On Friday we got to see (at least on screen), the fruit of our labour: the Introduction to Mallard book. Print copies will follow. This week’s book sprint was a remarkable collaborative writing experience, and I can’t wait to recommend it to other projects I know.

It’s been terrific working with Aruna, Sindhu, Kat and Dave, as well as honourary team members Heidi and Amanda. Thanks to our Google Open Source hosts Mary, Stephanie, Carol and Cat for getting us here, keeping an eye on us and stuffing us with abundant and frequent delicious food. Thanks again to Allen Gunn for inspiring us and to Adam Hyde for getting a book out of us and to Google for Doc Camp.

It was great to visit Amphitheatre Parkway again, now Google’s main campus. I was last here nearly 14 years ago when it was Silicon Graphics, the birthplace of my first home computer. I didn’t stop to look for waterfowl on my last trip, but this time couldn’t help noticing.

I had the privilege of traveling to and touring around Montreal (an off-map adventure) with Zeeshan and attending the first day of the summit. Thanks to James, Tristan and Savoir-faire Linux for hosting us, and to Ryan for organizing, and Hubert for sharing his extensive knowledge of Montreal and maple syrup. Thanks also for the hospitality of a new friend who put me up for Saturday night before an early flight to…

Google Doc Camp, where five members of the Docs Team will spend an
intensive 4+ days under the coaching of Allen Gunn and FLOSS Manuals’
Adam Hyde creating a book about Mallard. The first day was an amazing
“unconference” where we got input from the two other teams (and gave
them ours) to distill the goals of our week’s effort.

The Open Help Conference organized each year in Cincinnati by Shaun McCance is a terrific environment for a docs hackfest. It’s always a great opportunity to hear and discuss ideas in help and documentation tools, and, thus inspired, write docs.

The conference. Standout presentations for me included an entertaining talk about Ask Ubuntu by Jorge Castro, Red Hat’s Rich Bowen on knowing your audience, and Mozilla’s Janet Swisher with tips for making doc sprints successful. Warren Block showcased FreeBSD documentation tools, and Steve Gordon demonstrated web-based procedures used at Red Hat. Shaun exposed the machinations responsible for making the Getting Started videos translatable.

The events. On opening night, Shaun hosted a winning reception at Via Vite on Fountain Square, complete with a live concert as a backdrop and the sounds of fireworks on the river. To add to the festive atmosphere, the Reds arranged a homestand. Monday brought bourbon tasting, a fascinating history lesson at Japp’s in historic Over-the-Rhine. This was followed by a 7-km march into Kentucky and back (crossing the Ohio River on two different bridges) for a dish called chili in some precincts.

The city. The local cuisine dazzled us with its variety as we experienced Nada (Mexican), The Rookwood (steak dinner inside a pottery kiln), Tom + Chee (grilled cheese with anything), Izzy’s Deli, and a delicious last-morning coffee at Aquarius Star aka the Om Café (who also catered the fabulous organic conference lunches). We went for seconds of ice cream and chili; at Skyline the intrepid among us wore bibs for the photographs.

The sprint. Ryan Lortie embarked on a new strategy, HowDoI?, a daring DIY documentation departure for developers – here’s the page for GtkApplication. The rest of us brainstormed and wrote content for the devel-docs module with Shaun leading the process, giving the Platform page another facelift and tweaking the code. We built on work done earlier this year by the DX team in Brussels and the docs team in Brno, as well as previous years’ work by Phil, Tiffany and a small army of OPW interns. (My earliest experience of GNOME3-era devel docs was Johannes and Germán cranking out pages in Toronto). It will be great to see a combined effort at GUADEC.

The highlights. We organized an evening of discussion, laptop resuscitation and pizza around Dave & Kat’s wonderful gift of Kentish ale. Jim and I caught a couple of periods of Stanley Cup hockey as his team tangled with Boston in a rare Original Six final. Best of all was getting my son Gord involved with GNOME, as he got a chance to learn the ropes, and filled in for the absent interns.

Thanks to Shaun McCance and Syllogist for organizing a sensational conference, and sponsors Mozilla, WordPress, GitHub and Red Hat. Thank you also to the Foundation for sponsoring my travel and accommodation.

Join us in Cincinnati in June for the Open Help Conference, incorporating a GNOME doc sprint. We’ll be focusing on developer docs, and building on the work done at two earlier hackfests this year.