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Posts Tagged ‘FLOSS’
OLPC Book Ready for G1G1!
Tomorrow, Monday, November 17 is the launch of the new Give One Get One campaign for 2008 - meaning, once again you can buy your very own XO laptop. The tagline for this year is Give a Laptop. Get a Laptop. Change the World.
You can buy yours at amazon.com/xo.
All our community author’s work has culminated into a book that’s now for sale on Lulu, and as soon as we can get it listed on Amazon, the book will be available there as well.
The back cover of all FLOSS Manuals books say “Please copy!” We fully intend for the OLPC Laptop Guide to available to anyone who wants one. You can purchase a printed copy at Lulu for a modest markup (that funds future booksprints and the like), or download the PDF, or remix the content at FLOSSManuals.net.
The neat thing is, once you’re done with a real book, you can pass it on to the next person who wants to learn about their XO. My hope is that XO users around the world will get a book and pass it on.
Shows front and back covers of the Laptop Guide for OLPC
FLOSS Manuals book store now open!
I went out for a run this morning and realized it has been a year this very week since I started my volunteer work with OLPC. This project was my first foray into the open source world from a contributor standpoint, and I can’t believe how it has paid back at least tenfold in the people I’ve met, the lessons I’ve learned, and the technology I’m now acquainted with.
What did it take? For me, time and faith and trust in others.
This is an amazing day and it has been an amazing journey. And what is significant about today? We now have a FLOSS Manuals bookstore and we now have a real, hold-it-in-your-hands, put-it-on-your-bookshelf, book. With a cover designed by someone who works at MOMA no less. (Wow!) With content carefully authored by people who learned and knew enough about the technology while also considering who would read the chapters and what they want to do with the technology.
I’m happily and proudly displaying the distributable FLOSS Manuals bookstore on my blog - see the sidebar on the left? That’s a bit of HTML code that anyone can display and host a portable virtual book store on any web site. Here’s the code.
<style>
@import url("http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.css");
</style>
<img src="http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.gif"
style="margin-bottom:5px;">
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://stores.lulu.com/feed.php?fStore=flossmanuals&fFormat=js"></script>
You can always download the PDF for free, but by buying a book you support the FLOSS Manuals project and help support the uptake and usefulness of free software by providing free documentation. Your money is well spent as these paperbacks are high quality and can take wear and tear. My hope is that people will read it and that the book will be passed on to the next learner.
Upcoming presentations in Austin and Houston
I’ll be presenting Documentation as Conversation at the Austin STC meeting Tuesday October 7th.
Austin When
Tuesday October 7th
6:00 - 6:30 PM: Networking
6:30 - 7:30 PM: Program
7:45 - 9:00 PM: Networking dinner
Austin Where
UT Commons Center - Room 1.138 [Map]
Then in November I’m going to make the trip to the Houston STC Meeting Tuesday November 11th.
Houston When
5:30 - 6:30 PM: Networking
Houston Where
Houston, TX 77098
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/sl/1/en/hotel/hougp?_requestid=1732305
Documentation as Conversation: Working conversation and community into documentation using social technologies
Even if your documentation system does not converse with your users, your documentation can help customers talk to each other and make the connections that help them do their jobs well, play with technology at home, or learn something new in a classroom setting.
Instead of concentrating on single sourcing or the tools of the trade, this talk describes how you can think about documentation and user assistance in a conversational way, perhaps with the help of some social networking applications. I’ll also discuss the in-person FLOSS Manuals BookSprint as a use of a wiki paired with a community event to gather together writers to accomplish documentation goals for free, open source software projects.
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.
