Making it easier for Linaro users to help themselves

[Tom Gall]

I think this would be worthwhile session.

Coming from Gentoo, one thing we always put time into was our
documentation. It was/is generally goal based and smoke tested. As an
example, it's a worthwhile exercise to bring someone into the picture
who is completely unfamiliar with your area. Give them a goal and
point them at the wiki page(s) you think address the issue. If they
are able to accomplish the task without help great, if not, the help
you needed to give is what should have been in the document in the
first place.

It's too bad our wiki pages don't have a feedback mechanism to allow
people to comment on the quality of the information there, and post
problems/issues/questions left unanswered that they need.

Regards,
Tom

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Dave Martin <dave.martin at linaro.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Over recent months I've had a steady stream of comments from
> external people trying to use the Linaro deliverables about the
> difficulty of getting started, understanding what Linaro produces
> and how to use it.
>
>
> My experience with supporting users is that using and making sense
> of the linaro output is often not nearly as easy as we would like
> to believe.
>
> Part of the problem seems to be that we may not do a good job of
> passing on the knowledge and understanding necessary to allow
> users to help themselves.
>
>
> Is it worth a session at Linaro Connect to discuss how we could
> improve the situation?  This probably falls in the "community"
> area.
>
>
> Key things to discuss might be:
>
> * identifying and understanding our audience
>
> * providing the "missing manual" (what knowledge do we tend to
> assume in linaro that our audience may lack)
>
> * wiki ownership and maintenance (how do we _manage_ the
> information we produce to maximise its relevance and usefulness)
>
> (This includes identifying stale/obsolete information, removing
> duplicates and providing useful indices, contents lists and
> introductory material.)
>
>
> Ideally, we should get some users external to linaro to attend
> and/or provide input.
>
> Cheers
> ---Dave
>
> _______________________________________________
> linaro-dev mailing list
> linaro-dev at lists.linaro.org
> http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
>



-- 
Regards,
Tom

"We want great men who, when fortune frowns will not be discouraged."
- Colonel Henry Knox
Linaro.org │ Open source software for ARM SoCs
w) tom.gall att linaro.org
w) tom_gall att vnet.ibm.com
h) tom_gall att mac.com