OpenWeek

[Dougie Richardson]

Hi Matthew,

2009/4/22 Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com>:
> Basically, a one sheet guide on how to contribute? That sounds like a
> good idea. It should be possible to reuse existing material from the
> wiki for this.

Yes, there's a link to the MOTU one at the bottom of this page:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/GettingStarted

I'm not familiar enough with the wiki to do it myself (I frequently
have to look up MoinMoin syntax because I'm so used to DokuWiki).

Happy to put together one for the system docs, I thought of doing two
- creating a new document/topic and fixing a bug.

> I like this as well, if people can dedicate some time to running these
> sessions. We should certainly try and see what interest is attracted,
> and the sessions can be fairly widely publicised around the community.
>
> What would you see as the subject matter for lessons of this type? We
> might be able to use the OpenWeek session structure as a base for
> this. That way, we can reuse material prepared for the OpenWeek too.

Yes, that might work out - I take it its the same format as last
time,presentation in  ubuntu-classroom and questions in a side room?

> One idea that arose out of something that one potential contributor
> mentioned to me off-list was that we could do a walkthrough session to
> show people how genuinely easy it is to contribute. So, we could take
> a real (preferably simple) bug report, and walk the audience through
> fixing the bug step by step in live time. That way, a bug gets fixed,
> and people learn how to make and submit a patch. The same scheme would
> work for the wiki.

I have put a page up for ideas, I think there needs to be a focus on
practicality especially in bug clearing as that is, by and large, the
low hanging fruit for new users to gain confidence in our processes
with.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/Ideas/Lessons

It would be especially useful for new contributers to add to this.

> Because of the fact that people might find it difficult to commit to
> doing such sessions regularly, and potential contributors might not be
> able to attend in live time either, we could have an example
> walkthrough bugfix page on the wiki.

I think you're right but further to our first point we should link
this in with the proposed play book for bugs.

> Yes, I like this idea too - we could reduce overhead for preparing
> such an event by improving our current task list and use that as a
> base for the hug day. "Wiki weekends" have been organised in the past
> by forum contributors, and these use the same idea, and were quite a
> good way of encouraging some contribution. It would be excellent if
> that could be expanded to the whole community. And of course, we have
> Connor's "Summer of Documentation" too, as another brand to use to
> promote contribution.

Wiki weekends and the Summer of Documentation ideas are great but have
a larger focus on a wider area, I'm envisaging something more specific
and more frequent. The QA team have been running BugDays very
frequently:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/BugDayFocus

I can see it being the sort of thing we announce weekly, that next
weeks hug day is for such-and-such-a-topic. If we promote on the
Planet and the Forums then we can potentially draw in people with
specific areas of expertise who mightn't realise that there is a need
for their knowledge in a more generalized request for assistance.

-- 
Regards,

Dougie Richardson
http://www.lynxworks.eu/
dougierichardson at ubuntu.com