[FM Discuss] on the road...and back again (report)

[adam hyde]

so...

I am on a train now traveling back to New York from Boston. Its been a
crasy few weeks, and will end up in my temporary 'home' tonight - I'll
bed down with some stupid DVDs and NZ Sauvignon Blanc that I saved from
the Book Sprint (perk!)

Right next to me on the empty train seat is a XO (OLPC laptop) donated
to FM by SJ at OLPC. I mention it because I have just left their offices
in Boston and I had a very moving and extremely satisfying moment - SJ
demo'ed the laptop to me that is going out with the 'Give 1 Get 1'
rollout happening now. They expect to ship 100,000 laptops in the next
month or so. On that lovely little laptops desktop is a suite of icons -
one has a little question mark on it. If you click on it then...the
FLOSS Manuals documentation about the laptop and desktop (Sugar) pops up
before your eyes....

im quite stunned. i knew this was all happening of course, but to see
it was for me a very moving experience. the manual on the laptop was
remixed from the material created at the Book Sprint we did in Austin.
The docs were remixed and exported to HTML using the FM remix
feature, and then put on the laptop. Now its going to roll out on
100,000 machines...

What is also nice, is because of the modular nature we have adopted for
writing chapters (ie. all chapters are self contained) it was possible
for the manual on the laptop to draw from other material. There is, for
example, chapters on how to use Wikimedia Commons on the laptop which
are from the wonderful manual Brianna wrote and maintains.

So, indeed...everyone is a winner...

I will put some photos of the laptop with our docs on the blog
(http://www.flossmanuals.net/blog) in the next days 

so, big congrats to all that made that happen on the OLPC, Sugar, and FM
sides. Especially big thanks to Anne for all her hard work and
persistent forward energy to make this happen....

SJ, Adam Holt and I also discussed future possibilities for docs...a
pity Seth Woodworth wasn't there but with luck I might be in Boston
again in december to introduce the FSF to FM over lunch. If so then we
can talk more about the docs then.

while in Boston I also called in on the Sugarcamp which was held partly
at the Cambridge Innovation Centre and partly at the MIT media lab. I
did a quick 10 min overview about where we are with FM and the docs and
had some good feedback from all in the room (most were Sugar
developers). Pretty much people love the manuals (I brought some printed
copies to demo). We spoke about the possibility for more manuals with a
more 'lesson plan' focus and it seems this is on the agenda now for a
future collaboration between FM and Sugar.

So, the weeks preceding this short trip to Boston (<24 hrs) were very
full. We had the Book Sprint which I have already reported on, then
straight after this was the Dev Summit hosted by Aspiration Tech in San
Francisco. Anyone that has been to one of Gunners (Allen Gunn)
conferences will give you the Gunner religion. I am one of them.
Aspirations events channeled through Gunner are astonishing. If anyone
on the list has not had the good fortune of attending one - I strongly
recommend keeping an eye on Aspiration Techs event schedule and get to
one if you can.

Its a good mix of hard work, socialising, geek trivia quizzes,
drinking, sleep deprivation, good food, stinky tofu (on occasion), and
passionate talk with like-minded people. This one was 3 days and I was
all talked out by the end of day two (I was after-all, suffering from
sprint-lag), however I somehow fumbled through to the end and I was
very glad I did...I met tonnes of people (from netsquared, Craigslist
Foundation, Plone, Drupal, Joomla, Google, etc etc) and learned about a
lot of very interesting projects and I don't think many people left the
(un)conference without knowing what we do and why its important. I was
also finally able to meet Leslie Hawthorn from Google, give her the
Inkscape manual and thank her for the Summer of Code support which made
the Inkscape Book Sprint possible.

While in San Fran crashing on Gunners floor I was happily surprised to
again meet Arun Mehta (Delhi) who I knew from my previous life as a
radio guy. It was fantastic to catch up and while doing so Arun got
enthused about creating a Ruby on Rails beginners manual which i can see
from the email change notifications he has already started in FM! :)))

So...its been busy....next up is the mini-sprint this coming weekend to
write Docs for Miro (ex Democracy Now player). Dean Jansen (Miro) is
keen as well as Janet Swisher and Mr Fuzz :)

I think this week also I will settle down to doing some small tweaks on
FM, catch up with Aco, and ponder how we can promo the OLPC, Sugar, and
Bypassing Internet Censorship manuals...but first those crappy movies
and vino...

okedoke

adam














-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net