[FM Discuss] Fwd: POSSE and FLOSS Manuals

[Anne Gentle]

Hi fine FLOSS Manuals folks!

I'm forwarding this email from Greg to start a discussion about technical
writing professors teaching open source and participating in book sprints to
learn how to run book sprints with students.

I think we have had professors interested in book sprints for their students
in the past - we'd love to get feedback on small steps we could take towards
this larger goal.

Thanks,
Anne

 *Anne Gentle*
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 7:34 AM
Subject: POSSE and FLOSS Manuals
To: Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com>, Anne Gentle <annegentle at gmail.com>
Cc: Mel Chua <mechua at redhat.com>



Hey Andy.  So Mel Chua tells me that you're heavily involved with FLOSS
Manuals, which I did not know, and which is a brilliant thing.  Also copying
Anne Gentle from FLOSS Manuals, who I know from the OLPC/Sugar book sprints.
 Hi!  (/me waves)

I'm sitting here in POSSE, the Professor's Open Source Summer Experience for
computer science profs.  Andy, I think you actually signed books for it, but
Anne, in case you don't know about it, you can read more here:

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_2009

The more I think about it, the more it seems like POSSE may be an even
better model for technical writing professors.

Computer science is a hard nut to crack.  Asking CS professors to
essentially change the way they teach CS, in order to incorporate open
source methodologies, is asking an awful lot.  That's not stopping me from
asking, but it's going to be a long, hard road.

Asking technical writing professors to write for open source projects, and
to encourage their students to write for open source projects, seems like it
might be a lot more straightforward, and a lot more productive in the near
term.  To a tech writer, content is content; describing a proprietary UI and
an open source UI are essentially the same activity.  No change to workflow
required.

I would like to expand the POSSE idea to include tech writing professors.
The basic proposition:

* Red Hat sponsors a book sprint, run by the good people at FLOSS Manuals.

* We recruit tech writing professors to the event, with the intention of
teaching them how book sprints work.  We select those tech writing
professors who are willing to commit to running a book sprint with their
students within the next year.

What do you think?  Is this an idea you'd be willing to talk more about?

--g

--
Computer Science professors should be teaching open source.
Help make it happen.   Visit http://teachingopensource.org.
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