Getting started

Open Documentation Academy
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You’ve read about our Open Documentation Academy and you want to get involved. These are the steps you need to follow.

Prerequisites

Agree with the Ubuntu Code of Conduct

We’re not insisting that you sign the code of conduct, but we all need to abide by its rules and intent.

You will need a GitHub account

All Open Documentation Academy contributions are made in the Open Documentation Academy GitHub repository.

You don’t need any special git skills. Many documentation tasks can be submitted and worked upon within GitHub’s editor web interface. If you want to work with git directly, then we follow a standard fork and pull process.

Time considerations

There is no deadline. We’re completely flexible when it comes to how much time a task may take.

While we do ask for an estimated target date, this is only to enable us to better manage the task list, and to ensure tasks are being actively worked on. If you need to change your estimation, please let us know - it won’t be a problem.

Choose a task

Our tasks are listed as Issues in the Open Documentation Academy GitHub repository:

https://github.com/canonical/open-documentation-academy/issues

Each task can be worked on by a single person. If a task is already being worked on, it is “assigned” to the person doing the work. This is only ever a single person. You can see which issues are currently unassigned by selecting “Assigned to nobody” from the “Assignee” drop-down menu. Or use this link.

We use labels extensively to help filter the tasks that need to be done, their project domains, and whether they’re assigned to someone to work on.

When you find a task you want to work on, leave a comment on the issue saying you’d like to adopt this task with an estimated date for when you’d hope to get the work complete. One of us from the Academy team will respond and assign that task to you.

You’re now set! Your next steps will be to research the task and start work on your submission.

Get help on a task

For questions specific to each task, add a comment on the issue you’ve been assigned:

https://github.com/canonical/open-documentation-academy/issues

If you’ve not been able to work on the task for a while, please also leave a comment to let us know. This helps us know you intend to complete a task, and to keep our task list status up-to-date.

For more general questions, we recommend creating a post on our forum here, but you’re also welcome to ask on our Matrix group:

https://matrix.to/#/#documentation:ubuntu.com

Submitting your work

Submissions should be through the Open Documentation Academy GitHub repository. We will provide help and documentation to do this, but an overview of the process is as follows:

The Open Documentation Academy team will be in touch to review your work. This is where the collaboration begins!

See Resources for our communication channels, and for further reading.

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