Season of Docs Application 2019

Season of Docs home page.

OSGeo Application for 2019 Season of Docs

• Answers to Google's Application for the 2019 Season of Docs.
• Refer also to Google's Admin Guide.
• These draw inspiration from OSGeo's prior applications for Google's Summer of Code.

Welcome to the 2019 Season of Docs!

The goals of Season of Docs are to give technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects, and to give open source projects an opportunity to engage the technical writing community.

If you are interested in having your open source organization participate in Season of Docs, first familiarize yourself with the organization administrator guide at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/admin-guide and the organization administrator and mentor responsibilities at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/admin-mentor-responsibilities.

Next, fill out this application for your open source organization to participate in the 2019 Season of Docs program. For guidance on filling out this form, see https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/organization-application-hints.

You can continue updating the information on this form until the end of the application deadline.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 23, 2019 at 20:00 UTC

For more information on Season of Docs program dates and deadlines, see the official timeline at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/timeline.

The email address entered on this page in this form is not displayed on the Season of Docs website. It is used by the Season of Docs program administrators to communicate with you if there are any issues with the form entry.

Email address

Cameron Shorter's email address.

Open source organization information

The information in this section enables the program administrators to properly identify your open source organization.

Open source organization's email address *

This email address is used for contacting your open source organization about Season of Docs and is published on the Season of Docs website. It is used by the Google program administrators and technical writer participants to contact your organization. You are strongly advised not to use a personal email address as the email address for contacting your open source organization.

SeasonOfDocs@lists.osgeo.org

Open source project name *

Enter the name of the open source project that is participating in the Season of Docs.

Open Source Geospatial Foundation

Link to the open source project *

Enter the URL of your open source website or repository.

https://www.osgeo.org/

Open source project description *

This description is published on the Season of Docs website.

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is a not-for-profit organization serving as an umbrella organization for the Open Source Geospatial community. It represents 24 mature (graduated) projects, 13 office community projects, and other non-official projects. It also covers topic and regional community groups, along with the thousands of developers, users, and educators. Within Season of Docs, we propose to focus on a couple of initiatives and projects: OSGeoLive, QGIS, GeoNetwork and maybe one or two others. The OSGeoLive project provides a Linux distribution with ~ 50 open source geospatial applications, along with sample data, project overviews and quick starts, which have been translated into multiple languages. QGIS is a desktop geospatial client and is one of OSGeo flagship projects. GeoNetwork is a metadata management system for geospatial data. We propose to tackle a small set of documentation challenges as pilots within QGIS and GeoNetwork, and build into templates ready to be used by OSGeoLive for other OSGeo projects.

Link to your organization’s page about Season of Docs

If your organization has a web page or blog post dedicated to Season of Docs, enter the URL here. You can supply this link later too.

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Season_Of_Docs_2019

Optional stipend

Indicate whether your organization wants to receive a mentor stipend for this year’s program. For more information, see stipends for mentor organizations at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/org-payments.

Does your organization want to accept the mentor stipend? *

Yes

Organization Application for 2019 Season of Docs

• Required

Organization administrators

You must have at least two organization administrators to manage your organization's participation in Season of Docs. For more information about the organization application phase, see https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/admin-guide#organization_application_phase.

Primary organization administrator

The primary organization administrator is responsible for communicating with Season of Docs program administrators and managing tasks for their organization related to the Season of Docs program.

Primary administrator's full name *

This name is used in communications between the Season of Docs program administrators and the primary organization administrator. It is not published on the Season of Docs website.

Cameron Shorter

Primary administrator's display name *

This name is displayed publicly on the Season of Docs website. You are strongly advised not to use your real name as your display name. You may use your GitHub, Twitter, or community handle as your display name.

Cameron Shorter

Primary administrator's email address *

This email is not displayed on the Season of Docs website. It is used to communicate with you and to share program resources on the website.

Cameron Shorter's email address

Are you participating as a mentor in Season of Docs? *

If you are participating as a mentor, you must agree to the terms of the mentor participant agreement at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/terms/mentor-terms.

Yes. I agree to this Participant Agreement.

Alternative organization administrator

The alternative organization administrator is the secondary contact if the primary organization administrator is unavailable. DIRECT THE ALTERNATIVE ADMINISTRATOR TO REGISTER AT https://forms.gle/tsEsiNYB57WG4Ebz6.

Alternative administrator's full name *

This name is used in communications between the Season of Docs program administrators and the alternative organization administrator. It is not published on the Season of Docs website.

Jo Cook

Alternative administrator's email address *

This email is not displayed on the Season of Docs website. It is used to program communications and to share program resources on the website.

Jo Cook's email address

Organization's previous experience

This section provides the Season of Docs program administrators with information on your open source organization's previous experience with mentorship and working with documentation or technical writers.

What previous experience has your organization had in documentation or collaborating with technical writers?

If you or any of your mentors have worked with technical writers before, or have developed documentation, mention this in your answer. Describe the documentation that you produced and the ways in which you worked with the technical writer. For example, describe any review processes that you used, or how the technical writer's skills were useful to your project. Explain how this previous experience may help you to work with a technical writer in Season of Docs.

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation represents many mature projects, most of which have relatively mature documentation and associated documentation teams. Consequently, we are well positioned to tackle some of the hard documentation problems (as explained in our ideas page). Here we outline our experience within the projects we plan to focus on: OSGeoLive, QGIS and GeoNetwork. We are open to picking up more if we attract more volunteers.

The OSGeoLive core writer team have written Quickstart and Project Overview templates and then mentored techies from ~ 50 projects to write to these templates, and then helped the docs be translated into multiple languages. More details at http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2019/02/inspiring-techies-to-become-great.html. OSGeoLive mentors include Cameron Shorter, Astrid Emde, and Nicolas Rolandt.

The documentation team within the QGIS project has produced comprehensive docs. Further, there is an ecosystem of organisations and people who have created workshops and training courses. Challenges for us to address are around improving quality over quantity and improving sustainability. QGIS mentors include Matteo De Stefano and Nick Bearman.

The GeoNetwork project has reasonable documentation, but it has holes has quality challenges, and sustainability challenges. Mentors for GeoNetwork include Jo Cook and María Arias de Reyna.

But that is just the start. Eighteen people have volunteered to join this initiative in a cross-section of roles. I expect we will attract more. And through our OSGeoLive project, we have demonstrated our capacity to absorb writing volunteers, up to the supporting capacity of the core technical writer(s). See volunteer profiles at: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Season_of_Docs_Ideas_2019#People_keen_to_take_part

What previous experience has your organization had mentoring individuals?

If you or any of your mentors have taken part in Google Summer of Code or a similar program that mentors individuals, mention this in your answer. Describe your achievements in that program. Explain how this experience may influence the way you work in Season of Docs.

The OSGeo Foundation has over a decade's experience mentoring students as part of Google's Summer of Code, and more recently with the Google Code In. Each of the OSGeo core projects we will focus on has graduated through our stringent incubation process, which usually takes years to complete. Incubation criteria includes demonstrating a healthy and sustainable community (which pretty much guarantees systemic internal mentoring is in place). Refer to the breadth of our mentor's individual experience for more details of the collective experience we bring. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Season_of_Docs_Ideas_2019#People_keen_to_take_part

Mentoring capacity

Your organization must have at least two open source mentors for each technical writing project/technical writer that you plan to accept for this year's Season of Docs. You need the mentors to help during the technical writer exploration and application phases, as well as during doc development.

Season of Docs 2019 plans to allocate one or two technical writers per organization. Your request for one or two technical writers won't affect whether we choose your organization, but we need to know how many technical writers your organization wants to mentor so that we can accept the correct number of organizations to fill all the available technical writing slots.

Mentors who are not also organization administrators must register independently.

DIRECT THE MENTORS TO REGISTER AT https://forms.gle/a1x26WQGzURLerv66.

How many technical writers does your organization want to mentor this year? *

Option of 1 or 2

2

Technical writing project ideas

Work with your mentors to create a project ideas list. This list should include one or more documentation projects that you'd like a technical writer to tackle during this year's Season of Docs. You should publish your project ideas on a public web page, in a blog post, or in some other publicly visible document and include a link to the document in this section.

See the detailed guidelines on creating your project ideas list at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/project-ideas.

Link to project ideas list *

Enter the URL of a publicly accessible list of your organization's project ideas.

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Season_of_Docs_Ideas_2019

Organization Participation Agreement

By clicking on the "Submit" button, you agree to the terms of the program rules at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/terms/program-rules and the organization participation agreement at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/terms/organization-terms, shown on the Season of Docs website.

Acceptance of terms *

[x] I agree to the Organization Agreement.

[x] Send me a copy of my responses.

2019 Season of Docs: Mentor Registration

• Answers to Google's Season of Docs Application Form
• See also: Mentor Guide

Welcome to the 2019 Season of Docs!

The goals of Season of Docs are to give technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects, and to give open source projects an opportunity to engage the technical writing community.

Familiarize yourself with the mentor responsibilities at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/admin-mentor-responsibilities.

If your organization is applying to Season of Docs and you are a mentor, fill out this form.

• • • You can continue updating the information on this form until the end of the application deadline.***

APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 23, 2019 at 20:00 UTC

For more information on Season of Docs program dates and deadlines, see the official timeline at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/timeline.

The email address entered in this form is not displayed on the Season of Docs website. It is used by the Season of Docs program administrators to communicate with you and to share program resources on the website.

• Required

Email address

Your email address.

Open source organization information

The information in this section enables the program administrators to properly identify your open source organization and match your registration with that application.

Open source project name *

Open source organizations often host multiple projects. Enter the name of the specific project that is participating in the Season of Docs.

Open Source Geospatial Foundation

Link to the open source project *

Enter the URL of your open source website or repository.

https://www.osgeo.org/

Mentor's information

You are registering to mentor a technical writer on behalf of your open source organization and project.

Mentor's full name *

This name is used in communications between the Season of Docs program administrators and you. It is not published on the Season of Docs website.

Your name

Mentor's display name *

This name is displayed publicly on the Season of Docs website. You are strongly advised not to use your real name as your display name. You may use your GitHub, Twitter, or community handle as your display name.

Your name

Previous experience as a mentor

This section provides the Season of Docs program administrators with information on your previous experience with mentorship and working with documentation or technical writers.

What previous experience have you had creating documentation or collaborating with technical writers? *

If you have worked with technical writers before, or have developed documentation, mention this in your answer. Describe the documentation that you produced and the ways in which you worked with the technical writer. For example, describe any review processes that you used, or how the technical writer's skills were useful to your project. Explain how this previous experience may help you to work with a technical writer in Season of Docs.

Cameron Shorter's answer:

I have written Quickstart and Project Overview templates and then mentored techies from ~ 50 projects to write to these templates (as part of the OSGeoLive distribution); more details at http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2019/02/inspiring-techies-to-become-great.html. I've worked professionally as an information architect building an information strategy and writing templates for different documentation types. I've then worked as a technical writer in writing docs and mentoring both techies and writers in writing to these templates; more details at http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2018/06/technical-documentation-writing.html. I've managed teams of developers and writers; written proposals and technical reports as a consultant and business development manager; and have been published in technical magazines. I've worked in software organisations; from big to small; in government, private industry, and open source communities. I've covered a broad range of roles - software engineering, architecture, business, marketing, mentoring, community building and management. I'm keen to bring all these skills together to help achieve clear achievable goals, which should lay the groundwork for future OSGeo and open source documentation initiatives.

Jo Cook's answer:

In my professional capacity over almost 20 years, as a GIS consultant for Astun Technology (https://www.astuntechnology.com) and previously as a GIS Project Officer for Oxford Archaeology (https://www.oxfordarchaeology.com), I have needed to write high-quality documentation, for both technical and non-technical audiences, for a range of professional publications, internal use, websites and other communications.

In my current role I work with a technical writer to create new and improve existing documentation for my company's software, generally using Confluence. Either I create documentation and our technical writer reviews and publishes it, or she creates it and I review it. This process ensures that our company documentation is not only high quality and accessible, but that the "look and feel" throughout is consistent, making it easier for users to follow.

I have helped create documentation for the Scottish Spatial Data Infrastructure portal (https://spatialdata.gov.scot), in Read the Docs (http://scottish-sdi-metadata-portal.readthedocs.io/), and established a workflow by which non-technical users could make changes using the github gui and have them published automatically in readthedocs.

I actively seek to contribute documentation enhancements to many of the open source projects that I work with, focusing mainly on Geonetwork. Here I flag up missing documentation and create github issues for it, marked as "good first issue" to try and persuade non-coders to take part.

I have also run workshops at conferences (FOSS4GUK 2016 for one) coaching people in using GitHub to contribute to open source projects, particularly focused on documentation contributions.

I believe this will all help me engage with a technical writer as part of this project- I will bring enthusiasm and prior experience to the process, as well as an understanding of the different aspects of producing documentation, from the technical side of things, through the review process, to publication.

Nick Bearman's answer:

I have created a range of Geospatial documentation, including tutorials, teaching materials and general help documentation. I have a education teaching background, and am currently a Teaching Fellow in Geospatial Analysis (University College London) and GIS Trainer & Consultant (Geospatial Training Solutions). When writing practical tutorials, I have worked together with a colleague to develop training material. This required us to work together to ensure the material was consistent in style and approach. We were writing a series of 6 tutorials together and we had to ensure the practicals built upon one another and were written in a similar style. We chose an 'example' practical to base the style on, and negotiated on changes to make that practical work. We also did some extensive planning to ensure that each practical built on the previous one. I have also worked on QGIS documentation, where I contributed to a number of different sections. I based my contribution on the existing style of the surrounding sections to ensure it fitted in with the current documents. I liaised with others who contributed to the documentation to find the correct style for the writing, and made changes in line with their suggestions.

Astrid Emde's answer:

I have written Quickstart and Project Overviews for the OSGeoLive project and reviewed project input. I also worked on the Mapbender documentation and was involved in setting up the template structure for the element documentation (https://doc.mapbender.org). I've written proposals and technical reports as a consultant and development manager; and have been published abstracts for conferences. I created material for workshops.

Your story

What previous experience have you had mentoring individuals? *

If you have taken part in Google Summer of Code or a similar program, mention this in your answer. Describe your achievements in that program. Explain how this experience may influence the way you work in Season of Docs.

Cameron Shorter's answer:

On top of mentoring mentioned above, I've co-mentored numerous projects through OSGeo's incubation process, I've mentored organisors of OSGeo's international conference (I was the chair of the conference in 2009), I've been a team lead and manager at work, I've started open source projects and mentored new developers as they have joined. I've contributed to many other open source projects.

Jo Cook's answer:

Throughout almost 20 years working in GIS I have mentored many junior colleagues and clients, either in using software, or in writing clear and concise copy. I am passionate that software documentation should be clear, accessible, and easy to understand for non-coders. I understand how frustrating it is to be stopped at the first hurdle when using a new package, because the documentation is incomplete or so overly technical that it is not even possible to get started. Furthermore, I believe that the very language used when giving instructions can be extremely off-putting, making assumptions about knowledge and background that are not necessarily correct or appropriate. Since I consider myself to be one of those non-coders, I will bring this "beginners mindset" into my mentoring, focusing on accessibility and lowering barriers for use.

Nick Bearman's answer:

I have mentored individuals through a range of different aspects, both technical GIS projects and more general work support. I have worked with a range of MSc & PhD students and researchers helping them think about the spatial data needed for their project and how they could apply spatial analysis to help answer their research questions. I have also worked as a personal tutor for MSc students, ensuring they are progressing through their course well, and helping them if they have any difficulties. Much of the time this is providing a listening ear, and knowing where they can go for help. I am not expected to be a specialised in all areas, but I am expected to know what resources are available for them. For the Season of Docs, a key element would be planning what can be done, and ensuring that everyone is aware of what they and other people are doing. As a mentor, it is important for me to ensure all of the participants are happy with what they are doing, and that they know where to go for help, whether it is technical help (QGIS, Git or anything else) or writing help / proofreading.

Astrid Emde's answer:

I have mentored individuals at work like trainees or new colleagues. I also mentored people in summer school projects. You can learn from each other and it is always important to ask.

Your story

Participation Agreement

By clicking on the "Submit" button, you agree to the terms of the program rules at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/terms/program-rules and the mentor participation agreement at https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/terms/mentor-terms, shown on the Season of Docs website.

Acceptance of terms *

[x] I agree to this Participant Agreement.

[x] Send me a copy of my responses.