Join the Docs Jam!

For quite some time now we have had some information about how to join the Ubuntu community at www.ubuntu.com/community. This documentation has traditionally been pretty limited, doesn’t really help get people started effectively, and doesn’t represent the humanity and personal nature of being part of the Ubuntu community.

We want to change that in this cycle.

At UDS we had a great discussion about solving this problem. The challenge that we were faced with in refreshing this content is that the Canonical web team own these pages and have limited bandwidth for incorporating changes and improvements. As such we agreed to transition this content to a site where we can more readily make improvements and updates.

Michael Hall has deployed WordPress (which we agreed at UDS as our platform) with the Ubuntu theme to CanoniStack. We are now in a position where we have the skeleton of the site and we want to produce some awesome content tuned to the needs of new community members, as well as other content for our entire community (such as information about governance and the code of conduct).

To get this content in shape we have created a series of pages on pad.ubuntu.com for each page of content and we are transferring our existing content to these pages. We as a community can then collaborate on these pages and ensure they are crisp, concise, and provide all the information we need. When these pages are complete we can then transition them to the WordPress instance. When the content is there we will then ask the Canonical IS team to deploy it.

How To Help

To get this content in shape, on Thursday 13th Dec 2012 we are going to be holding a documentation jam to work together and get this content refined and finalized. This is how it works:

1. You can see the list of pages and the links to the pads below.

2. We will spend the day working on the content, refining and improving it and ensuring there are no typos. All the content should be writting using Markdown format; this makes it simple to write and merge into the WordPress site. For how to format your content with Markdown, see http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.

3. We will coordinate this work in the #ubuntu-doc channel.

The day after we will then move the completed content over to the WordPress site and finalize any stylistic changes. We should then be in good shape to get things moved over to production.

Legend

Each section below has a reported status:

Front Page

The front page should show off some current community activity that shows that we are exciting and vibrant. Once the user is encouraged by this, we need to give them a simple path to finding ways they can get involved. Don't overwhelm them with choices on this page, make the path to the next step as simple and enticing as possible.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-frontpage

News and Events

Provide more information about community activity that will inspire and excite new contributors, and keep motivated existing contributors.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-frontpage-news

How do I know what I want to work on?

List each of the different contributor roles with a summary of what is involved (the user will click on roles that interest them)

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-frontpage-findarea

Contribute

Once the user has decided to contribute to our community, we need to teach them about what forms contribution can take, and help them find the best area for their skills and interest.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute

Developers

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-developers

Documentation

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-documentation

Artwork

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-artwork

Design (possibly falls under Artwork)

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-design

Translations

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-translations

Support

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-support

Quality

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-quality

Advocacy

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-contribute-advocacy

Help and Information

We have a vast amount of information about our community and how to participate in it. Both new and existing contributors will need a place to find more detailed information about their chosen area of contribution, where to connect with other contributors in that area, and where to get help if they are stuck.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help

Finding Help

List the various places where help might be found, including IRC, mailing lists, forums, blogs, etc.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-find

Documentation

Provide links to the various places where we have documentation, specifically the various guides, tutorials and other area-specific documents.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-find-documentation

Support

Discuss the places the user can turn to when they need help with contributing. Different areas will have different resources, so be sure to break them out.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-find-support

Keeping Up To Date

Help new and existing contributors find all the various sources of community news, including blogs/aggregators, mailing lists, news websites, etc.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-keepup

News

Our community regularly posts updates from a number of sources: technical meeting minutes, UWN, the Fridge, etc. We also have have extra-community sources of news, like OMG!Ubuntu! and iloveubuntu.com. Provide short descriptions and links for each.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-keepup-news

Community Blogs

Many of our community members are regular bloggers, and we should highlight them. In addition to Planet, we should highlight some of those that focus on specific areas where a community member wants to contribute.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-keepup-blogs

Ubuntu On Air

UbuntuOnAir has been a great new way of interacting with the community, we should highlight how it works and provide links to the live stream, past events, etc.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-keepup-onair

Meeting Other Ubuntu Users

Provide resources for finding and getting to know other members of the Ubuntu community. Talk about both in-person events like meetups and conferences, but also online interactions and where they happen in our community.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-meeting

Local User Groups

LoCo Teams are a unique feature of the Ubuntu community, we should highlight them and point contributors towards them.

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-help-meeting-locos

Community Structure

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-structure

Governance

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-structure-governance

Code of Conduct

http://pad.ubuntu.com/communitywebsite-structure-coc