You are invited to join the Documentation and Training West Conference as a writer in the Firefox BookSprint. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be physically at the conference to participate. You can work remotely, via internet, email and telephone. In return, you’ll learn about writing in a collaborative authoring environment (a wiki), discover the FLOSS Manuals toolkit, participate in a single sourcing/topic-based authoring project, and share your knowledge of Firefox and web browsing so that others may benefit from using free documentation to learn about free software.
Each on-site writer brings his or her own laptop to the sprint. Remote writers will utilize their own laptops or workstations. Since the FLOSS Manuals tool is completely web-based, it does not matter if you use Windows, OSX, or UNIX. The key here is that your participation matters. We have set up the online tools so you can contribute from anywhere around the world.
The outline for the Firefox manual will be completed prior to the Book Sprint, offering a scaffolding for the book. We have gathered documentation wants and needs from the Firefox team and a real book will be available by the end of the two-day Sprint.
The support team consists of members of FLOSS Manuals writing community with Adam Hyde, the founder and Janet Swisher leading this workshop-style event. Chris Hofmann, Director of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation is joining us as well. Anne Gentle will be participating from her home office in Austin.
To contribute you must register and then select a manual and a chapter to work on. if it is not marked ‘complete’ then press the edit button! It’s as simple as that. Contributions can include cleaning up layout, spell checking, adding images, proof reading, or taking responsibility for writing one of more chapters. You don’t have to be a technical writer or a super geek, you just need to know how to write.
If you need to ask us questions about how to contribute then just ask Janet. We look forward to your contribution!
Get more information on using FLOSS Manuals.
More Information
Documentation and Training West 2009
March 17-20, 2009 Palm Springs, CA
http://www.doctrain.com/west/2009
