Tag: Open Help

Everything is set for the third annual Open Help Conference & Sprints, June 15-19 in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Open Help brings together leaders in open source documentation and support, as well as people from across the technical communications industry interested in community-based help.

The Open Help Conference features two days of presentations and open discussions. In true open source spirit, our discussions and agenda are led by our attendees, allowing you to learn and share what matters to you most. With some of the most interesting people in the industry, the Open Help Conference showcases the ideas that are shaping the future of help.

Following the conference, multiple teams take part in the Open Help Sprints, collaborative team meetings where people put ideas to work. Don’t have a team to bring to the sprint? Join us anyway and learn from the people who are pioneering documentation sprints.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be hosting the Open Help Conference & Sprints again this year. Last year was a great success, with attendees from projects like Mozilla, GNOME, FreeBSD, and Ubuntu, as well as people from the commercial tech comm world.

The conference features two days of presentations and open discussions, sort of a mix between a traditional conference and an unconference. We talk about everything that has anything to do with open source or community-based documentation, including tools, techniques, style, localization, and accessibility. If it helps us help more users, we’ll talk about it.

After the conference, we have three days of multiple team sprints, with impromptu cross-team discussion. As a GNOME person, it was extremely interesting for me to see the Mozilla team in action last year. We do a lot of things differently, and it’s great to colocate our sprints so we can learn from each other.

We’re looking for interesting presentation proposals. See the Sessions page if you’d like to present. We’ll also have a tools showcase: a set of lightning talks where we all show off the awesome tools we make and use.

I’m really looking forward to seeing everybody again, and to meeting more interesting people.

Hey! Why not add that banner to your own site or blog to help us spread the word?

Have you submitted a talk proposal for the Open Help Conference yet? If not, here’s an extra incentive: XML Press is providing a free book to every speaker. You can choose between these three fantastic titles:

• Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation by Anne Gentle
• Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation by Richard L. Hamilton
• WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit by Alan J. Porter

In light of the promotion, the proposal deadline has been extended to Martch 25. But why wait? Submit your talk proposal today.

The Open Help Conference focuses on how we can provide better help in open and collaborative communities. It’s not just about documentation; we’re also interested in participatory support for (and by) users. Please share your experiences, whether it’s about documentation, support, or communities.

Mark your calendars for June 3-5, 2011. The first-ever Open Help Conference will be held in Cincinnati, OH, USA. The Open Help Conference is a gathering of people interested in open-source and community-based help. It combines traditional conference presentations with discussion forums and a new open-participation writing session. Professionals and community volunteers will come together to learn, share, work, and have fun.

Does your team hold in-person documentation sprints? We can provide space for post-conference documentation sprints near the conference venue.

Space is limited, so register today.