[FM Discuss] How will FLOSS Manuals expand? WAS: Are we ready to expand?
adam hyde
adam at flossmanuals.net
Mon May 4 08:30:40 PDT 2009
hey
On Sun, 2009-05-03 at 22:45 -0500, Anne Gentle wrote:
> Great discussion, all. Sorry that I'm a little late in responding. I'm
> sitting here in a hotel room in Atlanta with Janet Swisher - we're
> ready for our presentation about wikis, blogs, and online communities
> for documentation - featuring FLOSS Manuals, naturally) - tomorrow
> at the Society for Tech Comm annual conference. I even got an orange
> blouse for the occasion. :)
good luck!!!!!!!!!!!
(in sprint so cant reply much at mo, but we could make stickers
available thru some kind of web service and work out a way to order them
via FM but have them delivered to you or anyone needing them)
adam
>
> Also, I've got a couple of comments about items I've been working on
> and wanted to give updates on progress:
> - One is, we've discussed having FM join the PR News Wire as a
> non-profit. I got a little stuck here and could use some help. What
> paperwork do I need to prove that FM the stichting is a non-profit
> according to PR NewsWire's standards so that I can fax in the
> application? Does anyone want to follow up on that specific item?
>
> Also, we need to seriously think about the money FM would need to
> continue doing this type of outreach activity after the first year.
> With PR News Wire, the first year is free - after that the membership
> is about $200 a year. I did email with Sean Daly at SugarLabs a bit
> about his strategy for press releases, and he is using eReleases which
> uses PR News Wire's network apparently. With eReleases, even their
> starter pack is about $100 a month to send a press release every
> calendar quarter. These kind of costs make me press pause a bit even
> without figuring out the whole non-profit status part. :) Do those
> prices sound right? Is there another approach?
>
> - I asked for a FM Banner and got a nice one from Lotte (thanks Lotte)
> that anyone can use on their blog or website - see
> http://annegentle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/floss_badge_transp.gif.
>
> - And the embeddable bookstore has been put on several websites.
>
> - We've also seen that SugarLabs having direct links to FLOSS Manuals
> has definitely helped with promotion of FM. We should keep encouraging
> projects to do just that - link right to FM.
>
> - We've given away many round stickers (Janet and I are giving out a
> bunch at our talk tomorrow in fact!) :) I mailed out FM stickers to
> Firefox participants who sent their mailing addresses in - I had
> stickers in the first place because I hand-carried them from
> Amsterdam.
>
> So I guess I'm saying that we do have some of the things Austin
> mentioned in place already, it's just that they're not necessarily
> easily distributed, especially the physical items like stickers.
>
> I'd love for the book-buying process to be so automatic that it's just
> "set it and forget it," which we had hoped Lulu would give to us. I
> really don't mind spending money one time only so that a book's
> distribution and sales channel is just set and left alone. But. I am
> having so much difficulty getting the OLPC book re-sized to crown
> quattro that I'm about ready to give up on Lulu and keep researching
> other alternatives. Chris, thanks for that feedback about Lulu. I may
> be at the tipping point now. :) But I just don't know of the best
> alternative that lets FM do things other than store books, mail books,
> and collect payment for books. Totally agree with Adam that most of us
> are on FM to write, not to figure out publishing channels. Then again,
> if someone wants to take that on as their goal, I don't think we'd
> complain. :)
>
> Anyway, I had been sitting on some thoughts and wanted to send them
> out. I'm talking with Richard Hamilton of XML Press this week and will
> pick his brain for publishing/distribution flows that makes sense for
> FM. I do like the model of the organization itself selling the
> physical books. And Chris thanks so much for your insights on
> purchases that contribute to a social good. That description is the
> right spot for FM, I think.
>
> Thanks,
> Anne
>
> P.S. Andy, I love that we can both have totally different ideas from
> car-building to home-based business for growing FM's content and
> that's just fine. :)
>
> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Austin Martin <ajmartin47 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> In my opinion the only thing we can for sure do, is promote
> our brand, promote FLOSS, and promote learning FLOSS with our
> manuals. Everything else from money to users to growth, comes
> from that. (Example: Wikipedia..)
>
> Suggestions:
> On the FLOSS Manuals Manual, start up a section about how to
> help us promote.
> Provide some art (or let the team help create art to promote
> the brand)
> Provide promotional materials. Banners, flyers, etc.
> Get the FLOSS we write of, to speak of us. (This is very
> important, because this is how and why I joined.) Even a small
> web banner on their site is important, (this goes back to
> art).
>
> Austin Martin
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 8:08 PM, chris hofmann
> <chofmann at meer.net> wrote:
>
>
> adam hyde wrote:
> if FM is to consider making money to cover
> costs and grow, the thing I
> ponder about this is - which part of the
> organisation would make it?
> This isnt a question about WHO would make the
> money, but where in our
> current activities would it be best to make $
>
> In my mind, selling books is something we
> would 'tack on the end' of
> what we do as its not really what we do now.
> What we do now is develop
> content, and so it would make the best sense
> to me that if we can
> generate income to make content we are
> actually fueling current
> processes rather than adopting new ones
>
>
> I agree. Keeping the "content generation engine"
> moving forward is primary. But to
> expand the project needs aditional contributors and
> energy around getting that content
> in front of more eyes. If the project does hit on
> the book that has wide spread appeal
> it needs systems to capitalize on it help with long
> term sustainability.
>
> for example, if we can get someone to pay us
> to write manuals then thats
> cool, cause we do it already, and we like
> doing it, and it means someone
> gets paid and more content goes into FM.
> great, exactly inline with our
> 'mission'
>
>
> My fear is that the number of FLOSS projects that have
> both the interest and money to do
> this might be limited. Is that fear shared by others?
>
> if we start thinking about the need to sell
> books then i dont see this
> as being inline with what we really want to do
> or what we are actually
> doing now. it is an additional activity.
> unless someone comes along to
> do it that is not interested in writing
> manuals this activity actually
> draws energy and resources away from what we
> are doing and want to do -
> writing manuals
>
> That might be the key. If there is someone in the
> community that wanted to take on the task
> of really working out a streamlined, efficient, and
> productive way of turning book sales into
> revenue that could be reinvested into what most of the
> people want to do on the project, then
> that should be encourage and maybe even promoted as a
> challenge. This is also a way to
> expand the community beyond just the core of
> involvement in the book sprint process.
>
> The power of buying something knowing that it has
> social impact and public benifit is pretty
> strong. The "Toms Shoes" model is sell a pair, give
> a pair away
> http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ig-greentoms19-2009apr19,0,1059085.story
> is an example. I could choose any shoe to buy, or
> any book to buy, but if I buy this shoe
> or book it also has social value I'm a lot more opt to
> do that.
>
> If you know that you can download the book for free,
> but if you buy one that it contributes
> to a social good that is is a pretty strong
> motivator; and it has benefits for all that are
> involved.
>
> so i think the best way to think about making
> money to help FM grow is
> to think about where to make it within the
> activities we already are
> doing and doing well
>
>
> absolutely! knowing what you want to do is key.
> knowing how to generate revenues
> to sustain the organization for the long term is
> secondary. But, it also critical if you want
> to be around for the next 3, 5, 10, or 40 years. You
> have to grapple with the idea
> of sustainability at some point if you think the cause
> is important enough to be a long
> term effort.
>
> book sprints, writing chapters for hire,
> documentation consultancy,
> finding orgs to fund new language sites
> etc...are all inline with this.
>
>
> but how long can that last if the number of projects
> and potential audience for the books
> is small?
> also, i would like to point out that at some
> point selling books might
> come into conflict with what we are trying to
> do - we are trying to get
> as much quality info out there as possible
> about how to use free
> software. that is not always going to be
> consistent with a goal to sell
> books - if we became reliant on book revenue
> we would soon come up
> against questions like "if we only held back
> the free version a few
> months we could sell more books" etc....I
> really feel uncomfortable with
> even getting near the space where a
> conversation like this might start
>
>
> DON'T HOLD BACK! People should buy the FLOSS manual
> books only on the premise
> that they get some value over printing their own copy
> or or viewing the content online.
>
> The option to view the content online or print their
> own book should always be available
> and promient! Its the extra value to them and to the
> cause that FLOSS manuals represents
> that is most important.
>
> I think all might be susprised at the number of people
> that would "voluntarily" buy good
> books knowing that they get some value, but more
> importantly their payment contributes
> to a greater good. We were definitely suprised by
> this at mozilla. The software was free
> for download but a large number of people prefered to
> buy the CD or the CD and book
> combo because they knew it had value for them (might
> have been on a slow connection)
> *and* it had value for the mozilla project and its
> long term sustainability.
>
> having said that, i think there is an
> interesting low resource way to
> make a bit of money selling books. since we
> make books anyways, if we
> can partner with organsations whose membership
> would constitute a
> 'target market' for a book, then we should
> work with them to push the
> book out to its members. the first case
> scenario of this is where we are
> working with the Free Software Foundation.
> They will print books, host a
> 'buy now' widget on their site and tell their
> membership to support FM
> by buying books. i am very interested in
> seeing how this works. if it
> works i would like to move forward with
> organisations like Mozilla to
> discuss this possibility also. Orgs like
> Mozilla and the FSF have a much
> bigger reach than we do, and if we can piggy
> back on their outreach we
> might be able to generate not just a profile
> amongst their membership,
> but also some revenue streams that might
> help.
> yes. lots of work to do here but I agree. I bought
> the SVG book off lulu and found it to be
> a hard, slow, expensive and unrewarding process given
> the criteria and goals for the
> process that I've listed above.
>
> however I think this
> should always done with the 'you can get this
> material for free, but if
> you buy this book you help FLOSS Manuals make
> more good stuff" byline
>
>
> absolutely.
>
> -chofmann
>
>
> adam
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 08:05 -0700, chris
> hofmann wrote:
>
> David has some good ideas here. From
> my expericence at Mozilla its
> important to broadly communicate the
> fact that you want or need more money
> and to experiment with a variety of
> ways fo find some good ones that match
> with the core values of the project.
>
> At Mozilla we tried a number of
> community organized campaigns that
> helped with fund raising, and actively
> sought to organize part of our
> community to focus just on these fund
> raising activities.
>
> We set up our own store
> ( http://store.mozilla.org/ ) to sell
> Mozilla gear that help to raise money
> and promote the brand. When the US
> store proved too expensive for
> shipping and import fees to Europe we
> set up a european affliate
> ( http://intlstore.mozilla.org/ ).
>
> The selling promotional goods though
> the store actually exceeded our
> expectaions for how much money it
> might generate, but we also had about
> 6 years of building out the Mozilla
> community to hundreds of thousands of
> participants and followers before we
> set up the store in 2004.
>
> Making the bookstore more prominent
> on http://en.flossmanuals.net/ or
> setting up and entirely new store site
> designed to feature, promote, and
> streamline book sales, then trying
> affliate programs on the web sites of
> all the open source projects now being
> supported to try and drive traffic
> book sales seems like a natural step
> to explore. Working hard on the
> right economic terms to turn book
> sales into a better revenue generator
> and revenue share between the project,
> the book producer, and the shipping
> company might be tricky by it seems
> like it deserves some work. I
> recently bought the Inkscape manual
> from here in the US and I could have
> very easily had most of my payment go
> to the shipping company. If people
> know that most of the money they are
> spending is going for the good cause
> of producing the open source manuals
> they will be much more likely to click
> on that [buy] button.
>
> Really working on trying to produce
> one high quality major hit or best
> seller with one of the books manuals
> might also raise the general
> visibility of project and all the
> things that its doing, and sales of
> all the rest of the books being
> produced. I don't know what that
> might look like but it seems like
> something to explore. There are some
> compelling and increasing relevant
> stories about how open organizations
> work and that might be the hot topic
> that generates wide spread interest in
> a book produced by the project. Jeff
> Javis [1, 2] is writing a lot about
> how google is the new model for how
> companies need to work in an "open
> world" but I'd say free and open
> source projects go way beyond googles
> level of openness. All of the
> "product planning", "ownership and
> decision making" used in the way the
> Internet runs and is a critical part
> of free and open source projects is
> idea that seems timely and
> compelling.
> http://people.mozilla.com/~chofmann/books/open-organizations/chofmann-curve2.png
>
> Exploring "beyond what google would
> do" in a book seems like it might
> compelling to a lot of people.
> Firefox is now getting close to
> reaching 250-275 million users.
> Figuring out the right right book to
> reach big parts of that audience seems
> like a possible way to a big hit as
> well.
>
> I'm sure there might be other great
> ideas about what topic might produce
> the great block buster.
>
> Thousands of press or news articles
> about the blockbuster book produced by
> a community of open source writers
> seems like it could really kick things
> into high gear. I think this best
> fits in with David's key suggestion of
>
> The simple answer is to make your
> project compelling enough that
> people want to help you succeed.
>
> The NY Times ad campaign was another
> great community organized project for
> Mozilla.
> http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-12-15.html
>
> We hoped for 2,500 donations within 10
> days, but ended up with 8000 donations
> in less than a week.
>
> In that campaign we simply asked the
> community to brainstorm about the best
> ways to promote the release of Firefox
> 1.0. They came up with the idea for
> the ad, then with the idea for a
> donation campaign to fund the idea.
> We got the effect of having the ad
> appear in the Times for one day, but
> way beyond that hundereds of news
> articles wrote about the amazing story
> of how it was all accomplished.
>
> But that is just one of many
> promotional and fund raising ideas
> that have been community orgainized.
> http://www.askstudent.com/videos/top-5-mozilla-firefox-ad-campaigns/
>
> I guess my short suggestion starts to
> look like:
>
> 1. Figure out a way to create a block
> buster book
> 2. Find ways to promote the hell out
> of the book, and how it was produced.
> 3. Have things in place so you can
> monitize and raise money out of the
> products that people love and the
> ideas that you want to promote when
> your visibility to the general public
> starts to increase.
>
> -chofmann
>
> 1
> http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Google-Jeff-Jarvis/dp/0061709719
> 2
> http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/qt/podcasts/cover_stories/covercast_01_29_09.mp3
>
> David Farning wrote:
>
> If you are Mozilla Corp... you
> can raise $45 million by
> making
> google.com the default home
> page for your browser.
>
> If you are Wikipedia... you
> can raise $6 million with a
> 'please donate button.'
>
> If you are Ubuntu... you can
> you can find a rich guy to
> fund you.
>
> The simple answer is to make
> your project compelling enough
> that
> people want to help you
> succeed.
>
> If you take away the cost of
> book sprints the expenses of
> FM are
> pretty low. When FM gets to
> the point where book sprints
> are self
> sustaining, the fixed costs of
> keeping FM running will not be
> a large
> concern.
>
> Some viable fund raising
> options for FLOSS Manuals
> would be:
> 1. Continue doing what you are
> doing.
> 2. Add a please donate button
> on the web site. A yearly
> capital
> campaign can be surprising
> successful.
> 3. Partner programs. Many
> projects create value in their
> brand name
> and then sell the 'rights to
> use that brand' to partners.
> For example
> official 'Moodle Partners' pay
> a fee to use the term moodle
> partner.
> 4. Advisory Board. Many
> projects have 'Advisory
> Boards' on which
> organizations with an interest
> in the direction of the
> project sit.
> Depending on the project seats
> can cost between $1,000s and
> $1,000,000s of US dollars.
>
> I think that you will be fine
> just continuing to do what you
> are
> doing. When and if you need
> more money you can start
> looking at other
> options.
>
> david
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:33
> PM, Janet Swisher
> <jmswisher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I generally agree with
> David. My only
> question in all this
> is how to
> generate revenue not
> only for individuals,
> but also for FLOSS
> Manuals
> Stichting. There is
> money in the bank, but
> it will only last so
> long.
> Grants tend to dry up
> once you get past the
> start-up phase, and
> prizes
> are hit-or-miss. Where
> do other foundations
> for open-source
> projects
> get funding?
>
> --Janet
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009
> at 8:03 PM, David
> Farning
> <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>
> FLOSS Manuals
> is already
> expanding
> rather
> nicely. That
> being said,
> the questions
> Andy raises
> will need
> answers
> eventually.
>
> The challenge
> is that FM is
> neither quite
> a community
> lead project
> nor
> is it a
> business. It
> operates as a
> benevolent
> dictatorship
> under
> Adam's
> leadership.
> That is
> fine. Many
> very
> successful
> projects
> operate as
> benevolent
> dictatorships. It _really_ cuts down on the
> overhead.
>
> Now, Andy
> steps up and
> wonders how a
> particular
> business model
> will fit into
> FM.
>
> My gut feeling
> is to tell
> Andy to go for
> it. Start
> selling your
> services as a
> book sprint
> leader and
> editor. FM
> will grow and
> evolve
> to keep up.
>
> The good thing
> about the book
> sprint process
> is that they
> are very
> short and
> involve little
> upfront
> investment.
> Your ability
> to refine
> and improve
> your process
> is pretty
> limitless.
>
> As far as
> putting
> pressure on
> the
> infrastructure, don't worry about
> it.
> Infrastructure can scale. Any load your projects might put on it
> will be
> compensated by
> the increased
> visibility for
> FLOSS Manuals.
> Weak points in
> the process
> can be fixed.
>
> The
> fundamental
> business model
> for open
> source
> products is to
> give
> away the base
> and sell value
> add goods and
> service on top
> of that base
> for a
> premium. The
> open source
> base is the FM
> collaborative
> authoring
> tools. The
> premium
> service is you
> leading the
> book sprint
> and editing
> the finished
> product.
>
> Asking for FM
> to build new
> tools is a
> slightly
> different.
> You will
> either have to
> convince a
> community
> member to add
> the feature or
> hire
> someone to add
> the feature
> for you.
> Those are
> both very
> effective and
> well
> understood
> ideas in the
> open source
> community.
>
> Nothing at FM
> will collapse
> if you start
> selling your
> services. If
> you think of
> yourself as
> AndyOEnterprises doing business ontop of the
> FM stack, see
> no reason why
> the existing
> infrastructure
> and
> organization
> will not be
> able to evolve
> to keep up
> with you:)
>
> david
>
> On Tue, Apr
> 28, 2009 at
> 8:32 AM, Andy
> Oram
> <andyo at oreilly.com> wrote:
>
>
> Aw,
> Anne,
> I'm
> hoping
> to
> build
> the
> Renault of technical documentation, and you talk of a "cottage industry..."
>
> I
> don't
> have a
> comprehensive reply (and that's why I opened up discussion on this group) but I'll add a few points.
>
> 1.
> Adam,
> thanks
> for
> showing confidence that FM can handle projects like the ones I mentioned. I noticed that a lot of the site setup for CiviCRM had to be done by you, and I know that you're teaching other people to do some of it, but I get the impression that we're not ready to have 5 or 10 people setting up new pages on a whim each time we contact an interested project. But I'll just keep you in the loop.
>
> 2.
> David
> Farning was making some detailed notes at Wintercamp, I remember, about what FM needs to scale and be sure of its future. David, that's relevant to this discussion if my memory is right.
>
> 3. A
> company like Cloudera probably has their own facilities that they'd like to use for documentation, but some documentation efforts will probably strain those facilities. That's why I wrote articles about the need for new tools, and FM provides some that make writing easy. But FM is oriented book-length projects and to making it easy to combine chapters into new books. Some of the projects I might recommend to Cloudera or OpenSIMS might be more blog-like.
>
> 4.
> Anne:
> I
> think
> any
> project to which we invite volunteers has to put the documentation under an open license. Nobody would have an incentive to volunteer her time otherwise. I think Cloudera understands that and would go along. Companies are recognizing the real value of open source, which I think I've caught in the last section of my article http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/01/free-software-meets-corporate.html (scroll down to "The most important benefit of free software: developing new programmers")
>
> 5. I'm
> going
> to
> work
> on
> CiviCRM and a couple more projects (OpenSIMS and Cloudera, if they sign up) and figure out how much time I'll take and how much I need to charge to make it more than a sideline. But I don't know how much strain I'm putting on the FM infrastructure or on Adam, and how much FM should ask in addition to what I want to charge.
>
> Andy
>
> -----
> Original Message -----
> From:
> Anne
> Gentle
> <annegentle at justwriteclick.com>
> To:
> discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> Sent:
> Mon,
> 27 Apr
> 2009
> 23:42:21 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] Are we ready to expand?
>
> Andy -
> I
> think
> these
> are
> great
> questions and you are fielding questions for the
> types
> of
> recruit projects we'd want FM to be part of. I agree though that
> scalability is the main issue - I have many more writing projects I'd like
> to be
> part
> of. So
> it's
> scalability of muliple types of people that we'd need
> to
> address. :)
>
> One
> observation I've had is that people are interested in FM and Book
> Sprints especially, but unless their project brings an enthusiastic
> maintainer along with them, the content might not be maintained as well as
> it
> would
> be if
> they
> kept
> even
> one or
> two
> writers as maintainers after the
> excitement of the sprint dies down a little.
>
> ...
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> --
> Anne Gentle
> email: annegentle at justwriteclick.com
> blog: www.justwriteclick.com
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--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
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Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
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