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.

season-of-docs-discuss@googlegroups.com

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 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. We propose to tackle a small set of documentation challenges as pilots within QGIS, and build into templates 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.

Matteo Ghetta

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.

Matteo Ghetta'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.

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

TBC: Note criteria: Your organization must have at least two open source mentors for each technical writing project 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.

If we want 2 writers, we need to round up at least 4 mentors who have a strong connection with targeted OSGeo projects. (I expect more will be preferred.) We need to list such mentors here.

Others who have volunteered to contribute as geospatial domain expert mentors, software expert mentors, writing mentors, education expert mentors and volunteer writing contributors are listed 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. Our OSGeo projects which have our stringent incubation criteria, which usually takes years to complete, have each demonstrated a healthy and sustainable community (which pretty much guarantees internal mentoring is in place). We plan to focus much of our energy on our OSGeoLive and QGIS communities. OSGeoLive packages ~ 50 projects into a linux distrubution. We mentor representatives from each project in the development and maintenance of an install script, along with Project Overview and Quickstart documentation.

TBC: What statement can we make about QGIS mentoring?

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.