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Posts Tagged ‘books’
BookSprint Laps
What is a continuation of a BookSprint called? I’m not sure what to call it, nor do I know which metaphors might fit, but there has been some additional energy emanating from the Austin-based OLPC BookSprint. In the week following the FLOSS Manuals BookSprint, OLPC has energized interns and staff members to continue refining existing chapters and adding new chapters also. As maintainer of the doc, I’ve been watching the changes on notifications and will make my own minor edits, but for the most part I’m just watching in delight at the outpouring of content. Another win for us writers is that the manuals will be remixed, output as HTML, and included on the XO laptop itself for deployments. My sincere hope is that good documentation will prove helpful to the support gang who work so hard on
I’m also completely tickled by the emails of encouragement and thanks coming from all parts of the community. Here are some excerpts from an email from David Farning, an awesome Sugar Labs community guy who I know I can learn a lot more from:
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 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.”David Cramer, a tech writer at Motive, the company that hosted the
event, provided a excellent takeaway on tech writing. ’When I write, I
write for one person. Usually, one person reads what I write. The rest
of the department just asks him….’ Very on point for SL (Sugar Labs) and OLPC.
With our limited resources, we can’t afford to target a broad audience.
But, can afford to target ‘that one guy’ who can spread our message.
Technical Communication bloggers have also caught on to the uniqueness and excitement of this community documentation site, FLOSS Manuals. Tom Johnson, Heidi Hanson, and Charles Jeter talk about it around the 7:30 mark of this podcast:
Quotes from the audio -
about the site “I’ve never seen anything quite like it…”
about the BookSprint “an amazing collaborative community type of event…”
about the FLOSS Manuals community “the social organization of it is going to give it it’s best foot forward…”
Adam Hyde has done an excellent round up of blog entries that talk about FLOSS Manuals. He took a picture of these covers of the books. They look so good and it’s so satisfying to see a book deliverable so quickly.
Additional excitement for this week centers around translation of the content. FLOSS Manuals has a side-by-side translation interface and all of the wiki interface is also in the language of the translators choice. See fa.flossmanuals.net to see the Farsi FLOSS Manuals.
BookSprint for Floss Manuals writing for the XO and Sugar
I’ve been busy lately working on plans for a Floss Manuals BookSprint. A BookSprint is a week-long concentrated effort of technical writers getting together to create a manual for free, libre open source software products. BookSprints are like a workshop where writers come together to learn how to write good user documentation. BookSprints are also a social experience where writers come together to form a community who share common goals and experiences.
Writers are giving a week’s time to be curators of information housed in wikis and websites everywhere, bringing it all together into the FLOSS Manual TWiki implementation to be ready for online viewing or gorgeous print output. If you’re interested in joining us for a day or all week, we’d love to have you. We’re planning to invite local students to the event also.
This picture shows the recent Inkscape BookSprint held in Paris France. We’re planning to hold the XO/Sugar BookSprint here in Austin, but I’m guessing the collection of laptops and cables will be the same here as there!
Inkscape BookSprint in Paris
In this case, we’ll produce a comprehensive manual for the kids, families, and teachers using the little green XO laptop. While the manual that exists at flossmanuals.net/olpc_simple is a targeted effort, it is outdated for the new line drawn between hardware (XO) and operating system (Sugar). Our hope is to expand the manual in advance of the new expanded Give 1 Get 1 program will give educators and children a chance to learn about their laptop, repair it, program with it, and teach others.
What can you do to help? Right now, I’m raising money and asking for in-kind donations to help with this concentrated effort. Here are some ideas, although you can come up with creative ideas yourself if you want!
$500 would provide hotel accommodations for a writer
$250 would provide a catered lunch for all the writers
$100 would provide gas money for many writers all week
Updated to add: You can also directly give donations at http://en.flossmanuals.net/donate.
Sponsorship earns not only good “whuffie” but we’ll list your name or business name on these websites: FLOSS Manuals, JustWriteClick, Sugar Labs, and OLPC.
An exciting aspect of this BookSprint is the international effort behind it. Adam Hyde, founder of Floss Manuals, is planning to make the trek to Austin from Amsterdam, and there’s a French Floss Manuals coordinator working behind the scenes to ensure that the document can be translated to French. I’m also working with Yama Ploskonka, admin of the OLPC-Sur list of Spanish-speaking OLPC supporters to find Spanish language translators.
All in all, this is a very exciting effort and I’d love to get readers of JustWriteClick involved in any way you’d like. I’m very excited to be part of this effort and pleased to play host - let’s gather some more community around the BookSprint to make it a success.
Reading lists for technical writing
As a graduate student in scientific and technical communication, I was fortunate to have been introduced to many texts for learning technical writing at Miami University in Ohio. I have kept those books, keeping them on my bookshelf wherever I work, and have added to that bookshelf ever since. Perhaps this list could be considered the start of a “classics” list.
The Elements of Style (Coyote Canyon Press Classics)
William Strunk
I agree with the New York Times’ assessment: “Buy it, study it, enjoy it. It’s as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility.”
Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach
Paul V. Anderson
I learned at Miami University from Paul V. Anderson, author of this book. I don’t have this latest version
but I’m sure it would be useful for both students and experienced practitioners.
Managing Your Documentation Projects
JoAnn T. Hackos (Paperback - Mar 23, 1994)
The original standard for technical documentation project management.
Information Development: Managing Your Documentation Projects, Portfolio, and People
JoAnn T. Hackos (Paperback - Dec 26, 2006)
An update to the 1994 classic book by JoAnn Hackos.
Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications
Microsoft Corporation (Paperback - Jun 30, 2004)
Hoping for an update that includes the “ribbon bar” but certainly a must-have to save time when your own company’s style guide doesn’t address something. At ASI we use it as a fall back.
Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry (2nd Edition)
Sun Technical Publications (Paperback - May 16, 2003)
This style guide is for those developing software documentation but not locked in to Windows standards. Also a time-saver for ending arguments over word selection or punctuation.
Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works
Janice (Ginny) Redish (Paperback - Jun 11, 2007)
Ginny Redish’s very helpful book, related to documentation and conversation.
Envisioning Information
Edward R. Tufte (Hardcover - May 1990)
I was first blown away by the author, Edward Tufte, at a Society for Technical Communication conference, and have been in awe ever since. Nice to have on the shelf for inspiration.
Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation
Kurt Ament (Paperback - Nov 2002)
A practical guide to building multiple deliverables from the same content, and I don’t mean just creating a PDF of your HTML-based website, and neither does Kurt. Immediately useful.
Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy
Ann Rockley (Paperback - Oct 27, 2002)
Truly the must-read book for embarking on a unifying documentation strategy with content management. You learn to model the content first, an essential step.
A Practical Guide to Usability Testing
Joseph S. Dumas, Janice C. Redish (Paperback - Jan 1, 1999)
On my bookshelf as well, written by Ginny Redish, studied for my master’s degree and useful in all of my jobs afterwards.
Techniques for Technical Communicators
Carol M. Barnum, Saul Carliner
May be outdated since after all, I did finish my degree in 1995, but there are lists of suggested reading for each chapter so this book is a great resource.
Technical Editing (4th Edition) (Technical Communication)
Carolyn D. Rude
Not only a how-to guide if you’re new to editing, but also contains standard copymarking symbols for entering edits. Extremely valuable for writers being edited and editors who write.
The Nurnberg Funnel: Designing Minimalist Instruction for Practical Computer Skill
John Carroll
Difficult to get your hands on a copy, but the basis for all minimalist documentation, which applies well to single-sourcing and modular documentation or topic authoring.
Tom Johnson just spoke with Heidi Hanson for some reading ideas, and her list is a nice one too. Tom originally made me think about this question by asking about it during our STC Intercom ideas discussion and with his follow up comment, I started looking on my bookshelf.
This list is pretty textbook oriented, which isn’t for everyone. I personally like to keep up with popular business books like Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
I’ve also referred to the Center for Information Development Management (CIDM) reading list often when I need to add a book to my summer reading list or when I know I’ll be on a plane for a long time. Although lately, parenting books have been taking over my reading time, ha ha!
The Central Ohio chapter of the STC used to have a book club, and their list of books was very useful as well, but it appears that ideawatch.org, the place where I found their reading lists a few years back, is no more. Heidi or Jennifer, what a great idea, what happened to it? You can still access the reading lists using archive.org, though.
Here in Austin, we considered starting an STC-based lunch time book club, but didn’t get quite enough interest to push it along.
What else are you reading this summer? What texts would you consider to be classics for technical communication? I didn’t include a link the Nuremburg Funnel by John Carroll since it’s difficult to get online, but certainly peruse your used bookstores for that classic on minimalism in computer documentation, you’d have a real classic in your hands.
Stories from SXSWi 2008 - Textbooks of the Future: Free & Collaborative
I have been talking to SJ Klein regularly via email and phone for my work on the wiki pages and kid’s user manual for the XO laptop for One Laptop Per Child, so I was excited to hear him speak and meet him in person. Also, directly afterwards I planned to go to lunch with SJ and with Robert Nagle, the technical writer (and self-named idiot programmer) in Houston who originated the idea of XO user groups across the states after the Give 1 Get 1 program completed.
I had tried my best to promote an XO meetup as a lunch after the Textbooks talk, even getting it listed on the entirely awesome sched.org, but when the four of us arrived at Las Manitas at about 10 after 1, we were the only ones with the “little computers,” as my son calls them. So we just waited our turn for seating, and got to know SJ and Melissa Hagemann, a program manager with the Open Society Initiative who was moderator for the panel. As it turned out, she and Robert had been in some of the same cities in south eastern Europe in the 90s. While speaking of books, Robert described hand-carrying two fifty-pound bags of books along dirt roads as a Peace Corp volunteer and for me it really brought home the fact that books - they are heavy. Much heavier than the two 3-pound XO laptops I had been “lugging” around the Austin Convention Center all day. The 3-pound OLPC library on the XO laptop probably contains hundreds of pounds of books, and you could add several hundred more pounds of books by putting in a small USB stick or SD card. Quite a revelation for me.
Here are my rough notes from the Textbooks of the Future: Free & Collaborative talk at SXSW Interactive 2008. I’ll link to the podcast of it when it’s available. (Updated to add the link, since now it is.)
For open source textbooks, take a look at cnx.org.
Yes, wikibooks are now possible. Pedia press had been doing high quality book output for a while, now partnering with Wikimedia Foundation.
OLPC’s interest in open education materials is that it gives students and teachers ability to share and collaborate on materials. They’re in a unique position in some ways, though, because they’d like to target 15 languages for their materials.
Why are open textbooks possible now?
- Convergence of technology and community
- Also XML - lets you build lego blogs of reconfigurable, recombinable objects (sounds like DITA topics, doesn’t it?)
- Online lets you go past books
- Intellectual property now has new licensing - creative commons license
- Development of quality control mechanisms, repository of content
- Lens - gives you a filter, lets you see things through a lens, filtering which items which you think are valuable
- National Instruments, Texas Instruments, checking the books, offering lenses
Print on demand options - if you can’t produce shiny books, you aren’t taken seriously in many parts of the world, and in some age groups, print is important. With just-in-time printing, books are assembled automatically, index generated automatically, print on demand only costs students $20 instead of $120.
The same thing will happen everywhere that knowledge is valuable.
Is there a role for publishers in the new learning environment? There can be conflicts even in branches of publishing. All major publishers he’s talked to know that a change has to happen. They’re investing/investigating.
What strategies are useful? “The Budapest Open Access Initiative: an international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet.” from http://www.soros.org/openaccess/index.shtml
Three dimensions -
people (blurring the lines of roles, in today’s society we have rigid lines of roles of teacher, or author)
networking, transmitters, guides
Q: Robert’s question as a representative from Teleread.org - people searching for tutorials or text books want “the best” - what’s the finished state?
A: People looking for most efficient and effective way to learn things. Those sites will rise to the top.
Q: Can you use a lens that is another company’s lens?
A: Next version, yes you can.
Q: What about “controversial” areas or areas that evolve year over year?
A: For CXN.org, they decided not to develop with a wiki model, allowing for a multiple entry model, such as causes for the civil war has multiple articles with author attribution. Lenses can then point towards most used, or most heavily peer reviewed, your choice.
Q: From instructional designer in corp. environment - she sees missing things such as visual representations or animations, what’s happening or needs to happen to bring in those valuable designers.
A: Inkscape - open source vector drawing application, access to others’ illustrations (svg, vector graphics standards) Also mentioned the payment for illustration contribution based on Phillip Greenspun’s donation to Wikimedia Foundation.
