[FM Discuss] purdata workshop

[adam hyde]

hi,
Just a quick update on a workshop Derek Holzer and I did.

Last week FM held a workshop on PureData at Montevideo (Amsterdam). We
started with an introduction to FLOSS Manuals, the idea, what we have
done so far, and how to use it. I expected this to take about 45 minutes 
but we had some very good questions throughout from the
workshop participants so it took about 1.5 hrs.

After this Derek took everyone through an excellent 5 hour PureData 101
workshop. It was obviously covering just the basics (although I was
surprised at how deep into PureData the workshop got in such a short
period, I think this is largely due to the fact Derek is very
experienced in these workshops and explains the software and underlying
concepts very clearly and succinctly).

At the end of the day I walked the participants through the editing
interface for FM and asked them to make a contribution to the PureData
(or any other) manual. I expected this to take about 20-30 minutes but
the participants worked for over an hour, perhaps 1.5 hrs (I lost
track).

It was a very interesting experience. The motivation to contribute
exceeded what I expected. It was at the end of a long day and I was
pretty sure that those that were there were more interested in learning
PureData than documenting. However there was some very nice
contributions made. Some added comments to the texts, someone added  a
nice funny addition to the background of the software, someone added
some Ezra Pound poetry, and one person found an error in one chapter I
wrote and corrected it.

The original motivation for the workshop was to find out if the act of
documenting something from a workshop would reinforce what was learned.
I am unsure if we achieved this as I think the process could be focused
further by asking participants to document something more specific and
directly related to what had just been covered in the workshop.

However, as a first experiment I was very pleased with the results. One
person later said they were excited by the idea they could contribute to
the free software movement this way as they have always wanted to
contribute but felt 'cut off' because they can't program. This is good
information to assist in encouraging future potential contributors.

I also feel that this was an excellent way to explain the paradigm of FM
and how it differs from other wiki processes, and why it suits
documentation.

So! I wanted to throw this into the list and encourage anyone doing
workshops to consider weaving FM into the process. I am going to think
about how to improve this process, and I'd be very interested in any
experiences others might have if you try it, or any thoughts on the
above.

adam



-- 
Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals

http://www.flossmanuals.net