Participants: @DanT Dan, Laura, @AmberS Amber, @nat Nat
Summary of a walking meeting!
- Audience / Documentation Purpose
- Users - researchers, farmers, etc.
- Developers hoping to contribute
- Software vs hardware
- Customizable vs not customizable
- Documentation Platforms / Tools
- Gitlab, Google Docs, GitHub
- Issues with findability and organization – how do we get people to read the docs?
- Videos – okay, if short
- How stage of development shapes documentation
- For highly customizable tools (mostly software), may need a clear set of use cases to show the capabilities open to others (before having API tutorials for more polished products further in development)
- Question of putting resources toward documentation really early – is this effective?
- Documentation is often a hidden cost of development (required, but often not listed as a line item)
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Potential Next Step:
- Centralized registry – could we list a number of open source ag tools, and links to developer-produced documentation, general info, etc.
- Template for documentation and tutorials
- What’s the minimum information requirement for open software? What about hardware?