Subtitled: "Writing FOSS Docs That Don't Suck" A look at why documentation is so important for open source projects, and how to create documentation that does wonders for your project. Created for linux.conf.au 2010 in Wellington

1. Creating Beautiful Open Source Technical Documentation Or: Writing FOSS Docs that Don't Suck

4. Technical Writing A Fairy Tale

5. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away ...

6. Jane

7. Fred Sue Bob

8. Monday

9. Tuesday

10. Tuesday My l337 db rawks!

11. Wednesday

12. Wednesday My h4X0r skills are teh win!

13. Thursday

14. Thursday My design skillz are made of awesome!

15. Friday

16. Friday WTF?!

17. Friday

18. Friday My l337 db rawks!

19. Friday My h4X0r skills are teh win!

20. Friday All users base are belong to us

21. Friday

22. Saturday

23. Sunday

24. Monday Ship it!

25. Tuesday

26. Wednesday

27. Thursday

28. Thursday ???

29. Thursday !!!

30. Thursday $*!%

31. Friday Dole queue

32. Just because you can READ a manual ...

33. Doesn't mean you can write one.

34. Happily Ever After?

35. Information Plan Content Specification Writing Translation & Production Review Release 5 Phase Model by JoAnn Hackos

36. “ A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools ” Douglas Adams “Mostly Harmless”

42. How To: Write FOSS Docs that don't suck

43. no one reads manuals! But ...

44. Why Document?

45. What makes your software awesome?

46. These things all work the same for documentation

47. Learnability

48. Efficiency

49. Retention

50. Few user errors

51. Satisfaction

52. It's all about the user

53. Whoever they might be

54. When users love the software then that's great software!

55. But when they don't ... the documentation should be there to save you

56. Beautiful documentation won't make crappy software any better But it might prevent some users from trying to stab you

57. Lana Brindley Red Hat Technical Writer [email_address] +61 410 500 659 @Loquacities http://lanabrindley.blogspot.com/