[FM Discuss] wikimania and foo part II

[Brian Jordan]

Thanks for this writeup, Adam! Sounds like the O'Reilly crew is good
people, and FM is getting some much deserved attention!

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:14 AM, adam hyde<adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> ok...phew...i was off the plane from foo, straight to a wedding, and now
> back after a much needed day watching 6 straight episodes of the
> sopranos...
>

I watched 2 seasons of the Sopranos in 48 hours. So good.

> now, back to bees knees...
>
> wikimania continued...After Erik Moeller I saw a great presentation
> about student authored texts by (I forget their first names) P. Baker
> and D. Allen (I think)...anyways...names aside...they were really very
> interesting although I was to discover later that they are running some
> kind of (slightly) cheesy business off their ideas which didn't quite
> sit well with the wholesomeness of their presentation...I might be being
> too harsh maybe...also, there was a certain lack of clarity about
> licensing of their 'platform', but more on this later...
>
> in essence these guys have been working with students since 2006, using
> wikibooks to create student authored textbooks. essentially the students
> spend 3 weeks writing chapters for a textbook they will use for the rest
> of the semester. each chapter is assigned to 3 students, each of which
> writes their own standalone version of this chapter. there is no, as far
> as i could tell, collaboration in writing the chapters (although I
> imagine this occurs behind the scenes) but rather, students are set up
> in competition, the 'winner' of which has their version of the chapter
> included in the textbook.
>
> i wasnt so keen on the competitive component, but i did like the more
> general idea that students write, and then use, the textbook
>
> some notes i made on the process:
> * the textbooks are outlined by the teachers, and written by the
> students
> * the textbook becomes the primary textbook for the course
> * the highest rated (by other students) text gets included
> * a chapter is 500 - 1000 words
> * they have to include a sidebar to illustrate a point
> * they need to incorporate assessment questions
> * 5 references must be included (2 popular, 2 academic, 1 of either
> type)
> * the text is written in wikibooks (mediawiki)
> * outlines are included in each chapter
> * articles have a number of criteria that they are rated on
>
>
> so...they talked a lot about their experience and how students found the
> exercise. Interestingly, some of the students freak out because they
> just cannot adjust to this model - they expect 'authorised' works and
> the teacher to be the authority and not 'merely' a guide...many students
> become very confident during the process, much more (in their opinion)
> than in 'traditional' teaching processes. Some students become so
> enthusiastic they become critiques of the platform and then there is a
> lot of time battling 'feature creep' (suggestions for new software
> features). The teachers found that there is a lot more 'hand holding'
> required through this process than teaching from a published textbook.
> They also found that this process exposed the fragile nature of the idea
> of what a 'credible source' is...I found this point to be very
> interesting...
>
> the teachers have found that there is a lot of ground that needed to be
> navigated between the open writing process and the rather closed and
> rigid nature of universities themselves...
>
> The textbook is in its 13th 'edition'...the teachers believe that since
> they have gone down this path they need to find a new definition for
> 'textbook'...they believe textbooks are not to be written for mass
> audiences, but should be niche orientated....they like also to focus on
> material that is easily adapted, over material that is widely adapted (a
> vote for open licenses perhaps?), also wikitextbooks are never out of
> date (if maintained as part of the coursework),....they also believe
> they need to change students expectations..the wikitextbook engaged
> students more, and there has been an unexpected and noticable pride of
> authorship, also the students have an increased sophistication in
> critiquing textbooks
>
> in the presenters minds (and I can see their point) the idea of a
> credible source really comes under the hammer. since its not possible to
> call a group of students 'a credible source' yet the work is good, then
> the idea of credibility in text book authoring falls apart. however, the
> view of the teachers is that credibility should be attached to the
> process, not the product (interesting)
>
> their new project, funded by some big US funder, is wittieproject.org
>
> i think its some kind of extension to mediawiki to improve the usability
> of the platform for their purposes. on this point - i got some very
> mixed messages about the openness (license) of the development. i think
> they are saying it is open but its not really, but i could be wrong
>
> next up i went to see Florence Devouard (ex chair of the wikimedia
> foundation) speak. Florence has always seemed very community orientated,
> and strong on her views about wikipedia remaining as open as possible
> but still needing to be pragmatically managed. the point of her talk
> today was about wikimedia usability but i just couldnt get into it,
> maybe it was the jet lag
>
> so...i went to a nice vege restaurant that night then went to bed very
> early
>
> day two...
>
> jimmy wales, wikipedia founder, hit the stage with a quiet and
> interesting presentation. it was titled' the state of the wiki' but it
> was actually about (surprise) the state of wikipedia. I actually find
> the slight misrepresentation of the topic in the title in itself quiet
> illuminating.
>
> so...this talk was mainly about all things wikipedia, and built on the
> recurrent theme about what are they going to do now that there are
> 'just' 100,000 'editors'...ok...some facts...
>
> * there are (in wikipedia) 13 million articles in 271 languages
> * there are 17 million pages
> * 330 million visitors monthly
> * 100,000 active contributors
> * 50 books published on all things wikipedia
> * august 05 there was 73 languages, august 08 156 languages, and august
> 09 - 177 languages
> * lowest wikipedia population is in china
>
> some notes from jimmy points :
> * there has been a low down in uptake in new languages,
> * most languages 'take off' after 3-4 years
> * is the leveling-off of contributors due to wikipedia being too geeky
> or not welcoming?
> * what is the target market?
> * there are a large number of reverted edits - is this wikipedia being
> too unfriendly? or is the content crap?
> * what emphasis should be placed on endangered languages?
> what emphasis should be placed on languages whose population also speak
> a larger, more popular language (eg. Maori)
>
> Jimmy then invited everyone to participate in these discussions via the
> wikimedia foundations strategy wiki : strategy.wikimedia.org
>
> so...coffee, then i checked out the program and it looked a little
> boring for the rest of the morning, so i went to the lightening talks.
> these are 5 min talks given by anyone on anything they want to talk
> about. its good to go to because they are full of new people trying to
> jump onto the radar. so, i put FM down to do one and talked for 5 mins
> about book sprints...i got a lot of +ve response and I think I attracted
> a few new members
>
> in the afternoon i attended and extended lunch, then ran off to see Mako
> (Benjamin Mako Hill) talk about the state of wikimedia scholarship. It
> was a great talk, but my mind was too fried from a crazy travel
> itinerary. I did meet up with Mako later however and drink some good
> Malbec :)
>
> In the afternoon I saw Naoko Komura present about the usability of
> mediawiki. If I understand her right, its not very usable ;) I think you
> can learn alot about her experiments from usability.wikimedia.org (they
> are testing new skins there etc).
>
> That was the last session, i went to dinner with a few people and then
> hit the Malbec, and then practices the presentation I would give the
> next day with my co-presenters Melanie and Shun-ling
>
>
> The last morning was us! wohooo! Shun-ling Chen, Melanie Dulong de
> Rosnay, and me talking about how copyright is boring and no longer
> useful. I posted the notes to the talk I gave to the list before the
> event so I won't elaborate here. I hope I can also convince Melanie and
> Shun-ling to post their notes here too...there was very much good
> feedback from this talk. I also met, immediately after, fellow FM-er
> Yaco, who is in Buenos Aires and came along to wikimania so we could
> meet. It was cool to meet Yaco, and he gave me a Mate cup with FLOSS
> Manuals engraved on the side!!! :) I will post a photo of the cup to the
> FM blog, but I think at the very least this should be our communal mate
> cup for book sprints :)
>
> then Yaco and I walked a little around the city for an hour and talked
> about many things free culture-ish including FM and the SELF platform.
>
> I returned in the afternoon to do a talk with Frank Schulenburg. Frank
> is part of the Wikimedia Foundation and he is doing some documentation
> and education projects and so he invited me (on the 2nd day) to share
> the stage with him. It was very nice of him and at the end of the
> presentation Frank invited me to host a Book Sprint for the
> foundation...lets see how that goes :)
>
> and that was wikimania...I made many good contacts, and renewed old
> ones. I hope the invitation by Frank will being something
> interesting...while in Buenos Aires I also managed to interest some very
> nice locals in FM and they will begin translating soon i hope!
>
> ok...next, i took a taxi to the airport, and flew to san francisco. 15
> hours later, with little sleep, i hired a car at the airport and drove 3
> hours north to Sebastapol, the home of OReilly and the
> 'foocamp'...arriving on the first morning, shaggy, unshowered, unshaved,
> and less than awake...
>
> still, i was determined to make the most of it...foocamp, for those that
> dont know, stands for 'Friends Of OReilly' - camp. i didnt know much
> about it except 2 good friends had told me they had been invited but
> turned down the invitations due to the exclusive nature of the event. It
> apparently is some kind of 'a-list' techosphere schmooze but in tents. I
> was completely unaware of all this, coming very unprepared (not even
> bringing a tent and slept in the car that night...ugh)...I think i was
> invited because I presented at the Tools of Change in NYC. TOC is a
> OReilly event about the changing nature of publishing, and I did a 5 min
> lightening talk there this year. At the end, seated amongst the 25
> audience members, there was Tim OReilly - founder and owner of OReilly
> media. I went up to him and gave him a copy of "How to Bypass Internet
> Censorship' and in return he said he should invite me to foo. I thought
> he had forgotten, but perhaps not...also, weirdly, whenever I mentioned
> I was going, often people would say 'oh! but thats interesting! as FM is
> the competition!' (to OReilly)...weird...are we really? i don't think
> so...i'd be interested in anyone elses thoughts on this, as the point
> was made 3 or 4 times but i still don't see it
>
> anyways...so there i was...more millionaires per square meter than
> moscow, and all looking kinda shabby, but alas, not as shabby as i.
>
> so, first up...coffee...then red eyed to see a nice easy talk about
> kindle hacking...phew...Jesse Vincent gave this talk, and his brain is
> enormous. i couldnt keep up on one coffee alone but it was extremely
> interesting. Essentially Jesse is hacking the kindle to see whats up,
> and trying various hacks. The kindle is basically a linux box, but it
> does all sorts of strange things...if you dont know, amazon can delete
> any content from your kindle _remotely_ and also the operating system
> automagically updates as well...famously there was a mass deletion
> of...1984...(can you believe it)...
>
> so...the kindle is not the free culture advocates friend, but
> thankfully, jesse is...and hes working hard to free the platform from
> the long fingers of amazons DRM protection (etc)...
>
> next i went to something about how publishers determine what books are
> to be written. i dont know. it was too 'inhouse' for me...i didnt know
> who the famous author was, and i didnt get their point - something about
> how books should be written for people (duh)...was i just too tired or
> was this just weirdly convoluted? no idea, but it didnt make much sense
> to me. I had the feeling I had just come out of the jungle and
> discovered a crumbling civilisation - one that spoke the same language
> but all the concepts were untranslatable
>
> so, i actually thought perhaps i should try and understand this point of
> view, and i made it a point to attend discussions that might give me an
> insight on how the publishing industry works.
>
> by the way, foo is deliberately informal. there is an open schedule -
> anyone can put their name on the board to talk about whatever they like.
> i put up my name to talk about Book Sprints.
>
> Anyways...next event was called 'Happiness Hacks'. I thought it might be
> more publishing insights...OReilly has a book series called 'hacks' and
> maybe this was about how to improve it or something...i dont know...so I

If you want some real happiness hacks, check out The How of Happiness
by psych. professor Sonja Lyubomirsky. One of the few "self-help"
books that includes more scientific references than proclaimations of
what's good for you. And it has lots of simple things to try!

Best
B

> turned up, one of 6 people. I sat in the circle...hellos all
> round...then the discussion...it turned out to be some kind of west
> coast IT group therapy session (oops! only 6 people! i cant escape!).
> The first high profile personage that i didnt know talked about the
> problems of being a high profile personage. well, actually they were the
> 4th high profile personage and only really talked about it by being
> asked by an (apparently) high profile start up CEO about "did being in
> the public eye create an expectation by friends that you would not have
> any time for them"...i dont know...i dont want to be mean, so i will
> cease my critique...suffice to say i felt very weird...my
> 'offering' (happiness hack) to the group was to say i am very happy now
> I dont have a net connection at my home...they looked at me like i was
> an alien...
>
> next next next....i walked into a discussion about the Google Book
> Settlement...first person I see is Tim OReilly he said (quote) "Hi! who
> are you!"...it was very friendly, but I guess he must have forgotten he
> invited me ;) ...also, by the way, a hacker friend (who shall remain
> unnamed) spent the evening making his own name tag as he wasnt
> invited...he even gave a presentation and then thanked Tim personally
> for inviting him...
>
> the Google Book Settlement was very interesting...way to dense to relay
> here...but essentially, Google scanned a whole lot of books, now the
> rights holders are represented in a 'class a suit' against google and
> google, rather than going to the wall at $150,000 per violation settled
> out of court...the result being that all rights holders can now get a
> little money from google, but google can commercialise their
> books...this is even more whacky than it sounds...the implication being,
> that because google violated copyrights, and because the joined suitors
> was meant to be 'all book rights holders', then googles settlement
> applies to everyone..so google now has the right to do what they want
> with all books..i would appreciate it if anyone can explain this more
> completely...it was far to dense a legal discussion for me...it was
> interesting to see Brewster Kahle there (Founder of archive.org) who has
> a much bigger picture of the issue but his point of view generated a lot
> of friction in the oreilly crew...anyways....my presentation was meant
> to be in this same room at the end of this discussion, but the
> discussion ran over time so i moved mine to the next day...
>
> while at foo i met with Leslie Hawthorn from Google (summer of Code).
> Leslie saw to it that the Ogg Theora sprint was sponsored and she also
> helped with the Inkscape Sprint. I gave Leslie a hand-bound (by Cara,
> the FM book binder) copy of the Theora book as a thank you (I will post
> photos of the book) and we had a good talk. It might be that we do a
> sprint with google about their summer of code...Leslie will get back to
> me about it..Leslie (who is a big fan of FM) also said quite directly to
> me (and I appreciate her directness) "I dont want you to take this the
> wrong way, but I dont know why you were invited". I didn't take it the
> wrong way, and it reinforced my own slight bemusement
>
> so...i slept the night in the car. ugh...then up next to do my
> presentation...2 people turned up...the head engineer of OReilly and Tim
> OBrien (an OReilly writer). I talked about Book Sprints and Tim got it
> immediately. He was so excited that he went around introducing me to
> people for the rest of the morning. Tim is a really cool guy. He also
> introduced me to Ingy who is a coder that I really hope we can involve
> in Booki.
>
> Tim did such a good job promoting FM to people I didnt know, that at the
> end Tim OReilly, in his thank you speech. name checked FM - we were the
> only organisation he mentioned in fact...weird days...
>
> i also went to a discussion (all events at foo are discussions, its
> kinda like a unconference format) about 'reimagining the book'. It was
> hosted by someone else from OReilly (I cant remember who). I was a
> little frustrated - it seems to me that the point is not to reimagine
> the book, but to reimagine the entire industry...so the conversation
> seemed a little ponderous to me...i said a few things about
> collaborative content creation but I'm not sure anyone got the point.
>
> At the end Jesse (kindle hacker) came up and said he loved FM :)
>
> so, lastly, Brewster Khale came up at the end and we started talking
> about how to host FM material in archive.org...then we started talking
> about Booki, and then he got so excited he invited me to meet with him
> and the coding crew of archive.org the next day...this was a great
> meeting and an announcement about the outcome will follow shortly...
>
> so, i then drove to my crappy airport hotel, slept the fourth night of 9
> in a bed while on this brief and crazy FM promo tour...
>
> the next night I went to town with my NZ buddys Adam and Zita. We
> brought lots of mexican herbs and spices (I have a great mexican cooking
> book but i cant get all the herbs they mentioned in berlin) and then
> then drank a few margaritas and i flew out early the next morning...
>
> ...it was a short trip, but extremely productive...watch for more
> news...
>
> adam
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> --
> Adam Hyde
> Founder FLOSS Manuals
> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>
> "Free manuals for free software"
> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>
>
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