For the Magento annual conferences (2016 and 2017) in Las Vegas, I asked to include a Docathon portion to the already existing, very popular Hackathon that was held every weekend before the conference began. We had great success with participants who didn't want or know how to code, but wanted to be part of it and to contribute to Magento. Developers, product managers, e-commerce merchants, and even one CEO all contributed documentation, using pull requests against our public GitHub repository. In most cases, the contributions were merged and published immediately, which was great fun for the contributors and demonstrated the power of the community to build and shape our content.
Doc Sprints vary widely in length, number of participants, environmental settings, and exact schedule breakdowns, but they are all for a single purpose:
Doc sprints are usually much shorter than traditional Agile sprints, lasting only a few days or even less. The collaborative aspect is fundamental, since just like the code or system that is being written about, good documentation consists of modules of in-depth info that then cross-reference and call upon other modules. So having us all together, even briefly, will allow for those cross-references to be quickly identified.
Think of Doc Sprints as a way to link together the fabric of all of your high-powered brains and deep knowledge into one fantastic Super-Cluster of Calxedian Knowledge!!! ;-)
For validation that Doc Sprints are increasingly popular, highly productive, and real (not just made up by Jim or Tana), see the following writings:
I attended the full week in San Francisco, worked the booth and demoed the product.