[FM Discuss] final TOC

[adam hyde]

so,
the last day of Tools of Change. 

We start the day with Stuart Broughton, the author of the OReilly book
on how to edit Wikipedia ("Wikipedia - the missing manual").

This was a curious presentation. I don't think Stuart is very confident
on stage and the light shining into his eyes meant he spent the entire
presentation shadowing his eyes with his hands. Add these factors to the
lack of microphone for audience questions and you get an ill-at-ease
presenter. Poor guy.  

His presentation was called "What happens when you edit your book
online". Potentially very interesting, potentially a 101 introduction to
all the processes FM is already involved in. It turned out to be
somewhere in between. Essentially Stuart wrote the book (hes a hardcore
Wikipedia guy) and then put the book online, on the Wikipedia site to be
stored forever in that sealed, impenetrable box some call the 'Free'
Documentation License. 

Stuart didnt speak about the book sales other than to hint that they
weren't great. The site got 3000 views in the first 2 days and now gets
about 100 a day (less than many FM manuals). 

The rest of the presentation was indeed an introduction to the idea of
editing a book online, however there were a couple of curious things.
There was a straight forward question to him about "what happens when
someone edits the book, when you release a new print edition will they
be credited?". Simple and obvious question. However his answer was a
little hard to fathom - essentially Stuart would not include any
improvements to the book made in Wikipedia in his paper version. I found
that pretty bizarre. There seemed to be a few issues, first - OReilly
keeps everything in DocBook. So apparently it took a long time to
translate docbook -> wiki pages, and the idea of translating
wiki->docbook doesnt make his day. Fair enough, but I was very surprised
to hear OReillys technical processes were so static, and also, at the
end of the day you can copy and paste a few changes - so this answer
wasn't very convincing to me. The strangest part of his 1/2 answer was
that he obviously felt weird about giving away his 'authorship'. I
couldn't get to the bottom of this, I asked him for clarification and he
replied with a no reply about OReilly business models etc. When I asked
him again if he would talk about why he himself seems to have a problem
(forgetting business models) he just couldnt answer the question. It was
weird. Someone else suggested, to help him out, that maybe he could pay
the people that made big edits, then their work could be considered a
'work for hire' and hence he would be the author (copyright holder) and
he replied that this was what the OReilly lawyers said too. I found this
also very bizarre - why use an 'open' license if you are not going to
use it? Weird.

Lastly, it seems that there have actually been very few edits to his
book online. There is also something in here about 'who has the mandate
to edit'? If a text is authored by one person I think others feel
inhibited to make alterations. However if a book is generated from a
community process, then the mandate to edit has a broader scope. FM of
course tries to give the mandate to everyone, but leave the publishing
process to the maintainer - however it doesn't mean that people always
_feel_ they can edit something, and thats an interesting issue in
itself.

I was left wondering what was going on here? There seemed to me to be a
huge reluctance by Stuart to engage in the same processes as an author
as he was used to when working with Wikipedia - ie. open collaborative
authoring. Was this an issue he had himself? Or was this because OReilly
can't work with this idea? Was this something weird emanating from the
Wikimedia Foundation?

After a bit of pondering I could only conclude that the world of open -
community authoring and the 'single author' publishing world often can't
work together for emotional, egocentric, technical, license,
promotional, and accreditation issues amongst others. Depending on who
is involved the mix and emphasis of reasons will be different. 

In this case, regarding OReilly, I was left wondering if it is possible
that the need to attribute texts to known persons is such an important
part of their business model that they can't let it go? Do they see
their need to be the 'conveyers of status' (as Tim OReilly was to speak
about later) that they cannot commit entirely to texts where there is no
identifiable author? This doesn't seem to be the entire reason but there
was a hint of it in Stuarts presentation.

However, for me the emotional / egocentric reasons are the most
interesting. Why didn't Stuart feel comfortable including other peoples
edits in the book? Stuart could not shed any light on this, a pity as he
represented an interesting axis between community and single-author
publishing.

So I couldn't answer this question and many others that the presentation
inspired. It was a fascinating presentation if only for the things it
did not say.

Next was a panel called 'Meet the CEOs' or something. I don't remember,
it was kinda boring except Tim OReilly and Bob Young (CEO of lulu.com)
said a few interesting things. Essentially Bob Young talked about lulus
strategy as being a tool provider - helping others publish themselves.
They are more than a print on demand service, they are more of a
publishing platform (as opposed to being a 'publisher'). That was an
interesting delineation. 

Tim OReilly relayed an interesting anecdote about how they recently
worked with some authors to write a book about a programming language
that has a small user group but is coming back because it is designed
for working with multiple processes...(anyone know the name of this?).
He was saying that the authors drew a lot of information from the
community and then when OReilly came to sell the book they pondered who
will buy it? The language has a finite user group and they all
contributed to the book itself, so they don't need it. As it turned out
just about all of the expert group brought a copy of the book. Tim
OReilly attributed this to the idea that the book is a souveneer of a
collaborative process, Interesting. He also talked about the idea that
OReilly 'conveys status' on authors and online entities, and this is a
very important role for both him and the organisation. Tim OReilly
actively builds up his profile on Twitter (etc) to maintain this
position.

After the presentation I went up to Bob Young (he was also the CEO of
Redhat at some point) and gave him a copy of the Bypassing Internet
Censorship book. It was nice to meet him, a very charming guy.

The next sessions were all kind of dull. I popped in and out of the
sessions. I learned in one that OReilly doesn't consider that torrent
versions of their books have an effect on sales. I met a woman from Pan
McMillan who was amazed that FM could produce books so easily. They want
to do some kind of print on demand for back catalog stuff but they are
frozen by their 'industry standard' technical processes.

I also talked to the Safari Books people about getting FM content sold
within their service, They seemed interested but I will have to follow
this up.

Lastly, the final keynotes. There weren't actually that many people
left. I found myself sitting next to Stephen Colbert and had to email
Aco (his biggest fan ;) Nick Bilton from the New York Times was up
first. I think the NYT are doing amazing things with media on their
site. Its interesting to me that the NYT and the BBC are more
adventurous than most new media artists when it comes to experimenting
with online content. Many years ago (maybe 6-7 years ago) the BBC was
experimenting with OGG vorbis as an audio format. I found that
incredible - and the NYT is doing some cool things with their audio
slideshows etc.

Anyways, Nick Bilton was interesting, but he just did a demo of some
stuff I had already seen on the NYT. He did talk about how his kid wants
media all the time from everywhere for free and how proud he was about
learning about how the new generation works through his kids. Someone
leaned over to me and whispered "I dont want a kid like that!"...

He also talked a little about how he thinks publishers should make sites
for authors. He sees this as key for the survival of the industry.

Next up, Tim OReilly. He did the 'Steve Jobs' kind of rant. Inspired,
loving what he does, and transmitting this energy through to the
audience. He covered a lot but essentially (short notes) :
* Cathedrals used to be the media for stories, but books killed that
* Gutenberg could not have imagined universal literacy and the impact of
the printing press
* in 19 years the web has generated more text than all the books ever
published
* people are reading a lot
* publishers need to get rapid development processes
* publishers should do more for authors
* publishers need to convey status
* he sees DRM as an obstacle
* PDF is the most popular reading format for laptops
* OReilly sales are now 50% books, 50% electronic
* while putting books in electronic form OReilly hasnt lost market share
(although he didnt say if the market itself has shrunk)
* he sees participation as driving revenue
* when OReilly sold electronic copies at 4.99 (cant remember the title)
they tried putting the price up and the sales dived. 
* he sees free electronic content as enabling the market for paid books

That was about it. It was a great presentation. Last was Nina Paley. I
found myself sitting next to Nina at the breakfast table that day so we
chatted a little and she gave me a copy of her DVD 'Sita Sings the
Blues'. Nina made this movie herself and its doing wonderfully well.
Essentially however, because of some 50 year old songs she used, Nina
now has to raise 50,000 USD to buy the rights so she can release her own
work.

So, Nina has released the movie under creative commons and gives the
movie away. It has done the round of film festivals and as a result of
her strategy to avoid using normal distribution agencies and models,
people around the world have volunteered to hold fund raising events for
her and Nina has made 30,000 or so in a few months, Amazing.

So, Ninas presentation was about Copyright and how it works against the
artist. At first Nina came across as very naive, but that didn't last.
Her presentation was the best argument against 'all rights reserved'
that I have seen. It was really fantastic. I will try and find the URL
for the video (I think all presentations were recorded and out online)
as I can't do it justice here. You have to see it.

Okedoke...that was it...a great event. I'm very glad I went an presented
FM and I'm also happy to have good food for thought which I hope to have
included in some parseable form here.

:)

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