Ready for some classic back scratchin’? (That’s where you scratch my back, and I scratch yours.)
You are in charge of or part of a class in technical writing or documentation. We have an open project with tools, processes, and lots of great content to create and manage. In addition to using community-generated content to create release notes, we also produce an Installation Guide, a User Guide, and others in the works and already published. We want to add in deeper technical content, such as an Administration Guide, a Security Guide, and a seriously updated Development Guide.
Our writers, editors, and mentors are prepared to work with your class. Students get exposed to state of the art technical writing tools (wiki, gobby, DocBook) using the ultra-proven and useful open source writing methodology.
We have so much work to do, instructors could do an entire semester of twenty+ students working on this just to get a nice status quo for future work. Open source technical writing is a fantastic way to get involved in, and learn about, open source projects. Listen to what the Fedora Project Leader has to say about it: “I came to be part of the Fedora community through the Documentation Project.” Word!
Ask the folks at Seneca College how it works for software. In fact, Jack, while you are out there on tour, please talk with anyone who will listen about this idea.
Maybe someone wants to do a Free Skool class on this; I’d show up and help. If I mention the Guerilla Drive-in, will that catch Wes Modes or someone else’s attention who might actually make it happen?
Onward, truly.
He hears you. But does he listen?
Hmm, lemme see. Free Skool is all about DIY. If I want to learn about, say, Carpentry, and I know a tiny bit, but want to learn more, I host a carpentry class. A bunch of people all show up with a little bit of knowledge like a potluck, and we learn together.
Or conversely, I’m gonna try to facilitate a class on, I don’t know, book binding, and so I do. Well, if I’m gonna facilitate the class, I better get crackin on learnin stuff, because soon I’m going to be the expert. Gives me an excuse to learn awesome stuff.
And so goes tech writing. In other words, get crackin and DIY.