Collaborative Futures
I was involved in the Collaborative Futures book sprint, the first book written using Booki, and the first FLOSS Manuals project that isn’t software documentation. I was amazed by the results materially and socially, and even more so by the just completed 2nd edition of Collaborative Futures, which successfully incorporated several new authors and benefited from new Booki features.
I am inspired by the potential for book sprints and the Booki software to expand the scope of collaborative production in a wide variety of contexts, especially education. Booki is an exciting new innovative platform that is bringing book production online and is an important new form of free culture / free knowledge production. Platforms that expand the categories of works that can be radically improved through free collaboration (beyond software and encyclopedias) are absolutely essential to building a good future. I enthusiastically endorse Booki and encourage all to use and support it.
Mike Linksvayer, Vice President
Creative Commons
Firefox Book Sprint
I first worked with FLOSS Manuals in early 2009 as a participant in one of their Book Sprints. It was a great experience and we produced a great Firefox manual – in 3 short days.
I have continued to follow the progress of FLOSS Manuals closely, often participating in community discussions and supporting the project whenever I can. I am happy to see they continue to make excellent progress and are applying lessons learned from the first generation of FLOSS Manuals’s tools.
The new system called “Booki” embodies the skills, tools, and experiences that the FLOSS Manuals community has gained over the last couple of years to create a new kind of publishing. Booki changes all by enabling the production of books on dramatically faster cycles and reducing the obstacles that get in the way of community and open publishing.
Chris Hofmann, Director Engineering
Mozilla (Firefox)
One Laptop Per Child Book Sprint
The OLPC BookSprint brought together several overlapping communities:
* hard-core, full-time participants in the OLPC, SugarLabs, and FLOSS Manuals projects
* Austin XO enthusiasts
* Austin technical writers interested in open source software
I (Janet Swisher) am in the third camp. I’ve blogged and presented on why technical writers might want to contribute to open source projects, and I work for a company that publishes some of its software as open source. I didn’t have much prior experience with OLPC, other than having bought an XO for my nephews the previous Christmas. However, I knew that OLPC was a cool project and the BookSprint was in my home town. On top of that, Anne Gentle, who I knew through the local STC chapter and as a blogging tech writer, asked me to participate. How could I not?
I walked in on day two of the sprint, having briefly seen my nephews’ XO laptop nine months before, and having downloaded the XO emulator for Windows the previous day. Lacking domain expertise, what I could contribute was technical writing expertise. My first task was to improve the style guide for the XO manual. I reorganized it a bit and added a few items that others in the room said they wanted guidance on. My opinion about style guides for open source projects is that the fewer rules writers have to remember, the better. However, this parsimony must balance against readers’ need for consistency.
After that, I reviewed chapters in the XO and Sugar manuals that were finished or nearly so, making sure they complied with the style guide, and editing anything I thought needed it. I tested procedures with one of the XO laptops that were scattered around the room. Apparently, this made an impression on David Farning, a Sugar programmer who attended the BookSprint and who later wrote: I realized this was not just a couple of programmers trying to throw together a wiki as I watched Janet Swisher intensely studying the XO’s battery. Turns out she was trying to determine if the “installing the battery” section could be misread. From my experience, a programmer would have said, “If they can’t figure out how to put the battery in, what’s the point of a fine manual?”
One factor that I did not have to worry about for the BookSprint was writing tools. The FLOSS Manuals Website, being a wiki with a WYSIWYG HTML editor, was dead simple to use. The site even kept track of which chapters were currently being edited by whom, so that we wouldn’t step on each other’s changes. There were times when a chapter that I wanted to edit was one of several that the system said was being edited by another person. Since we were sitting in the same room, I could just say “Hey, are you still working on that chapter? If not, can I break your lock?” For certain sections, I decided that the most appropriate HTML structure was a definition list, which was not supported by the WYSIWYG editor. Being familiar with HTML, I was able to switch into “code” view and insert the tags manually. However, within a few minutes of my mentioning this to Adam Hyde, he had modified the editor, and buttons for the needed tags appeared on the editor’s toolbar.
Another benefit of co-location was that when I came across a note that said, “Walter, check for accuracy,” I could just say “Hey, Walter,” and Walter Bender (founder of SugarLabs, former president of OLPC for Software and Content, and former executive director of the MIT Media Lab) would walk around the table to look over my shoulder. Talk about immediate feedback!
Bringing together communities with related interests can lead to unexpected synergies. The Sugar API documentation was not within the scope of the BookSprint, but when it came up in conversation, I was able to point the Sugar folks toward a tool for wikifying it, to encourage programmers to contribute. Also, at the Wednesday cookout, my husband, who is a musician and a graduate student, got into a long discussion about computer-generated music with Adam Hyde, who is a “sound artist” as well as the FLOSS Manuals impresario. (OK, that has nothing directly to do with the BookSprint, but it wouldn’t have happened without it!) In comparing this and other face-to-face meetings of virtual communities, I can see the following benefits:
- 1. Community members get to know each other “for real.” If you’ve ever worked on a virtual team, you know that you work much better with team members you’ve met face-to-face. Putting faces to names and personalities to email addresses helps the team or community work together virtually in the future.
- 2. A concrete time and place to work increases productivity tremendously. Volunteers working asynchronously tend to lack urgency; there is always some other priority that pushes the volunteer work off to “someday.” At a sprint, the work must be done here and now. And, as I mentioned, feedback can be provided within a few seconds instead of hours or days.
- 3. The event helps put the project in perspective for participants. When a project is coordinated online, participants can get swamped by details. A sprint helps focus priorities and helps participants see how their pieces fit into the bigger puzzle.
- 4. It’s fun! People feed off each others’ energy and excitement. Jokes are cracked, camaraderie develops, and friendships form.
Introduction to the Command Line
“I have written basic introductions to the command line in three different technical books on GNU/Linux and read dozens of others. FLOSS Manual’s “Introduction to the Command Line” is at least as clear, complete, and accurate as any I’ve read or written. But while there are countless correct reference works on the subject, FLOSS’s book speaks to an audience of absolute beginners more effectively, and is ultimately more useful, than any other I have seen.”
–Benjamin Mako Hil
CiviCRM
“I received the following feedback from a potential CiviCRM user who was reading our book. She had some basic questions and she used the Organization information in the Examples section to send an email to the AFSC’s general information address. That email was forwarded to me.
After I answered her questions, giving CiviCRM glowing reviews of course J I asked her what she thought about the book. This is what she said:
‘And I would like to say [...] I thought it was very helpful and really well organized so wonderful job there’.
When I read her comment I immediately thought of all of you and wanted you to be a part of what I was feeling, which was pretty proud of all the work that we did. It feels really good to know that people are referencing it. “
Cynthia Tarascio, Book Sprint Participant
“I’ve also gotten some very positive feedback from folks. We are frequently referring folks to it on the forum when it’s clear they need “the big picture”.
Dave Greenberg, CiviCRM founder and sprint participant
“I actually received some feedback recently that I’ve been meaning to send out to the group. I was contacted by someone who was in the process of implementing Civi and needed some assistance (he’s already begun implementation). He mentioned having read significant portions of the book, and was particularly impressed with some of the early chapters that dealt with project management, identifying key players, etc. He said he took a step back to rethink how he approached some aspects of the project after reading those sections.”
Brian Shaughnessy, Book Sprint Participant
“I met someone from Greennet recently (an ethical UK ISP) at a London Net Tuesday event. He was a developer who was doing his first development with a client and said he found the book super useful in getting to know the system. He said that he learnt loads about Civi through the book and was really grateful to have access to it.
I’ve also seen 3 copies of it out and about on my travels – and watched 2 people buy it online (and I didn’t pressure them into buying it – honest!)”
Michael McAndrew, Book Sprint Participant and Manual Maintainer
“I met with the IT manager of a (new zealand) political party today who was considering CiviCRM. He contacted me through the Circus Trust as he had read the case study.
Anyway, he was really positive about the book and made the comment that ‘IT manuals normally put him to sleep but this one was interesting and well-written’. It was obvious that reading the book was having a significant influence on the likelihood of him going down the CiviCRM path and also increase the amount of functionality he would take advantage of.
So, nice to see that not only do people appreciate the book but that it also achieves it’s goal of getting people to use Civi & to use it better.”
Eileen McNaughton, Book Sprint Participant