This weekend (7-9 feb 2014) the Stroopwafel sprint was held in Amsterdam. The idea behind it was to have a ‘meta-sprint’, to organize, strategize and plan for the future of Plone documentation.
It turned out to grow beyond our initial expectations, and much work was done by the participants.
Cake-driven documentation was taken to new heights…
You’ll hear much more about the results in the coming months, and in the run-up to Plone 5. But some of the highlights were:
- we have a plan for consolidating all documentation in one place. That includes docs targeted at the various audiences (end-users, themers, site admins, deployers, developers). We’ve killed many post-it notes and colored dots in the process, but now have a mindmap and a plan. Huge thanks go out to Sisi Nutt, for guiding us, and keeping us all on track.
- we have a plan for versioning the documentation for the different versions of Plone. This is especially important as Plone5 will bring changes to the user interface. We will be able to have the documentation ready for the version of Plone that users are on.
- we have a clean separation between the actual documentation and the technical aspects (buildouts, testing frameworks) to make it all look good.
- we have the infrastructure in place, and working, to create multi-lingual versions of the documentation. Translators will be able to work with Transifex, to make translating much easier (Thanks, Giacomo Spettoli!) and we will even have automated screenshots in the correct language (Thanks, Asko Soukka!)
- we’ve worked on selecting a correct license for all documentation (Creative Commons 4.0 by-attribution) to maximize the re-use of documentation.
- we’ve identified gaps in the documentation, and a hit-list of wrong, out-of-date, and misleading info that will be taken down, corrected or re-routed.
All in all, a very productive weekend, and more than enough to do before the next Documentation sprint in Munich, Germany.
Yes, you read that right: two documentation sprints in a row!
We have our eyes set on major improvements for Plone 5, not only the software but also the documentation.
And, as ever, it’s all made possible by the great Plone community. Ten people from six countries worked hard, but also had immense fun doing this.
thanks to all participants, to the people that helped us remotely, and to the Plone Foundation for supporting sprints like this.