Live GIS Disc Press Release 39

=OSGeo-Live Quickstart Hackathon - Wrappup=

18 February 2013

As we are wrapping up the OSGeo-Live 6.5 release, it is worth taking stock of the progress made during our recent OSGeo-Live Quickstart Hackaton. This was kicked off by a 48 hour intensive hackathon, followed up by a couple of weeks, addressing issues found.

Our aim was to "... bring OSGeo-Live documentation quality up one notch, by putting the Quickstarts through the same comprehensive testing and review that we have provided for our Project Overviews". We set up a comprehensive 3 tier review process, ensuring that
 * 1) All steps from quickstarts have been updated by the original author,
 * 2) The quickstarts have been tested by an independent person,
 * 3) And quickstarts have been reviewed for usability and consistency.

And the results:
 * at least 24 people joined the hackfest
 * Out of 62 Quickstart documents:
 * 40 were brought in line with the latest 6.5 OSGeo-Live release
 * 28 were externally reviewed
 * 12 were comprehensively updated for readability and consistency. These included most of the high profile OSGeo projects.

And what did we learn?
 * There is a lot of work involved in reviewing all these documents. We were spending in the order of 2 to 16 hours per quickstart for a comprehensive review. This is quite a bit of time when considering there are 62 documents.
 * "Many hands might light work". The many contributors ensured we made some great progress on this task.
 * We still haven't finished, but we are now in a good position to bring the docs in line for the next OSGeo-Live release, version 7.0.

Participants
Thanks to all the contributors. (I think there are a few more contributors who didn't register)
 * 1) Cameron Shorter
 * 2) Angelos Tzotsos
 * 3) Hamish Bowman
 * 4) Brian Hamlin
 * 5) Alex Mandel
 * 6) Javi Sanchez
 * 7) Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas
 * 8) Sergio Baños Calvo
 * 9) Alexander Muriy
 * 10) Micha Silver
 * 11) Stephan Meissl
 * 12) David Mateos Pascual
 * 13) Roberto Antolín
 * 14) Andrea Yanza
 * 15) Javier Luque
 * 16) Yansa Tejada
 * 17) Agustín Diez
 * 18) Henry Addo
 * 19) Astrid Emde
 * 20) Eike Hinderk Jürrens
 * 21) James Klassen
 * 22) Argyros Argyridis
 * 23) Maria Vakalopoulou
 * 24) Alexander Muriy