[FM Discuss] bypassing internet censorship sprint done

[adam hyde]

hey Tom,

Many thanks to you for the wonderful feedback and for the proofing.

When I think that in 5 days we went from zero to book it still seems a
little impossible ;) 

The sprint underlined for me again that the collaborative process can
make high quality docs. Its also wonderful how this ongoing improvement
process can take on a life of its own - for example, I am in San
Francisco now at a conf and the Tor team is here. Roger and Jake from
Tor have both offered to go through the manual and fact check the Tor
sections. To have the input from the source of the projects we are
writing about is pretty fantastic. To also have Jake thank FM for
producing the manual made me feel pretty good about what we are doing.

Its also interesting how the FM book sprint is being refined which each
iteration - this one was really a jump forward in the refinement of the
process. Part of the success of course was the amazing team that was
writing on and off line :

Seth Schoen (EFF)
Freerk Ohling (http://cship.org)
Tomas Krag (http://wndw.net)
Janet Swisher (http://www.janetswisher.com/)
Edward Cherlin (freelance writer + OLPC advocate)
Alice Miller (circumvention enthusiast)
Z. Zorrino (circumvention enthusiast)
Sam Tennyson (circumvention enthusiast + journo)

(and of course you Tom!)

It was especially great that Tomas Krag, who originally came up with the
idea of book sprints, was in the catskills with us working on this
manual.

anyways...back to the conf....

:)

adam







On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 03:01 -0500, TJB wrote:
> Adam and company, I chatted with Edward Cherlin Monday evening, but I
> owe to everyone who worked on the Circumvention Book Sprint the same
> compliment:  this is absolutely an excellent accomplishment!
> 
> When I saw "0 to bookstore in 5 days" my first thought was "quick and
> dirty", but this is absolutely "quick and squeaky clean"!
> 
> I am finding only minor typos to correct as I finally get around to
> proofing it (didn't want to jump in in the middle of its development
> and have to proof the changing chapters over and over), and I'm fixing
> the very few things I find as I find them.
> 
> The most common error I'm finding is hyperlinks that go somewhere
> other than where the text says they go.  The most common subset of
> that group is missing the "http://" at the front of the link, so they
> try to go to a (relative) page within flossmanuals.net.  Just a
> heads-up for the next manual.
> 
> You may well be "sprint lagged", but the results of this effort
> certainly made it worthwhile!
> 
> Tom Boyle
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/15/2008 12:59 AM, adam hyde wrote:
> > hey
> > 
> > its late here...1am or so in upstate New York and the Book Sprint has
> > finished. I can tell you, I'm completely knackered. 5 days in all - the
> > last 3 days were 14 hr days, but we got it all done. It was an amazing
> > experience...7 people living in one huge house for a week complete with
> > Bald Eagles, Roebling Bridges, barbeque pit in the back yard and
> > writing...some lively scenery, sort of Stephen King-ish.... It was a
> > collection of people from France, Denmark, the US, NZ (me!), and
> > Germany. Amongst these were representatives from FM, the EFF, cship.org,
> > wndw.net and others.
> > 
> > We finished the "How to Bypass Internet Censorship" (with free software)
> > manual. 200 pages all up. 630pm we uploaded it to lulu.com and it is now
> > in the FM Book Store widget. thats 0 to bookstore in 5 days. 
> > 
> > You can see the book here:
> > http://www.lulu.com/content/4904448
> > 
> > and the manual on FM here:
> > http://en.flossmanuals.net/CircumventionTools
> > 
> > 
> > you can also host it in your site with this html:
> > 
> > <img src="http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.gif"/>
> > <style>
> >   @import url("http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.css");
> > </style>
> >  <script src="http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.js"
> > type="text/javascript"></script>
> >  <script type="text/javascript">
> >     FM.init({"preferred":["How to bypass internet censorship"]});
> >  </script>
> > 
> > 
> > as always, the manual is for free forever and it can be purchased as a
> > book with a 2 euro mark-up. the income from sales is spent by the
> > maintainers of the book in the way they think is best to continue the
> > dev of the content. we haven't decided who the maintainers are yet but
> > this will come.
> > 
> > i think its a fantastic manual. 
> > 
> > but i will leave that up to you to decide. for now i goto bed. 
> > 
> > special thanks to Janet Swisher for her offline editing and Lotte for
> > the book cover :))
> > 
> > adam
> > 
> > 
> > 
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-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net