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.