A big thanks to Advomatic, who hosted a 4-hour User Guide sprint today! From my perspective, it went very well; I hope the participants will comment here with their thoughts. Oliver/oseldman organized the sprint, and he contacted me ahead of time to ask if I had any suggestions. Then they picked a time (and notified me ahead of time), so that Joe and I could try to be available in IRC while they were sprinting.
At the time of the sprint, each person who participated chose an issue to work on, either writing a topic or one of the open editing issues. I answered a few questions to get them going and fixed a few glitches in links etc., and some fun and work ensued! Two issues were completed, another one is probably done (I need to review it when I'm done writing this post), and two more are in progress. Amanda/mndonx also volunteered to make us a logo for the cover of the Guide, so I'm looking forward to that, and I think Advomatic plans another session or two in the coming weeks.
Maybe your company can be next? Feel free to contact Joe/eojthebrave or me if you'd like to be the next company to sponsor a few hours of User Guide work time. I thought the 4-hour time frame was a good choice: long enough to get something done, and short enough to keep from completely disrupting work or getting tired of writing. If getting several people from your company together at the same time doesn't work for you, you could also do what Pronovix did last summer, and sponsor several people each to spend some time (each on their own schedule) to write topics. Any help is welcome... the User Guide is getting closer, but there is still work to be done!

Comments
This was fun!
This was fun! Looking forward to doing another. Thanks for helping us get going!
Thanks so much for your help getting ramped up here, jhodgdon!
My first doc sprint was a pleasure to be a part of and I would do it again. :)
This was great. Some of the
This was great.
Some of the equivalent pages in the handbook on d.o have gotten pretty long winded over the years. It looks like this will help to really trim things down and focus in on the important information that people need to know when sitting down with D8 for the first time.
I hope we'll have another chance to do this again.
--
Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Advomatic.com
Pronouns: he/him/his
Agreed, thanks so much for
Agreed, thanks so much for walking us through this process. I'll definitely be back again!
Success!
Thanks Jennifer! It went well for us too, in large part due to your suggestions in the lead up to the sprint and your assistance in IRC on the day. We're all looking forward to the next one.
We chose a nice assortment of tasks, from editing/testing existing content, to accomplishing new one-off tasks, to (starting) creating larger how-tos -- dependent on prerequisite documentation. This approach allowed everyone to get involved in what interested them. We were able to make a (small) dent in the remaining tasks and have some ongoing work to keep us engaged for the next round.
Thanks again for helping to make our contribution sprint a success!
Any update on the User Guide?
Hi Jennifer, thank you for all your contributions to this community! Just wanted to know about any updates in regards to the User Guide :)?