[FM Discuss] feedback

[adam hyde]

hi

I was asked to talk about my role as an educator by Trebor Sholtz for a
forthcoming book about education and tools...

Just posting this here in the hope of some feedback since the topic is
centered around FM/booki:

========================

My role as an educator revolves around group processes. Essentially I
facilitate groups of 5-10 people working together in one room over an
intensive 3-5 days to produce a book. Zero to book in 5 days (or less).
This process is known as a Book Sprint and although it is an uncommon
practice the common perception is of a Book Production methodology.
However I would argue that in all circumstances the collaborators walk
away having learned a great deal about the subject they have just
created a book about. I also believe that this process can be used by
students to write their own textbooks. Learning what they write and
passing the free textbook onto the next years students to improve. I am
eagerly awaiting the first enlightened institution that would take this
on and I am sure they would be positively surprised by the results –
both in the quality of book produced and by what the students learn in
terms of content and collaboration. 

Book Sprints utilise collaborative digital environments. The only Book
Sprint I know of before we did them used word processing documents –
passing these around via email between collaborators over a period of 3
months or so. Not a 'sprint' as such, more like a long run, but still
the process cut the standard industry timeline down by about 60-80%.
Zero to book in 3 months is pretty good in the publishing industry.
However for FLOSS Manuals 3 months was too long. We wanted to do it in 5
days and so we needed a quicker methodology and a better tool set. Wikis
might come to your mind immediately as it did to us. However it wasn't
long before we realised that wikis were not built with the right
paradigm. Books are very structured and wikis are not. That is the
essence of it – I don't want to get into 'future of the book'
discussions. Books can be many things, I am talking here of what 'most'
people mean by a book. A one piece cover, several hundred pages, table
of contents, structured readable and comprehensive content, self
contained with absolute URLs instead of hyperlinks. We built a system
that could produce this kind of book – paper books – in a Book Sprint
environment. Zero to book in 5 days – that leaves about 3 minutes at the
end to produce book formatted PDF ready to upload to a PoD sevice or
send to the local printer. That is what we needed and wikis don't enable
you to do that. So we hand rolled our own. The first generation was
built on T-Wiki and we pushed it to its outer limits with extensions
built by Aleksandar Erkalovic and a book fomratted PDF renderer built by
Luka Frelih. Now we are onto the second generation – Booki (a BOOK-wikI
if you will). It does the same job as the first tool set, but does it
better – its easier to use, more flexible, and it supports a greater
number of possible output formats and types. 

While Booki does a lot and its hard to imagine a Book Sprint without it,
there are limits to working digitally. Certainly we also experience the
highs of surprising networked collaboration. One sprint ('Introduction
to the Command Line') was written entirely remotely and written in 2
days (Mako Hill, FSF Board member and renown hacker said it was the best
book on its topic). However there are also limits to digital media and
digital networks. I believe that there is less knowledge passed through
digital media when collaborating. I firmly believe this – otherwise we
would have all of our Book Sprints remote – it would cut down on
logistics and costs. However text based chat does not convey enough
information, VOIP is terrible for more than 2 people at a time and even
then I wonder at its real usefulness in intensive collaboration, and
email is just too slow. Microblogging is as good as IRC in this instance
– ie. barely useful. Sneaker networks are not only faster but more fluid
and they enable better shared understandings, quicker. 

In addition I find it is often good to push people out of the screen and
into the book. Since we work fast in sprints we sometimes realise we
need to clean up structural issues. This often occurs when 2 or more
people are working on content that needs to fit together – and it
doesn't. Often we print out the necessary chapters, sit on the floor,
and (gasp) cut-and-paste the chapters into each other until they work.
Same process as a digital text editor, just with a physical tool set –
the result is that it gets better results quicker.

The end result of a Book Sprint is a book. Thats a great thing to have.
However there is also a mandate to take care of, and content to take
care of. How do you enable this content to live? Books do not live by
licenses alone – they need help. They need the original collaborators to
find the avenues to keep the content alive. One strategy is to maintain
this content themselves although, despite good will, this seldom
continues beyond some initial edits immediately after the sprint ends.
The original collaborators need to pass on the mandate to others, this
is critical for the life of the book. As such I discourage the use of
terms like 'authors' as this denotes legacies of ownership and does not
encourage new contributors to take the mandate to improve the book.
Instead the strategies revolve around keeping the participation
threshold low (minimising social filters, using open language, making
Booki simpler and simpler to use) and welcoming in new contributions. We
also welcome forking books. Take a book – make it your own whichever way
you feel is best. However occasionally sprinters, caught up in the
fervor of intensive production, get scared and start building their own
ethical barriers to keep out new contributions. What if they take it and
make money? What if they spam it? What if they change the tone of the
book? Ruin it? This is the ethical quandry put at the foot of freedom by
the fears and protective tendencies of the proprietary publishing
industry, We all carry this a little bit and my response is always 'let
it go'. Let the content be free...





-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals &
Booki Project Manager 

Contact Information
German mobile : + 49 177 4935122
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
irc : irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals


"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about

Free Software for making Free Books
http://www.booki.cc/