During the programme, technical writers will spend a few months with open source communities to work on open source documentation
Google has launched Season of Docs, a new programme to improve documentation for open source projects.
This programme aims to bring together open source contributors and technical writers, to create stronger and more comprehensive documentation for various open source technologies.
The Open Source Survey had demonstrated that good documentation is lacking for many open source projects. Google believes that this is because creation of documentation is hard, and so it created this programme to improve it.
Google writes in a blog, “During Season of Docs, technical writers will spend a few months working closely with open source communities. Each writer works with their chosen open source project. The writers bring their expertise to the projects’ documentation while at the same time learning about open source and new technologies.”
Mentors from participating open source organizations will share knowledge of their communities’ processes and tools. Together the technical writers and mentors will work to create a new doc set, improve the structure of the existing docs, develop a much-needed tutorial, or improve contribution processes and guides.
Google has prepared a timeline for the programme. Mentoring organizations can submit application starting April and technical writers from May.
Programme to be executed in phases:
- April 2-23: Open source organizations apply to take part in Season of Docs
- April 30: Google publishes the list of accepted mentoring organizations, along with their ideas for documentation projects
- April 30 – June 28: Technical writers choose the project they’d like to work on and submit their proposals to Season of Docs
- July 30: Google announces the accepted technical writer projects
- August 1 – September 1: Community bonding: Technical writers get to know mentors and the open source community, and refine their projects in collaboration with their mentors
- September 2 – November 29: Technical writers work with open source mentors on the accepted projects, and submit their work at the end of the period
- December 10: Google publishes the list of successfully-completed projects.
