About the Academy

The accessibility of Linux and open source has helped many of us find vocations, wherever in the world we were. We didn’t need to ask for permission.

But getting involved is easier to type than do. Where do you start? Who do you ask? What needs to be done?

The Open Documentation Academy attempts to answer those questions by being the place to get involved. It’s where new contributors can find tasks to work on and get the help they need, and it’s also where open source projects and technical authors can get help with their own documentation.

Thanks to the wide range of open source projects that we work on, from the Ubuntu Desktop and command line tools, to security, cloud orchestration and device provisioning, we have a fantastic opportunity to help people make meaningful contributions to technologies they’re most excited about. And those contributions start with documentation.

Why documentation

Documentation is the circulatory system for a project. New features do not exist unless they’re documented. New users don’t exist unless they know where to start, and established users won’t stay unless they know what to stay for. But these requirements are also what makes documentation challenging, and for those of us into this kind of thing, ceaselessly fascinating.

  • it’s how you learn about a project and its governance

  • no contribution is too small, or too big

  • documentation can always be improved

  • small changes can have massive impact and benefit so many people

The Academy provides a curated list of documentation tasks. Tasks include testing and fixing tutorials, updating the outdated, restructuring large documents, and anything else you may want to suggest. The list is growing, and a big part of the Documentation Academy is ensuring there’s always a wide range of tasks available, across as many projects and technologies as possible.

For contributors

The Academy guides contributors through their first contributions, providing advice on approaches to build confidence and set an example for positive collaboration:

Real experience, real skills, real discipline: Open-source products in the Canonical/Ubuntu industry are highly-respected and used by millions of people. Standards for contributions are high. You’ll have a chance to contribute to prestigious projects, and acquire the skills to take part in the development of world-class software.

Structured support: The Open Documentation Academy will include a structured programme of support and development for serious participants, taking them from their first steps to having the confidence to lead their own documentation initiatives.

Recognition: Your contributions will speak for themselves, but we’ll vouch for you too. Participants who complete our programme will receive certification from Canonical.

What the Academy offers

Anyone is welcome to participate, and that doesn’t always mean working on documentation tasks. There are many other aspects to the Academy:

Mentoring: You are not alone. Regardless of whether you’re writing your first document, or editing your hundredth, we’re here to help. Our 1:1 mentorship can help you through your first contributions, provide advice on approaches, and help you build your confidence.

Guided contributions: Help us identify gaps, nominate solutions, and propose documentation of your own. We curate tasks across a variety of different open source projects. Choose a task you’re interested in, at a level you’re comfortable with, and make a contribution. Research. Write. Commit. Fill blanks in your resume and colour your GitHub Activity tracker golden.

Community: Through our forum and communication channels, you can directly interact with documentation teams and co-conspirators across the globe. We want our community to be friendly, inclusive and always supremely approachable, in accordance with the Ubuntu Code of Conduct 3.

Activities

Weekly Community Hour: Every Friday, join us for interactive discussions about tricky documentation problems and help us to improve documents together. This is the place to solicit feedback from the team, and to share your docs struggles and accomplishments. Everyone is welcome, whether you participate or prefer to listen. See Documentation office hours for our schedule.

Events: We host and often record online presentations and workshop sessions. We’ve also attended several conferences to talk about the Academy, and have plans to hold in-person events enabling us all to target specific objectives together. These targets may include improving sets of documentation, creating guides and tutorials, or just discussing and agreeing on a style guide.

Stay in touch

If you’d like to ask us questions outside of our public forums, feel free to email us at docsacademy@canonical.com.

You can also: