Docs workshop: Virtually writing together

At the Fedora Linux 38 release party, the Docs team suggested that we take advantage of a virtual meetup to bring teamwork into documentation writing. Documentation writing shouldn’t be a solitary pursuit.

An interactive session at Flock 2023 helped exchange ideas on a collaborative way to run meetings and invite more contributions for documentation.

After months of waiting for ideas to be finalized, the Docs team is pleased to announce the workshop will begin September 2023.

If you fancy coming along, just let us know your preferred timeslot in the When-is-good scheduler by September 15 2023.

But why and how?

The idea behind a virtual writing session is to combine the power of the Fedora Podcast with advocacy of writing and maintaining excellent user documentation. Here is why.

• Documentation in any free and open source software project provides reasons for users and contributors to stay loyal to the project and software.
• The Docs workshop aims to facilitate individual and collaborative work through a supportive community of documentarians.
• Documentation is more than a fix of visual presentation. We’re writing, reviewing, and deploying docs.
• In accordance with the Fedora project motto “First”, we like to try new things in toolset, automation, and UI improvement.

Building on feedback from each session, the Docs team wants to empower people to learn about templates, issue tickets, review processes, and tool chains to improve documentation for Fedora Linux users and contributors.

Program agenda

A monthly agenda will be posted in Fedocal and Fosstodon (@fedora@fosstodon.org).

Track 1: Introduction and onboarding (odd months)
– What the Docs team is all about. What role will interest you?
– The types of user documentation Fedora Linux publishes
– How you can help improve Fedora Documentation.

Track 2: Skill-based workshop (even months)
– Technical review, Git workshop, AsciiDoc template and attributes
– Use of local build and preview script
– Test documentation quality

Format of Track 2
– Demo
– Try it yourself
– Q&A

If you come along to the Track 2 workshop, all you need is a Fedora account and Pagure account with your computer, preferably with Git and Podman (or Docker) installed.

In the meantime, if you have questions, feel free to drop by our Discussion forum. I’m looking forward to saying hello at our first virtual docs workshop someday in late September (the exact date depends on the when-is-good responses)! Let’s do it!