-minute sessions on the same day. Track 2 (skill-based workshop) will be an hour session every two months.
Workshop calendar will be added in Fedocal on 15 September.
Docs team will kick-start writing workshop on 2023-09-28T12:00:00Z→2023-09-28T12:30:00Z and 2023-09-28T18:00:00Z→2023-09-28T18:30:00Z on JItsi Meet.
Peter Boy and I will be the co-host of the workshop. Spread the word to anyone who is interested in user documentation and passionate about creating awesome Docs!
Thanks to all participants in the virtual workshop. Docs team will continue to improve onboarding experience for new comers and provide hands-on content for contributions.
Please find the link to web pages and info I walked through.
Docs weekly IRC meeting: Each Wednesday, 18:30 UTC at #fedora-meeting-1
@joseph@pboy, Big thanks for joining the session as co-host!
In October, we will start editing Quick Docs articles together on the fly using a web browser. Stayed tuned as the schedule and agenda for October will be updated on the Fedocal soon.
Commits by docs repo (5 in Pagure and 4 in GitHub): 2022-10-01 - 2023-10-01
