[FM Discuss] updates

[adam hyde]

hi,

so...after doing some jobs to pay the rent, and doing a little art in nz
i am back on board the FM train 100%

So, a few updates. 

this year is looking pretty good for us so far. We have lined up a book
sprint in New York starting feb 6 and ending feb 8. This is the first of
our 'FLOSSify' series. I will send some PR out about this today. We
expect at least 8 people at Eyebeam, but probably much more. Michael
Mandiberg is one of the authors I am working with to host this, and he
has some very interesting ideas of how to utilise experts and newbies
effectively in such an open walk-in sprint. Essentially we will look to
couple each newbie with a expert so they can work together on the same
machine. I think this is an interesting idea and I am keen to see how
well it works, as it might make a good model for future open 'walk in'
book sprints at events. Joshua from the Inkscape team is coming, as is
Mel from OLPC, as well as James from the Software Freedom Law Center and
Dave Mandl from WFMU and many more...should be great fun...

next...it looks like march there will be 2 more sprints - the first will
be at Doctrain West in California. This is sometime around march 17-20.
We have to confirm dates etc. This is focused on writing a manual about
Firefox. We want to entice the technical writing community to be
involved in FM and this is an excellent way to do it. Janet Swisher will
attend to co-host the event with me. We also hope that the Mozilla
support team will send someone to participate but this is yet to be
confirmed.

after that we have another yet-to-be confirmed event which is a possible
book sprint with the Free Software Foundation. I will send more
information about this when it is confirmed, but the manager Peter Brown
just wrote to me to suggest this with some interesting ideas. Its not
confirmed yet but looks promising. 

Also of course in Amsterdam we have the worlds first summit on FLOSS
Manuals and Free Documentation. It is to be held in Amsterdam and about
15-20 FM-ers are attending from around the world and 150 people from 10
other networks. Its going to be exciting! I very much want us to use
this event to discuss the future of free documentation and FLOSS
Manuals, and to plot our future path. The FM coding team will also be
there to work on the new platform.

On Monday I present FLOSS Manuals at the OReilly Tools of Change
conference, but mainly I am there to network FM and to learn more about
how the publishing industry works.

so...other news...there is some possibility of a FM Burmese community,
although this needs a lot more discussion before we can ascertain if
this will happen. Also, I am hoping Elisa will be able to come to the
meeting in Amsterdam to present the forthcoming French FLOSS Manuals and
after that we will have a clear idea on the future of FM in French.

There is also a mini-sprint in Berlin about streaming events using free
software. This will be a part of our 'doing things with free software'
series which the 'Bypassing Internet Censorship' book is a part of. This
is the same series that the Video Production manual that Mick Fuzz is
working on (looks good!).

OpenMoko are transferring all their documentation to FM also, and I am
happy to say that Joshua Gay from the textbook revolution is starting
some manuals in FM.

Also, on the tech side, lulu (the print on demand service we use)
changed their printing process slightly it seems so I have made some
adjustments to the print source production process to match their
changes. It needs some testing, so I have ordered some books and will
know in a few days if it works properly. It might mean that some books
need to have renewed sources so I will refresh them all once I know its
all sorted.

And thats just Feb and March! Amazing.

Also, potentially there will be a manual about mobile wireless
communications in the Artic...(I bet that just woke Tomas Krag up ;) ...
more on that later...

thats all the news for now...more to come, in the meantime I will go
prepare for the FLOSSify event tomorrow

adam








-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net

"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about