[SeasonOfDocs] Conversations about writing templates, and a bit more

[Cameron Shorter]

I'm summarising a few conversations I've joined in the last few days, 
and a couple more coming re creating a Writing Templates / Guides project.

For those being looped into this conversation for the first time, here 
are some getting started links:

--

Stephanie Blotner is a tech writer at Uber and did a great podcast 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZmAEuC2zuA about empowering developers 
to become better writers .. and quite a bit more. She covers some of 
this in this blog post: 
https://increment.com/documentation/primer-on-documentation-content-strategy/ 
. She has also suggested 
https://github.com/San-Francisco-Write-The-Docs/lone-writers-guide as a 
group who have started collating tech writer know-how.

Stephanie, you were wondering about IP and getting permission to share 
company writing guides. The bottom line is that in the digital economy, 
*collaboration out competes competition*. Longer version at: 
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-open-business-business-case.html

-- 

Sara Ratner is an educational specialist covered a bunch of ideas. A 
highlight for me was:

* In high schools we teach kids recounts, poetry, ... but not technical 
writing, which is an important skill for our next generation workforce. 
If we can define tech writing course material, then we can then teach it.

--

Sarah Maddox, spiritual leader of SeasonOfDocs, pointed to material we 
can build from:

Open-sourced pre-work for Google's Tech Writing 101 class. 
https://lisafc.github.io/tw101-reading/
The source is on GitHub: https://github.com/LisaFC/tw101-reading

"Various README templates & tips on writing high-quality documentation 
that people want to read." 
https://github.com/kylelobo/The-Documentation-Compendium

--

And for those who are not up to speed yet:

* The SeasonOfDocs template writing ideas we've started is 
here:https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Season_of_Docs_Ideas_2019#Best_practice_templates

* You can join our email list discussion by subscribing here: 
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs . (Email archives 
are also linked from this page)

* My long-hand story and inspiration for building writing templates and 
guides is at 
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2019/02/inspiring-techies-to-become-great.html

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254

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