2013 Sessions
Want to show the world what you’ve been working on? Email your proposal to conf@openhelp.cc. We’re interested in any topic related to documentation, support, and open communities. In particular, we’re excited to see talks related to the following:
- Engaging user communities to create user-generated content, managing contributions and contributors, and getting people excited about helping other users.
- Running effective documentation sprints, either in-person or remotely.
- Making documentation available to everybody through better internationalization, localization, and accessibility.
The Open Help Conference has a heavy focus on open discussion, so we prefer presentations that foster discussion and collaboration. Plan to speak for 45 minutes. Proposals are evaluated as they come in, so send your proposal as soon as possible.
Demos
Don’t feel like preparing a whole talk? We also love to see demos of tools and projects. Demos can be as short as a few minutes, but be prepared for questions. Email conf@openhelp.cc with a short description of what you’d like to show.
GNOME 3.8 features new getting started videos. These videos are built from SVG resources that are translated with the ITS-based XML translation tool itstool. Members of the GNOME documentation team will show how it all works.
Doc sprints, book sprints, and doc-athons
A "documentation sprint" is a short period (typically a few days) when a group of people come together, virtually or actually, to collaborate on writing documentation on a given topic or related topics. Find out how several projects and organizations have implemented this idea to boost their content and enhance their documentation community. Learn tips for running a successful doc sprint.
Solving the Q+A conundrum with StackExchange
Three years ago StackExchange opened up a process that allows projects to run their own StackOverflow-like site if there was community interest. Ubuntu applied and launched “Ask Ubuntu”, which has been growing steadily. But how do StackExchanges fit with other project resources? Many projects have wikis, mailing lists, and forums, how does an SE site fit in a way that doesn’t make those things redundant? What about open source clones of SE? How do they measure up? In this talk I will share some lessons learned from Ubuntu, how we sorted out licensing of content, workflows, governance, and moderation to make the site useful for users.
Listening to your Audience
Too often, we write docs for ourselves, and either don’t listen to our audience at all, or tell them that they’re asking the wrong questions. But if the docs don’t answer questions that the readers are actually asking, they’re going to go somewhere else for those answers. In this talk, Rich will talk about listening to users, and what things we might be able to do to encourage them to talk to us.
Documentation: Don’t be Afraid
Whether you’re just rolling out a new project, or you’re maintaining ten years and three major versions of legacy code, good documentation is vital for your users. But writing good docs doesn’t need to be a long, painful process. This talk will get you started - and finished! - in no time.
From first drafts to final revisions, we’ll discuss how to get started, how to build on what you already have, and even some ideas for attracting volunteers to help document your project.
Drupal for Tech Comm: Walkthough to full-featured CMS
This year, Provonix, a Drupal shop based in Belgium, introduced Walkthrough, a tool that leverages new Drupal features to allow the easy creation and management of virtual web tours and tutorials that can step the user through complex workflows. In this talk, we’ll look at why people are excited about Walkthrough and we’ll discuss how Drupal is evolving into an increasingly useful platform for technical communication.
How Mozilla supports users all over the world
The Mozilla support platform is built around a fully localizable wiki and an awesome community of volunteers. Together we’re able to support nearly half a billion users in dozens of languages. This talk will look at some of the lessons we’ve learned about writing good docs and helping users find them.