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.
