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An Introduction to GNOME 3.0

(This is the first in a series of blogs posts about Ohio Linux Fest)

I gave a talk this weekend at Ohio Linux Fest titled “An Introduction to GNOME 3.0”. The purpose of my talk was, which I hope to do a few more times this year, is to start introducing the community to the changes coming in GNOME 3.0. Change is hard, especially when we’re talking about a change to the user interface, and I believe the sooner we start engaging and educating the community, the more helpful it will be.

The presentation focuses on three things:

  1. What is GNOME
  2. History of GNOME (up to and including a brief overview of GNOME 2.28)
  3. GNOME 3.0

One thing I hope attendees take away is that GNOME 3.0 is more than just GNOME Shell. I believe the call to action in the GNOME 3.0 community that Vincent and the release team started back in April and that continued at GUADEC really motivated a number of teams to see what they could do to contribute to GNOME 3.0. In the presentation I talk about Accessibility, Documentation, Marketing, the GNOME Developer Platform, the GNOME Activity Journal and Zeitgeist, Tomboy Online and GNOME Shell (including a demo).

I spent a lot of time reading Presentation Zen these last few months and used the concepts the book advocates. In addition to the presentation, I also provided a handout (available as a PDF on my website as well) for attendees to take away that goes into a little more detail and cites and attributes all of my sources.

I’ve uploaded my slides, images, and the handout on the GNOME Marketing wiki, all available in one archive. This material is available under a Creative Commons Share-alike 3.0 license. I’m sure I’ve got a few things wrong here and there, and I look forward to any feedback anyone has.

I’ll be giving this talk in November in St. Paul, MN at the Penguins Unbound LUG, and I’m hoping to reach out to a few more LUGs in the Midwest, as well as submit it as a talk at SCALE next February. If you’d like me to come give a talk somewhere, let me know via email or my blog.

I'm going to Ohio Linux Fest

Ohio Linux Fest

I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio this weekend for Ohio Linux Fest. It will be my first time attending OLF, though I did book a flight last year and had to cancel at the last minute.

I’ll be giving a talk – “An Introduction GNOME 3.0” where I’ll cover what GNOME is, how it started, touch on the recent 2.28 release, and what may be coming in GNOME 3.0. I’ll post my presentation, both the handout and the slides, next week on the GNOME Marketing wiki. (Nothing like procrastinating to get it done).

I’m sure I’ll make a few mistakes, especially as I plan on demoing GNOME Shell, so feedback is welcome. If you’re there, stop by and say hi!

GNOME 2.28 Released!

GNOME 2.28 - Made to Share!

GNOME 2.28 came out right on time yesterday! Improvements include Bluetooth support, tons of feature enhancements in Empathy (and all new documentation using Mallard!), and Webkit in Epiphany. But don’t take my word for it – go read the release notes!

Speaking of release notes, it was the first time I’ve helped write them, and and it was pretty cool to see the GNOME community working together from a front row seat. A special thanks to Dannielle for giving me pointers on how to get started, Frederic and Andre for all my questions during the process in the #docs channel, and everyone who helped review them and gave feedback to make them better. It was also pretty neat to see the translators at work – everytime I’d refresh the website to proofread or do a git pull there were more and more translations available. And one last thank you to Bastien and Guillame for providing quotes in the press release, which is the first time we’ve included quotes from developers as far as I know (or at least in recent memory).

I’ve enjoyed reading the various coverage on the web, but I did want to correct one small point that some are reporting – the decision to make GNOME 2.30 into GNOME 3.0 won’t be made until November, so it’s not a safe assumption that 2.28 is the last 2.x release. The release team will consider a number of factors, and it’s possible 2.32 could be 3.0 instead.

Congrats again to all the GNOME developers, contributors, and translators for a job well done.

Happy Birthday GNOME Journal!

GNOME Journal celebrates it’s 5 year anniversary this month, with the first ever edition released in September 2004.

After taking 2008 off, I’m happy to say that 2009 is turning into a banner year for GNOME Journal, and 2009 has seen more issues published than any year other 2005, and we’re on pace to break 2005’s record of five issues.

Looking back at the first Letter from the Editor from Jim Hodapp, it’s good to see that our mission hasn’t changed:

  • There is a current lack of original written content centered around GNOME – GNOME Journal fulfills this void by creating original content that focuses on the technology, community, philosophy, and general happenings within the GNOME umbrella.
  • A void that is largely unfilled currently is how to effectively market the GNOME desktop to people who either currently use a free operating system and don’t use GNOME, or to attract those people who use another operating system altogether GNOME will not run. GNOME Journal will provide a very tangible and centralized place that people can read to gain original insite into what GNOME is and what they can do with it.
  • Lastly, GNOME Journal is entering into existence simply because it is a cool idea. It is my hope that it will also spur on increased appreciation for GNOME and allow more people to feel like they can get involved in the community.

I whole heartedly agree with the above statements, and they are just as true in 2009 as they were in 2004. There continues to be a lack of original content around GNOME; as a member of the GNOME Marketing team there is no question that it is hard to market GNOME to our existing user base; and there is no question that GNOME Journal is, and continues to be, a cool idea.

One of the things I’m most proud of since becoming the release coordinator for GNOME Journal earlier this year, is the new writers who have (and will have) contributed to GNOME Journal.

In no particular order: Stormy Peters, Les Harris, Jayson Rowe, Og Maciel, Natan Yellin, and Emily Chen.

I’m also thankful to everyone in the GNOME Community who has made time for interviews on interesting projects such as J5 and Laszlo Peter, and those featured in Behind the Scenes, including Stormy, Owen Taylor and Lucas Rocha.

We aren’t done with 2009 either! We have two special editions coming up, the first focused on Multimedia and the second is an edition of GNOME Journal written by the GNOME Women team. We’re hoping to introduce new features in GNOME Journal, including a new article every feature, as well as migrating from our current CMS to blogs.gnome.org, which will also us to do multimedia, publish to PDF, and rate articles. And a big thank you to Dave Neary letting us know our database crashed last week and we weren’t displaying any content. (Jeff Waugh – if you’re reading this, please reply to my emails so we can finish this migration. Thank you!)

We’re always looking for new article ideas, writers and editors – we’re also big on collaboration, so don’t feel that you have to write an entire article by yourself. Interested? Email me, leave a comment on my blog, or best of all, join the GNOME Journal mailing list.

And lastly, thank you to our readers. Our hits have been going up every issue, and I am grateful for all the comments left on my blog after announcing a new issue. I’m hopeful that we can turn these comments into reality, and we’re already working on a suggestion for an interview that was just recently left on my blog.

I hope you enjoy reading GNOME Journal as much as we enjoy writing it.

Docs Team Meetings

The Docs team is having two meetings in the next week – a community Q&A session tomorrow, and a project meeting this Sunday. More details on our shiny new blog at http://blogs.gnome.org/docs/2009/06/24/upcoming-documentation-june-meetings/ (Thanks Olav for adding us to news.gnome.org!)

Speaking of our shiny new blog, does anyone know how to add additional authors to a blog on blogs.gnome.org? I haven’t been able to figure it out and I’d like to add Shaun. Is it a setting that’s right under my nose and I just don’t see it? Thanks!

GNOME Docs Hackfest Part II

Day three of the Writing Open Source conference was our hackfest. I previously showed off Milo’s work in Part I, but it’s probably best to start at the beginning.

We started day three by applying some of what we had learned over the first two days. When writing, especially documentation, it is best to plan your work. This includes knowing your audience, their personas, and understanding their needs.

Lynda Chiotti, with help from Janet Swisher, led us through a brainstorming exercise. Using a mind mapping tool, we brainstormed what users want to do (and might need help with) when using their computer.

This was important for a few different reasons. For GNOME 3.0, we want to re-write the GNOME User Guide as topic based help using Mallard. Re-creating might be a better word, as we are going to switch licenses from the GFDL to CC-SA 3.0, and it’s probably easier to re-write it from scratch than to contact all the previous authors over the years to get permission. More importantly, we need to think like our users. How many times do we, as GNOME power users and developers, talk to ourselves, and not think like the average computer user? If this user needs help, does our documentation help them? Do they get frustrated and stop using GNOME or GNOME applications? We have a unique opportunity to use both our tools and the launch of GNOME 3.0 to radically improve our documentation and help our users.

After that, Phil, Milo, Shaun and I spent some time talking about how we could improve the GNOME Documentation Project. There were no sacred cows, and we’ve launched an effort to overhaul the docs team, including:

  • Adding simple tasks that new contributors can do and then build on (thanks Emma!)
  • Focusing the docs team on writers, editors, and translators. Each perform different, but similar roles, including crossover. We need to improve our tools for each team, and communication.
  • Holding more regular meetings, including a monthly project meeting, and weekly community sessions to encourage participation
  • Developing a roadmap of tasks we want to accomplish, including both the documentation itself and the tools
  • Understanding Shaun’s role as our fearless documentation project leader, and how we can help him to free him up and not having the team be blocked on any one person.
  • Make a significant effort to coordinate with downstream distributions, including meetings and communication, introducing Mallard, and better comments within documentation.

And that’s just the recap! Our wiki space is going through a revamp as we bring this to life, and there is a lot more to come.

Lastly, while Phil and Milo started hacking on Empathy docs using Mallard, I jumped into Bugzilla. Almost half of our open bugs in gnome-user-docs were touched (36 of 80), and of those 36, 23 were closed. Finally, 16 commits were made to update the current User Guide, including reviewing and patches from contributors. Fun fact (or embarrassing) – the oldest bug fixed was from July, 2006.

Overall, woscon was an amazing experience, and we all learned a lot. A few years from now, we’ll be able to look back and say: “We were there when this began”.

I think I speak for all of the GNOME Docs team members who were there, including Phil, Milo, and Shaun when I say we are sincerely thankful for the GNOME Foundation’s sponsorship of our travel to the Writing Open Source conference. This conference was the brain child of Emma Jane Hogbin, and we are very grateful for all the time and effort she put in to organizing and hosting woscon.

GNOME Docs Hackfest (Part I)

dsc02277.jpg

(A duck at Inglis Falls, in Owen Sound, Ontario, home of woscon09. If only it had been a mallard…)

Milo Casagrande, who attended woscon09 with the GNOME Docs team last week, has written an introduction to Mallard.

Milo and Phil spent Sunday’s hackfest creating the first Mallard document for use as a help file within an application. We chose Empathy, for a few different reasons, including: it will be in GNOME in 2.28; the current documentation is not completed; we want to re-license it from GFDL to CC BY-SA 3.0 and Milo and one other collaborator were the only ones who had worked on it previously (though we fulfill our obligations in re-licensing by the exercise below).

Using the information we learned Friday and Saturday, we spent time planning the document and brainstorming what users want a messaging application to do, and what questions they might have: “How do I….?”.

From there, and with great gusto, Phil and Milo spent the sprint creating a proof of concept help file for Empathy. Not only is it written in Mallard, which can dynamically link the pages, we are focusing on creating topic based help, rather than tasks that take a user step by step in performing an action. Phil and Milo will probably have words with me, but you can follow along on the empathy-mallard branch in Gitorious.

You will need Yelp 2.27.1 and gnome-doc-utils 0.17.1 to see a Mallard doc in Yelp. And now I have to go figure out why Yelp isn’t cooperating with me.

Banshee Documentation

One of the things I learned last weekend at woscon09, was the importance of planning when beginning to write documentation.

With that in mind, and the GNOME Documentation Project’s focus on moving to topic based documentation, the goal of writing docs for Banshee is to answer the question “How do I…?” for users.

So let’s kick off writing the first ever integrated help file for Banshee!

Knowing that, have you come across any forum posts, blog posts, information on a wiki, or howto’s about Banshee? Do you know a trick or tip about Banshee most people might not know? You needn’t have written it, I’m just looking for links. If you have some to share, please leave a comment on my blog. (I have an over-aggressive spam filter, but I’ll be actively monitoring it).

I’ve brainstormed my own topics for user help, and have the start of a table of contents, but I’d love this to be a community effort. As I see good information out in the community, my goal is to contact the author and see if they’re willing to help with Banshee docs. The Banshee documentation will be one of the first help documents in GNOME to move to a CC-SA 3.0 license, and if the authors want to help, that’s the only requirement. CC-SA 3.0 automatically gives attribution as well.

My last goal is to write the Banshee docs in Mallard, now that support support for Mallard is in GNOME 2.27. And if you want to help, don’t be intimated by that! We’ll do the markup for you if you’re new to GNOME docs and have good information to share!

I’ve started a docs branch on the Banshee repository on Gitorious which is where active development will take place.

And speaking of attribution, I can’t take credit for this idea. A big thank you to Emma at woscon09 last weekend for encouraging me to get the community involved.

So what topics do you think should be in the Banshee help file? What information about Banshee have you come across on the internet that should be shared with other users?

Writing Open Source Day 2

We’re just over halfway done with day 2 of the Writing Open Source conference, and today is an “unconference” day in the style of BarCamp.

Conference attendees are giving talks today inspired by conversations from yesterday, other ideas attendees had, and more.

GNOME’s own fearless documentation leader, Shaun McCance, kicked off day two this morning giving an overview of Project Mallard.

shaun-mallard-talk

(Please note that the picture on the projector is a wood duck, and not a Mallard. You’ll have to ask Shaun for the story. Picture courtesy of Milo Casagrande).

Shaun talked about his design goals for Mallard, the benefits of using it instead of using Docbook, and showed it working in Yelp(!), the GNOME help browser. Shaun also discussed and demonstrated Pulse, and you could tell how much passion he has for documentation and the tools involved.

We also had talks about how we can make docs easier for translators (and I showed off Damned Lies, which is so cool, especially considering how little I know about it), how an organization could create a certification program, creating a book in 5 days or less, and my personal favorite, communities. We talked about how different communities that are represented here at the conference work, how upstream and downstream work, what’s not working, how we could be doing community outreach, and why there is a perception that docs just aren’t cool. (Take it from me, docs are sexy! And there will be more to come on that subject).

One of the coolest things for me at least, so far, is finding these other communities, including Drupal, BSD, XFCE just to name a few that are represented here, and how many commonalities we have. Drupal and GNOME might not have a lot of common in how documentation is used, but we have similar challenges and processes. We are making friendships that will help us to create documentation best practices that span communities and one of our goals is build on the success of this conference and keep in contact and continue to share information with each other, and recruit more to join us.

Tomorrow is our hack day, and that should be a blast as well.

Writing Open Source

The first ever (that we know of) conference for documentation writers in open source conference started today in Owen Sound, Ontario (about 2 hours from Toronto). The Writing Open Source conference is being hosted by Emma Jane Hogbin, and a few of us from GNOME are here:

dsc02257.jpg

(Left to Right: Shaun McCance, Milo Cassagrande, Phil Bull and myself).

We’re halfway through the first day, which is keynotes, and the conference is awesome.

Some random thoughts:

  • How cool is it that all of our keynote speakers are women? And our conference overall is 50% women / 50% men.
  • Lots of different projects are represented, including BSD, Drupal, GNOME, XFCE and more.
  • The keynotes are great. All of us have pages of notes, either on paper, in Tomboy or insert your favorite text editor.
  • A quarter of attendees have netbooks. There’s a couple of Macs, and the rest of us are on laptops with Linux. I haven’t seen one Windows laptop yet.
  • Experience ranges from published authors to one individual who’s never contributed but wants to learn.

Belinda from Canonical is talking now, and she has goodies and exercises for us to do, so I have to run. More to come. You can follow along on Twitter or identi.ca with the #woscon09 hash tag too.