[FM Discuss] help with article

[adam hyde]

hi

Many thanks for Andy Oram for his edits notes and comments...I have
included the altered article below. I now have to write a section
explicitly on FLOSS Manuals. The outline I have been given reads:


---
1. please write a short introduction to the technology, which should be
comprised of a description with some historical background. This could
include a truncated version of the history of web browsing or social
bookmarking, for example. 
<500 words

2. Third, please share your experiences–the pros and cons of teaching,
learning, and researching with this tool. 
<500 words

3. And fourth, please outline an example of one of your especially
successful assignments using this technology.  
<500 words
---

I can write #1 easy enough but #2 and #3 are directed at educators
within institutions I think...Im not one of them. Anyone out there in
fm-land had experience with #2 and #3 in institutional ed environments
that I can use as examples in the text? 

many thanks for any help...




adam


-------

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 most people who ask for and participate in a sprint see it as 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 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 we had
already 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, so 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 very few references to other parts of the document and
careful use of outside references instead of a welter of back-and-forth
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 service 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 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 in a Book Sprint. Certainly we
also experience the highs of surprising networked collaboration. One
sprint ('Introduction to the Command Line') was written almost 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 communication channels 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, often get worried about misappropriation or unethical use
and erect barriers that do nothing to help and a lot to hurt. They ask
themselves questions like 'What if someone takes the content and make
money? What if contributors spam the book? What if someone changes the
tone of the book? Could contributions ruin it?' This is the ethical
quandry put at the foot of freedom largely by the fears and protective
necessities 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 and you will be happily surprised by the results. The irony is that
once sprinters are convinced of this idea they are left 'fighting' the
default – standard attitudes towards publishing and authorship means its
hard work to get people to uptake the freedoms of free content. Book
Sprint collaborators (and free content developers in general) often need
to put a lot of energy into reaching out to others to get them to take
ownership of the material and make changes, but it can be done with the
right approach. I am hoping soon we see will the integration of Book
Sprints into Curriculum to create and improve textbooks as another way
to explicitly pass on the mandate to change and I'm very much looking
forward to seeing this strategy develop...



-- 
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


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