The weekend of October 9 to 11, we are holding our first ever documentation sprint, at the Mozilla Paris office. A documentation sprint is like a code sprint or hackfest, except that the focus is on writing docs instead of on writing code. In this case, the specific focus is documentation on the Mozilla Developer Network related to open web standards and how to use them. That includes HTML5, CSS3, MathML, next-generation JavaScript APIs, and so on.

This event is inspired by the “book sprints” pioneered by our friends at the FLOSS Manuals project, but instead of writing a book in three days (yes, it can be done and has been done), we’re going to write a whole bunch of topics for MDN in three days.

If you know a thing or two about open web standards and you enjoy writing documentation, I invite you to participate, either remotely or in person if you’ll be in Paris. E-mail me at jswisher at mozilla dot com with “doc sprint” in the subject, and let me know what you’re interested in writing about (and where you’re located). If you’re not sure exactly what to write about, I can suggest some ideas. It’s OK if you can’t participate for all three days, but please be willing to contribute some significant time and effort. Because physical space is limited, please don’t arrive in person without contacting me first. For remote contributors, we’ll use the #devmo channel on irc.mozilla.org, which is where discussion about MDN normally happens. I’ll also set up some conference calls to help keep the remote contributors in tune with the folks in the room.

Among the ideas for things to write is tutorials based on some of the wonderful demos that Paul Rouget and others have posted on this blog. That is, deconstruct a demo, and describe step-by-step how to create it. Then, at the Drumbest Festival next month in Barcelona, we’ll get feedback on any tutorials we create from festival participants in the Webcraft Toolshed. If the materials we create are on appropriate topics and of high enough quality, they might be used in the next course sessions of the Peer-to-Peer University’s School of Webcraft.

As usual for MDN, most docs will be written in English. However, if you’re more comfortable writing in French, I volunteer to attempt to translate into English. For those writing in English, we can help edit what you write, so it’s OK if you don’t write perfectly (no matter what your native language is).

I’m really looking forward to this event, and excited to see what we will accomplish to extend and enhance the documentation on MDN.