#woscon09: Day 1
A number of years ago I saw James Gilmore give a presentation about the experience economy. It gave me the term for what my parents had taught me growing up: provide an amazing experience for a person and you will inspire them to learn new things, and engage with others. Today the stage was set for the world's first ever (as far as we know) conference for open source documentation. It's only been a day but already people are sharing exciting new ideas and talking about collaboration. Although this is natural for a conference to get that excitement, what's amazing is that the sharing is happening across projects where you never would have guessed it would feel natural.
The conference Writing Open Source was conceived months ago: the idea was simple and crazy. I care about documentation, and so do a few of my friends, so I bet there are more. Why not meet and share some good food and good conversation and see what we can learn from each other. In my experience, creative people get even more creative when you give them crazy-awesome things to talk about. We kicked off the first day of the conference with an amazing breakfast (with real maple syrup), a visit from the mayor, and bag pipes. Except it wasn't just the mayor and bag pipes. It was a procession through downtown Owen Sound, led by the piper and the mayor (and her grand daughter) as we moved from our breakfast venue to our conference venue.
During the day we had five exceptional presenters deliver engaging, funny, thought provoking and truly outstanding talks. They were recorded and hopefully will be uploaded to archive.org (or somewhere) in the near future.
It's not just about the speakers though: all participants have engaged and are participating in creating and shaping the experience as it unfolds. Whether they are new to documentation, or are seasoned experts, participants are contributing their passion for open source, documentation and community (yes, and even their passion for licensing). What an incredible experience it's already been. And it's only the end of day 1.
I'm sure there will be more blog posts as Dru has told us all to write daily, but in the mean time...try a search through identi.ca or twitter for the conference hashtag: #woscon09. Not surprisingly, a conference on documentation is getting a LOT of real-time reporting.
Documentation: please help fix what's already there
Tonight I spent about two hours cleaning up the multi-site install instructions on drupal.org. Mostly I was trying to roll in some comments and generally tidy what had already been written. I noticed that the documentation for multi-site is sorely lacking though. There are a lot of really great tutorials that exist somewhere other than d.o (I'm looking at you Kevin, and you Jam!), but the information hasn't been rolled into our Official Documentation. Multi-site is just one example where Drupal.org documentation is less gooder [sic] than what the rest of the internet has to offer. There are other topics that are also lacking quality documentation. You probably know what they are.
I know that Addison has amazing monthly challenges for the doc team, but here's mine: for every minute you've spent complaining about the docs in the last month, spend two minutes fixing the pages you think are confusing, lacking information or outright wrong. Did you write a tutorial in the last month on your own site because you couldn't find the information on drupal.org? Now's the time to make the d.o docs better--find the place where that information should be and add it. (Of course you should only add information that you have written.) Anyone with a drupal.org account is already a member of the documentation team and can add and modify documentation on Drupal.org. (Cool, eh?!)
If you have an awesome tutorial but you're not sure where it fits: ask! We're in IRC (#drupal-docs on freenode) and we have a mailing list. We can help you find the best spot to put the information. And if you can't find the best spot. At least find a spot. We have a list of recently updated pages and can shuffle new pages that seem out of place. The goal here isn't to have 9832878 variations of the same information in drupal.org, so look carefully and make sure you are adding new information before creating a new page. Chances are good the information is "sort of" there but needs a little bit of care to include the bits that are missing. This might mean you need to edit a couple of different pages to place all of your information into the site.
I know that it can sometimes be a little bit intimidating to edit The Official Documentation, but that's why we track revisions for the pages: so that you can make changes without worrying about losing information! If you've ever felt you needed an invitation or permission to edit the docs, please consider this a personal request from me to you. I need your help, the team needs your help and Drupal needs your help.
print yarrr!
Webchick cornered me tonight and asked me to take a look at an interesting patch that affects themers: Allow more granular theming of drupal_rendered elements. The short version is that if the patch is applied all template files will need to be updated from:
print $content
to
print r($content)
The new "yarr" function will allow you to render the variable from within the template. This means you will be able to extract specific fields from the "whole" content variable and style them differently (y'know, like an image that ought to be floated to the right). It also means that you can actually use the variable $content instead of just chucking it and having to style each field individually because you want a variable to have a unique HTML wrapper/CSS style applied.
Overall I think the patch is a good suggestion. I have only one concern: print_r and print r are very different, but look similar. I'd hate to have to teach a class where I say, "print r" and explain why that is completely different and in no way related to "print_r."
Is this being too picky? What do you think? Please leave your comments IN THE ISSUE QUEUE and help make Drupal 7 even more awesome for themers and future themers! (And thanks to the developers for looking out for us.)
Writing Open Source coming soon!
In a little over two weeks we are going to have the first-ever conference dedicated entirely to open source documentation. It's called Writing Open Source and it's happening in Owen Sound, Canada the weekend of June 12-14.
The first day is conference-style set of talks by five industry leaders:
- Fame, Fortune and Technical Writing by Dru Lavigne, Author
- Information Architecture: panning for gold by Lynda Chiotti, Information Architect
- Learning styles and instructional design by Belinda Lopez, Instructional Designer
- Cat Herding 101: Community management in Open Source by Addison Berry, Documentation Lead, Drupal
- Licensing and Authoring by Megan Langley Grainger, Lawyer
The second day is an unconference including the following proposals:
- Book sprints: 0 to book in 5 days or less, with FLOSS Manuals (Janet Swisher)
- Pydocweb: Round-tripping API docs from code to wiki and back (Janet Swisher)
- Group discussion: Strategies for recruiting writers
- Group discussion: Community structures. Talk about how do the ways
we set up various formal or informal structures in our communities
effect how documentation teams work (or don't).
The third day is a sprint day for the following projects:
- Drupal documentation sprint
- Xfce documentation sprint
- GNOME documentation sprint
There are still tickets available if you're interested. They are $250CAD (less in USD) and including all food and transportation to and from YYZ (Toronto) or BUF (Buffalo). Confirmed participants are coming in from Texas, Italy, Vancouver, Baltimore, Ottawa and beyond!
UPDATE: obviously the conversion will depend on the current exchange rate. Apologies for not having checked to see that the Canadian dollar is currently stronger than it was when the prices were first set several months ago.
There is also one sponsored spot available! This includes a free ticket as well as accommodation during the event. You will be responsible for your own travel to either YYZ, BUF or Owen Sound as appropriate. Please get in touch if you are interested in attending but need financial assistance.
My life is full
Today was one of those incredibly busy days that I never thought would be part of my life. I went to a plant sale at a church, abandoned it for a plant sale at the conservation authority (I got tomatoes and a shrubbery). I wrestled a grape vine in the woods while on the phone to Spain. I planted bulbs and shared hostas with my neighbour. I broke the blade of my shovel and set up my composter.
I made spring jam with rhubarb from my dad's garden. I discovered a new way of making labels for my jars (the red blade with the largest Creative Memories circle makes a perfectly sized circle for wide mouth mason jar).
I made rhubarb crisp, which I shared with another neighbour. I tried to go to a star gazing thing at the museum, but it was cloudy. Also? I cleaned up cat puke and I had my legs professionally waxed (don't worry, no pictures). Today my life was pretty much as full as life can possibly be. Tonight I will sleep well.
With a little bit of structure
Now that I have a system I like, I'm getting faster at putting together scrapbook pages. I'm spending less time worrying about the photos as whole images and am thinking more about how to put the story together. There are images that I'll put (uncropped) into my larger "photography" album, which allows me to treat the book I was working in tonight as my "story book" which documents my adventures.
Brussels, Belgium:
DrupalCon, Washington DC:
A few extra notes on these pages:
- Although I like both pages, I prefer the Brussels page. It has photos which fit together nicely (and has no pictures of people). The Belgian flag and vertical photos please me to no end.
- The DrupalCon page, on the other hand, is mostly photos of people that I pilfered from Flickr. I'm lousy at getting my camera out and snapping photos of humans and am grateful that others have uploaded their pictures. The layout is about as "exciting" as my photos of people.
- I still have a hard time with title placement and lettering. My hand writing is atrocious, but getting slightly better as I practice more. I used to really enjoy doodling letters, but for some reason I'm getting stuck on making nicer titles.
- I spent a few extra minutes to add some notes to both of these pages.
Unfortunately I was doing it while distracted by an audio book. I
should have pressed pause and focused at least a little bit. Oh well, it's done now.
What a bunch of squares: finished
I usually go on project starting binges, but this week has been the opposite. I've been finishing up quilts that I started years ago. Literally. According to Flickr I started this quilt in August 2007. I can't believe it's been that long. And I can't believe how far away my life is from what it was back then. "What a bunch of squares" was finished up last night and the photos were taken this morning. It's inspired by one of the designs in Denyse Schmidt's book. A lot of people have made variations on this quilt. I love wandering through the Flickr galleries for this pattern and Denyse's other designs.
There are a few more pictures on Flickr from the piecing process as well. In retrospect maybe I should start including the start year as well as the finish year on my quilts.
Leveraging Drupal
As a business owner, one of the hardest things to do is take the time away from work to refine your internal processes. Over the last two years I've been in transition and have been moving to the "HICK Tech" brand. It's always easier to help someone else with their Web site than it is to work on your own, so the migration has been very slow going. One of the tools that I've been using is Victor Kane's book Leveraging Drupal (affiliate link for the Drupal Association to Amazon.com).
Disclaimer: I'm very impatient. While I have no problems scanning a chapter, I'm moderately lousy at reading things from beginning to end. I do well with audio books and the radio but rarely manage to get through a few works of fiction a year while I'm at home. I tend to buy my fiction at the airport (as recommended by Oprah) and will plow through what I've bought when my laptop has run out of battery or my knitting has gotten boring. When I'm reading non-fiction/technical books I like things to be well chunked so that I can dip in and out as needed.
I got a copy of Leveraging Drupal this spring and have been picking my way through it ever since. I started at page one, and although I was entertained by the narrative, I found it to be a tough read. But I keep going back to the book because there are excellent ideas in it. Victor does a great job of touching on the things that I know I ought to be doing, but don't always have the discpline to do. I'm now reading the book as if each chapter was an extended HOWTO. Here are the topics that have been of interest to me:
- Using Trac for client projects (Chapter 3).
- How to create an install profile (Chapter 14).
- Storing user stories in Drupal (Chapter 11).
- Upgrading to D6 (Chapters 8 and 9).
- Drush (Chapter 5).
By mixing work philosophy and hands-on "code" Leveraging Drupal can be a tough read as you switch between the two cognitive domains--and especially difficult if you're trying to learn Drupal at the same time. It is, however, a wonderful overview of the topics you need to know to be an efficient Drupal shop. Whether you are a "waterfall" company, or more interested in iterative development, this book acts as a good reference for those who are starting to feel their current toolkit isn't quite enough.
Front and back on two fronts
Much of this afternoon (and this evening) was spent piecing together a new quilt. I'd originally thought that I was making a front and back, but now I'm having a hard time deciding which would be the top and which would be the back.
I'm pretty sure I'll still make them a front and back of the same quilt, but I'll sleep on it first.
This quilt uses up some new fabric from the quilting store in Wiarton, some hand printed fabric from Melly's stash (go buy her book!), the blue is from my sister's fabric stash. There's also an old pair of cords and an old t-shirt. Oh yeah, and left over flannel fabric from a pair of PJs that my mum made for me years ago (which I still wear). The inner light border on the "inside" quilt is from Shannon's shop in Cleveland.
Finished object: quilt
I started this quilt December 2007 and finished it tonight. I'm quite happy with it. It doesn't remind me of an inukshuk quite as much as the un-quilted top, but I'll probably still think of it as my red silk inukshuk. I started the quilt on my grandmother's PFAFF sewing machine and finished up on a new Singer machine that I'd received for Christmas in 2007. I'll be keeping this quilt as my couch blanket. The red silk matches my couch beautifully. I think I may have even taken the quilt top with me when I went couch shopping in January 2008.
