Yes We Do it Again: SUSE Doc Day at SUSECON 2020

After the huge success of our first-ever SUSE Doc Day during SUSECON 2019 in Nashville, we are happy to offer a similar in-person experience for our upcoming SUSECON 2020 in Dublin, Ireland. Doc Day will take place on the last day of SUSECON, on Friday, March 27 2020 (09:00-18:00), at the Convention Centre Dublin Spencer Dock.

What is SUSE Doc Day?

A Doc Day is a time when a group of people gathers to collaborate on writing documentation on one or more given topics. The main premise for our Doc Day is to get a group of interested people – YOU – in a room together and have you work towards shared goals. To help you feel more comfortable, we will give a short overview of our documentation, how we usually work, and how you can contribute.

Of course, you cannot write entire manuals or guides in one single day. But you can help us to improve existing documentation by reviewing, editing and updating it. In addition, we will use the Doc Day to kick-off the creation of new guides and papers for topics that you think are not yet covered (well enough).

What to Expect?

To ensure a productive environment with tangible results, we have to confine our documentation efforts onsite to a limited number of specific topics. In a first step, we decided that the products and solutions we will focus on are Enterprise Server, Container Technologies, Storage, Open Build Service, and Documentation in general. Depending on pre-registrations, these topics might still be subject to change.

Registration in advance is required for planning purposes. Once again depending on pre-registrations, we might have to limit attendance to 10-15 participants per work group or topic. But in any case, we will be there and open to listen to your ideas. And if needed, hopefully a waiting list can be made available.

Why Documentation?

Documentation is an essential part of a product – above all when it comes to software. You hardly find a „self-explanatory” software tool. There is no product which is so simple to use and maintain, that it doesn’t require any description, introduction or examples. Most software solutions only become usable thanks to detailed documentation. If you work in an IT department and you are responsible for a functioning environment and smooth processes, missing or poor documentation might impact your daily work and eventually even the success of your business.

Why You Should Contribute?

In the age of container and cloud, “X as a Service” and “Y as a Platform”, technical projects become more and more complex. More often than not technical writers working on open source documentation projects just cannot easily replicate use cases and scenarios as implemented for production at a customer’s organization, to test and describe them properly. In consequence, documentation projects are increasingly reliant on contributions from external experts working on a regular basis with our technologies, products and solutions. These experts are: YOU.

Whether you are a system administrator using SUSE products daily, a partner consultant implementing our products and solution stacks onsite, an engineer developing Linux technologies used in SUSE products, an information security specialist, support engineer, enterprise architect, you name it – we call upon you to share your knowledge! Be a vital part of our open source community – contribute some of your know-how, and benefit from the experience of others. We share all SUSE documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License!

How You Can Contribute?

First of all: Anyone can participate in the SUSE Doc Day. You don’t need to have technical writing background. We know – and appreciate the fact – that you can help to deliver specific content. You are working on a huge variety of topics, and you know which kind of information is needed and might be from interest for others, too.

However, the ever-growing complexity of IT products and projects requires comprehension of technical contexts, and the ability to explain those in a clear language. This means a minimum requirement is that you are really up for talking and/or writing about your experiences with our products and technologies.

What Else Do You Need to Know?

If you want to join us for the SUSE Doc Day at SUSECON 2020, select the SUSE Doc Day package with your SUSECON registration to secure your seat. Also, be sure to select one topic of interest from the following which are currently selectable during registration:

• Enterprise Server
• Container Technologies
• Storage
• Open Build Service
• Quo Vadis? (R)evolution of documentation – a discussion.

Just as a reminder, these topics might still be subject to change. If you have a suggestion for a topic to be discussed, please do not hesitate to let us know in advance. Closer to the event we will publish another blog article with more details regarding the agenda and the exact course of the Doc Day. And please keep in mind: If you register for SUSE Doc Day, you give us permission to contact you via email to share more detailed information about planned topics and the work groups. This is important for some preparation and to ensure a successful event.

In any case, if you plan to join us for Doc Day, be also sure to plan your travel accordingly: SUSE Doc Day takes place on Friday, March 27, 2020, which is the last day of SUSECON, and will not end until 6 pm. Just stay a day or two longer in lovely Dublin ;-).

The SUSE Documentation Team is very much looking forward to welcoming you at the SUSECON Doc Day.

Disclaimer: The text at hand has been written by a non-native English speaker. If you find typos or language mistakes, please send them to me (meike.chabowski@suse.com) – or if you like them, just keep them and feed them.