For nearly three weeks I've had a tab open on my browser with the intention of writing something. Today. But for nearly three weeks I just haven't managed to collect my thoughts in ways that I wanted them to be consumed. It's been a whirlwind though.

Writing Open Source - the first ever (as far as we know) Open Source Documentation conference was held in Owen Sound. It was amazing. I am biased, but it was amazing. (I'm not being redundant, it really was amazing.) I am also intensely proud of how this conference has turned into a community. Please participate, or at least follow along, on the revamped WOS site. There's a planet feed, forums and amazing intiatives including a style guide, documentation personas and a best practices guide. And when I say initiatives I mean it in the exact definition of the word: the projects are initiated and looking for your input!

(Yes, that's a bag piper and a chocolate fountain. And, yes, that's the mayor in both the photo on the left and the right. She insisted that we go up to Inglis Falls after meeting everyone and even drove us up to the falls when I tried to decline after I thought she was just being polite! Thanks, Mayor Lovell Stanners!)

With WOSCON wrapped up, I trekked out to PDX for Open Source Bridge. If you weren't there this year, you should go next year.

Stay a couple of days and explore Portland too. It's very pretty there, even when it's raining.

Back in Owen Sound I've been playing tourist in my own town (and a little bit further sometimes too). 

I've also started on the food box from a local market garden and have been eating better ever since. Delicious radishes, radishes and ... more radishes were on the menu the first week. If you're ever plagued by radishes I recommend: radish curry, radish bean burger, tabouleh and roasted radish with roast chicken (they come out tasting sweet, much like garlic does). As my own garden ripens I'll need to come up with more ways of dealing with radishes.

Last night we had a wonderful Canada Day celebration at my aunt and uncle's cottage. There were fireworks and sparklers, of course.

In two weeks I'm headed to OSCON. I'll be drinking from the firehose and am taking Damian Conway's presenter workshop. I'm really looking forward to it.

Another incredible day has wrapped up with the Writing Open Source crew. We're not just conference participants anymore, we're a crew. (We know we're a crew because the Web site no longer has a conference schedule, but a forum for discussion after the conference has ended.) It's been incredible to watch the progression as people look both outward for support and best practices, and inward to apply new information to existing practices within a team project.

Today we had several sessions that came from yesterday's talks they included:

• Dru on the BSD certification project
• Janet on the FLOSS Manuals project
• Shaun on the new markup language he's created for GNOME docs: project mallard
• an adhoc discussion on the challenges of translation and the toolkit that we're currently struggling with in various projects

After stuffing ourselves with ideas, we headed up to Inglis Falls at the request of the mayor. (She felt it was inappropriate for people to come all this way and not see the falls. She was right.) After dinner talk was filled the commerce of open source, authoring books for main stream publishers and more. A whole lot of really funny jokes have been established. You know the kind that make no sense without context and are only referred to by their punchline? Y'know, like this:

[ ] F

I can assure you that is all kinds of hilarious. It was so hilarious that Milo translated it:

[ ] V

Awwww, yeah: there's nothing like a good documentation joke. Apologies to those of you who were following along in Identi.ca and Twitter tonight. The dip into senseless tweeting and denting was inevitable after two days of really awesome, and thought provoking, content.

Sunday (tomorrow) is a project sprint day so I expect the tweet feeds to be fairly quiet. In the mean time, check out some of the links above for projects that might not have otherwise been on your radar. There's some truly fantastic work happening in the world of open source documentation and I'm very excited to be a part of it.

A number of years ago I saw James Gilmore give a presentation about the experience economy. It gave me the term for what my parents had taught me growing up: provide an amazing experience for a person and you will inspire them to learn new things, and engage with others. Today the stage was set for the world's first ever (as far as we know) conference for open source documentation. It's only been a day but already people are sharing exciting new ideas and talking about collaboration. Although this is natural for a conference to get that excitement, what's amazing is that the sharing is happening across projects where you never would have guessed it would feel natural.

The conference Writing Open Source was conceived months ago: the idea was simple and crazy. I care about documentation, and so do a few of my friends, so I bet there are more. Why not meet and share some good food and good conversation and see what we can learn from each other. In my experience, creative people get even more creative when you give them crazy-awesome things to talk about. We kicked off the first day of the conference with an amazing breakfast (with real maple syrup), a visit from the mayor, and bag pipes. Except it wasn't just the mayor and bag pipes. It was a procession through downtown Owen Sound, led by the piper and the mayor (and her grand daughter) as we moved from our breakfast venue to our conference venue.

During the day we had five exceptional presenters deliver engaging, funny, thought provoking and truly outstanding talks. They were recorded and hopefully will be uploaded to archive.org (or somewhere) in the near future.

It's not just about the speakers though: all participants have engaged and are participating in creating and shaping the experience as it unfolds. Whether they are new to documentation, or are seasoned experts, participants are contributing their passion for open source, documentation and community (yes, and even their passion for licensing). What an incredible experience it's already been. And it's only the end of day 1.

I'm sure there will be more blog posts as Dru has told us all to write daily, but in the mean time...try a search through identi.ca or twitter for the conference hashtag: #woscon09. Not surprisingly, a conference on documentation is getting a LOT of real-time reporting.