[FM Discuss] Session 2 notes - Wednesday afternoon

[Martin Kean]

Session 2 - Room 3
Wednesday afternoon 4 March 2009

Present: Adam, Ann, Ed, Patrick, Ali, David, Zita, Martin, Aco, Douglas,
Mike, Andy

[On a theatre stage with the spot lights on, green, blue, purple gels]

A book is a place where readers and writers sometimes meet - Steiner

Ann - synergy between wiki site & FM and remote collaboration

Patrick - how increase readership. UI features, embedding, where would
people use the manuals, PR, embedding and syndication

Ed - contracts

Output formats feed into readership

Structure and sustainibility of organisation

Forking content / remix / cross topic collaboration

Contribution thresholds / satisfying experiences for writers

Images : tables instead of screenshots
standardised

The big topics today:
Outreach
Content Management
Booki
Book Sprints
Structure & Sustainibility

Booki discussion
Need a platform for collaborative authoring of books, but no suitable
platorm available
Accounts -based systems
Create real project administrators
Have the facility to have multiple versions of a project/book
have a default version of the book
TOC will be in the editing system / drag and drop to arrange chapters
We need to improve the chat and chat history
Each user will have profile page
showcase of work
Improve PDF creation
Capability to hold 1000s of books
Attachments- automatically resize, resolution, manage resolution
Drop automatic linking in chapters
Version and history system, better management required
Output formats - to html, PDF, openoffice doc, docbook, didda, git
Editor improvements
Education - use DIFF history comparison utility to get students involved
and use for assessment
clone a repository, change, and push back????
A visual DIFF that highlights changes
Tools for the user
online collaboration tools for booksprints
Friday night FLOSS????
Newsfeed / chat / recent changes
Emulate Sugar tools?
User interaction / user experience
IRC chat history
Server acts as one user in IRC / but names are shown
Tasks could be colour-coded? Is the IRC becoming too complicated? Is
this scaling too fast?
IRC should not be developed independently
Where does Booki play in sustainability of FLOSSmanuals?
Booki and NGOs
it's needed for NGOs to author books
provide a mechanism and generate revenue
OSI are likely to fund helping NGOs to write books
Sustainability
increasing readership - Dec 2008 there were 11,500 downloads/month
Teaching yourself online / Moodle?? / step-by-step / James Warbank
Uploading teaching tools to FLOSSmanuals / getting students to
contribute
Topic-based / appendix-based teacing tools
How can Booki and Moodle share things?
Most software products fail in version 2!!! - (David)
    - so modularise!
Booki will be multi-lingual by using Django

Book Sprints - Ann's presentation + discussion
pick a date (availability of key participants)
pick a location / 2 rooms / feed people
Toolset / preplanning / determining audience, scope, outline
(eg kids, parents, teachers)
Assign writing from day one
People will join right up to the last minute
event-based documentation
writers should be able to use FM immediately
editor used 2 browser windows to check html against text
which spellchecker to use - US or UK?
Make sure people understand the level of expertise and make sure people
don’t make incorrect changes
Versus, good enough is good enough
Aesthetic vs pedagogy ??
Make good use of the talk page to give feedback to writers about
chapters, design aesthetics etc.
How do we improve sprints?
How to change the ‘incomplete’ progress marker?
Have a real public space where everyone at the sprint can see the one
screen
Should there be a producer? - food/location/people mgt/driving
Should there be someone documenting it?
How to make remote contributor's experience richer?
Can make the book sprint follow the sun / or parallel sprint
Conference call for remote contributors / VOIP / SKYP
E
But VOIP/SKYPE
has no history
How to decide which remote cThe local simultanRemote collaboration might work better on second iteration through the
book
Encourage book sprints in many locations
Book sprint ambassador pack to encourage people to take on sprints /
franchises
You have to send the information widely even if a minority jump on board
There can be different strengths of booksprints? Serious vs casual|
Can we have people pay us to do booksprints?
Should Booki be included in the documentation that goes out to people
before a booksprint?
Friday night FLOSS / FlashMob booksprint?
FM Minisprints / Style-sprint / student minisprint
We need a mini-sprint schedule
Combine weekend sprint / follow-the-sun
Open Creation Tools booksprint in July

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