Communications from DMN

Unless you haven’t been paying attention, we’ve been talking and tweeting about the upcoming Open Help Conference quite a bit lately.

Scheduled for June 3 to 5, the Conference:

is a three-day event bringing together people who work on open source or community-based documentation and support. Combining traditional conference presentations with discussion forums and open-participation sessions, the Open Help Conference is a unique opportunity to learn, share, work, and have fun.

And there’s still time to participate. How? If you’re interested in speaking at the conference, you have until March 15 to submit a proposal. If you’re just interested in attending, you can get an early-bird discount until February 28.

Why not give the conference a try. You never know … you might just learn something!

For more information, email Shaun McCance at syllogist@syllogist.net.

If you do, then you’re in luck. The call for proposals is now open.

That said, you’ve still got time to put in a proposal for a presentation or session. The conference is looking for any topic related to user help, including documentation, video demonstrations, user support, writing and build tools, localization, and accessibility. A free software/Open Source software angle is preferred, though not essential.

For more details, visit the Open Help Conference Web site. Or, email your proposal to Shaun McCance at syllogist@syllogist.net.

Remember to provide the following in you proposal:

• Your name
• The title of your presentation
• A brief abstract

You’ve got until March 15, 2011 to submit your proposal.

About the Open Help Conference: Scheduled for June 3-5, 2011, the Open Help Conference is a three-day event bringing together people who work on open source or community-based documentation and support. Combining traditional conference presentations with discussion forums and open-participation sessions, the Open Help Conference is a unique opportunity to learn, share, work, and have fun. The organizers can also provide space for team sprints after the main conference.

For more information, visit the conference Web site.

At WritersUA earlier this year, I met Jim Campbell and Shaun McCance. Jim and Shaun do a lot of documentation for a few Open Source projects – including GNOME and XUbuntu.

While out for dinner one night, the subject of conferences came up. We talked a bit about Open Source-specific writing conferences for a while, and things seemed to be left at that.

A couple of months ago, a message from Shaun found its way into my inbox. The subject? Something Shaun was putting together: a three-day conference in Cincinnati focusing on documentation for Open Source. He asked me if I wanted to get involved, and I immediately said Yes!

Shaun’s brainchild is the Open Help Conference. Scheduled for June 3-5, 2011, the conference will bring together people who work on open source or community-based help and help tools.

This isn’t going to be a traditional or even typical technical communication gathering. The Open Help Conference will combine the best elements of a formal conferences, unconferences, and camps. The conference will include traditional presentations, workshops, and open-participation sessions.

While the conference is still in the planning stages, Shaun has a solid group of people working with him. I’m definitely looking forward to this one.

The conference Web site is bare bones at the moment. But keep checking the site for more information about the speakers and the schedule. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the conference, contact Shaun.

Photo credit: Dmitry Goygel-Sokol from Photoxpress

On October 29, I attended the Free Software Open Source Symposium (FSOSS) at Seneca College here in Toronto. This was the second time that I attended FSOSS, and once again it was an interesting experience. Even when you take my presentation crash and burn out of the equation.

While I only sat in on three sessions this year, and only one of those sessions had any relation to technical communication, I learned quite a bit.

Here’s what I heard and learned.

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Last Friday, I attended day one of DrupalCamp Toronto 2010, an unconference for Drupal enthusiasts. Drupal being the popular Open Source Web content management system.

To say that my knowledge of Drupal is basic is being generous. So I thought attending DrupalCamp could help expand that knowledge. While I didn’t attend any of the more technical sessions (they were on Saturday, when I couldn’t attend), the sessions that I did sit in on gave me a good idea not only of what Drupal can do but also how to plan an implement a Web site in Drupal and (important to me) how to more actively participate in an Open Source community.

Here’s the first part of a longish report on what I heard and saw.

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