[FM Discuss] remote Firefox Book Sprinting in Austin, TX 3/17 and 3/18

[Anne Gentle]

Hi all -
I sent this invitation out to local STCers in Austin this week, but wanted
to be sure any Austin-based FLOSS Manuals writers know about it also.

I'm planning to donate a few hours to the Firefox Book Sprint on March 17
and 18, and I'd love for you to join me! We'll be at Flightpath Coffee
House<http://www.flightpathcoffeehouse.com/>at Duval and 51st from
5pm-7pm both Tuesday and Wednesday.

Here's additional information about the concept of a Book
Sprint<http://justwriteclick.com/2009/02/16/understanding-foundations-before-tools/>.
The book's outline is already started and all you have to do is pick a
chapter and start working on it.
What is a Book Sprint? Book Sprints are an innovative format based on Code
Sprints but with the focus on producing documentation instead of code.
Ideally a week-long event, a Book Sprint starts with an outline for a newly
formed book idea, and ends on the last day with the production of a printed
book available to participants and interested readers using an on demand
print service. Writing a book in a week or less is an incredible and
demanding feat. It was enabled by the FLOSS Manuals platform which has
turned the corner from wiki to collaborative publishing platform. The
platform enables fluent collaboration with local and remote writers, a low
technical threshold and an automated print source generator that produces
beautiful book-formatted PDF files. Upload this file to a print-on-demand
service, and you have a fast moving process able to produce books at the
same rate programmers change the software.

*Firefox Book Sprint at DocTrain West (with remote collaboration
opportunity)*

You are invited to join as a writer in the upcoming Book Sprint. In return,
you learn about writing in a collaborative authoring environment (a wiki),
learn more about the FLOSS Manuals <http://en.flossmanuals.net/> toolkit,
single sourcing, and topic authoring, and offer your knowledge of
Firefox<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html>and web browsing
so that others may benefit from using free documentation to
learn about free software. Each writer brings his or her own laptop to the
sprint. Since the FLOSS Manuals tool is completely web-based, it does not
matter if you use Windows, OSX, or UNIX. The key here is that your
participation matters. We have set up the online tools so you can contribute
from anywhere around the world.

The support team consists of members of FLOSS Manuals writing community with
Adam Hyde, the founder and Janet Swisher leading this workshop-style event.
Chris Hofmann, Director of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation is joining
us as well.

The outline for the Firefox manual will be completed prior to the Book
Sprint, offering a scaffolding for the book. We have gathered documentation
wants and needs from the Firefox team and a real book will be available by
the end of the two-day Sprint.

To contribute you must register and then select a manual and a chapter to
work on. if it is not marked ‘complete’ then press the edit button! It’s as
simple as that.

Contributions can include cleaning up layout, spell checking, adding images,
proof reading, or taking responsibility for writing one of more chapters.
You don’t have to be a technical writer or a super geek, you just need to
know how to write.

If you need to ask us questions about how to contribute then just ask us. We
look forward to your contribution! For more information on using FLOSS
Manuals you may also read our manual at
http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManual.
Remote contributors have signed up from Calgary to Moscow to Bangalore.
Let's get a little group in Austin to join in this global work group.

Thanks,
Anne



-- 
Anne Gentle
email: annegentle at justwriteclick.com
blog: www.justwriteclick.com
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