[FM Discuss] FM Meet Up Report important

Thu Oct 13 07:07:48 PDT 2011

hi,

So we had a fantastic 3 day meet up in berlin (Oct 3,4,5). We hired a 
large apartment for everyone to stay in and then hired an equally cool 
venue (a cafe in a park which used to be no-mans-land). It turned out 
the cheapest AND most comfortable way to do things.

Attending were:
Janet Swisher
Tomi Toivio
Elisa de Castro Guerra
Laurent Giacobino
Tuukka Hastrup
Aleksandar Erkalovic
Luka Frelih
Mick Fuzz
Michael McAndrew
Sacha van Geffen
Helen Varley Jamieson
Adam Hyde

So, before we go one...a few announcements. First and foremost, part of 
the meeting was to choose a new board for FLOSS Manuals. It is now in 
place and consists of:
Sacha van Geffen (Chair)
Janet Swisher
Tuukka Hastrup
Elisa de Castro Guerra
Eric Kluitenberg

This is *big* news for us. Its a great board and signals a new era for 
FLOSS Manuals. The board will introduce themselves to the list over the 
days...I am extremely happy to see this board in place. It is a great 
selection of people that know FM for a long time and from many different 
perspectives. I'm looking forward *very* much to this new era with this 
new board.

Other outcomes from the meet - I am appointed Chief Executive, a fancy 
and overly formal title which means pretty much that I do what I do now 
but perhaps not all of it (shedding some of the sysadmin and other tasks 
I have been doing by default). Essentially that means I keep my role 
with 'staying the ship' and am trusted to play somewhat of a leadership 
role. You might read this as 'more of the same' from me ;)

So the meeting put in place this board and we covered a lot of other 
terrain including :
* discussing new part-time staff roles
* establishment of FLOSS Manuals ORG
* strategic discussions about Booki
* organising a new series of events
* establishing a budget for the next 6 months
* establishing new admin list

and more...

If you wish to read the full minutes (35 pages) of the meeting please 
visit the new FM.org (www.flossmanuals.org)  site....and check under the 
'staff & meetings' tab (or get direct from 
http://www.flossmanuals.org/sites/default/files/minutes_Feb_2011.odt).

So, kicking it off - big news for us is that we have some new part-time 
staff. First - we have a new part-time Fundraising Manager. I am 
astounded that we have been lucky enough to have Laurent Giacobino 
(formerly of Internews) join us in this role. Laurent is working 
approximately half time for FM for the next 6 months. We are working now 
to get funds in the bank to keep him, and FM in general, going after 
that period. Any tips for fundraising for Laurent please send them to 
laurent at flossmanuals.net (or [name]@flossmanuals.org, this works for all 
fm email addresses eg laurent at flossmanuals.org, adam at flossmanuals.org etc).

Also Camille Acey is onboard for 5 hours a week working on PR for FLOSS 
Manuals. We are also extremely lucky to have Camille onboard. Camille is 
based in NYC and also works on questioncopyright.org (if you don't know 
that site you should!). Any press contacts (we need them all!) please 
send my sleuth or sail to camille at flossmanuals.net

John Curwood is now going to be managing the FM admin side (he currently 
does this) AND the online (lulu.com) FM book shop - updating all the 
books etc...so any help needed send an email to this list and i am sure 
he will respond quickly.

Tuukka Hastrup and Luka Frelih share the role of technical managers. 
Both extremely capable and we are lucky to have them...tech issues? send 
them to the discuss list (this one) and call them out by name.

And...the new FM ORG I hear you ask? Yes, a further outcome of the 
meeting is that we have decided to create a new entity - 
www.flossmanuals.org -this is the home of the umbrella organisaton for 
FLOSS Manuals. The board is appointed to oversee this AND (at present) 
the English FM. In time however we foresee (and it will be milestoned) 
creating a new foundation for FLOSS Manuals English. We believe that the 
English FM should not be the 'default' home of FM but each language 
community should be equal.

Each FM language community will be its own legal entity (as is true for 
the French FM) and the umbrella org will assist each language community 
with resources such as fundraising expertise, PR, tech support etc.

So FLOSSManuals.org is effectively where you will find people like 
Laurent and Camille, (increasingly) me and the board.

We have this site in place already in scratch form 
(www.flossmanuals.org) - it is running CiviCRM (thanks to Michael 
McAndrew) and we aim to work this site into shape over the next weeks.

Next- We are going to start running a series of FM conferences known as 
Sprint Conferences. We have a reputation for delivering a lot of content 
despite small resources (especially with Book Sprints) and the Sprint 
Confs will push this further. Sprint Confs will build upon the model in 
place for the Google Summer of Code Doc Summit happening next week 
(co-organised and facilitated by FM, GSoC and Aspiration). At this event 
we will run 4 parallel Book Sprints (KDE, OpenStreetMaps, Sahana, and 
OpenMRS). With future Sprint Confs we aim to explode this model and push 
our doc output to another level - the first to happen perhaps as early 
as March.

The Sprint Confs are not just a random thing we wanted to do but fulfil 
two other purposes (we hope) - fundraising and a strategic move to 
further push FLOSS Manuals into the role of 'enabler' and 'context 
provider'. Fundraising is reasonably self explanatory but the last two 
items may sound esoteric.

In essence they mean we need to focus on helping people make docs about 
free software. That means 'enabling' that process where ever possible, 
and providing the contexts for this to happen. We should never be a team 
of professional doc creators or some such doing 'our own thing' - if we 
did get a load of cash from fundraising it should be put to helping 
people create docs and getting the most out of the docs. Those people 
might include you or me and our doc needs/wants, a disparate group 
rallying around a manual 'in' FM, or a group working on docs within 
established free software project etc. Sprint Conferences fit into this 
role perfectly, as do Book Sprints, the current website, this list 
etc...we aim to help people make free documentation about free software 
and provide the spaces to do it, not to employ teams of fulltimers to do 
it for you...

Essentially we realise that FM has achieved a lot already and our past 
(and present) could e categorised something like:
* content building
* platform building
* community building

We now think we have come a long way in each of these. Building content 
and community is always going be close to the heart of FM but we should 
should only be in the business of making tools for as long as it takes 
to make the ones we need. We have done a good job with Booki and it 
might almost be time to find a partner org to help us with managing its 
development. Now its time to move into this new phase of 'context 
provision'. If this still seems unclear to you just hold on to the 
rails, it will become clearer in time as we start actioning some of this 
and refining this objective.

ok...so. At the meeting we also outlined a budget, it is detailed in the 
minutes. Essentially we are spending money to lift FM to a new level 
(not just to keep going as we are now). We don't have a lot of money so 
we are spending it wisely but needless to say the next 6 months for FM 
is very critical.

For this reason we have also put the board in place and we are starting 
a new admin list for managing some of these activities. Anyone can join 
the admin list but if you join it you are expected to *do something* for 
FM. Something more than you currently do. Same with the board, they are 
there to push FM along and so if you have the time and energy to 
volunteer to make things happen then join here:
http://lists.flossmanuals.org/listinfo.cgi/admin-flossmanuals.org

Currently on that list are all those that attended this very special FM 
meet up. Each has made a commitment to get stuck in. All those attending 
also have FM email addresses (janet at flossmanuals.net, 
sacha at flossmanuals.net etc)...so if you want one of those then come to 
the next meeting....

Ok, believe or not that is a *brief* summary. I will leave it to the 
board members and those present to highlight anything they think is 
important that I might have missed or under emphasised.

I can only say that I am astounded at the quality of people we had at 
this meeting - it further highlights what an amazing community we have. 
The discussions were amazing and we (FM) came out of it very 
strengthened I believe. Not only in terms of the (fantastic) board and 
new part-time staff but the meeting is the start of a very strong vision 
for FMs future and a very strong commitment from those that were there 
to help achieve it...we hope you will also pitch in as much as you can...

:)

adam

-- 

--
Adam Hyde
Founder, FLOSS Manuals
Project Manager, Booki
Book Sprint Facilitator
mobile :+ 49 177 4935122
identi.ca : @eset
booki.flossmanuals.net : @adam

http://www.flossmanuals.net
http://www.booki.cc
http://www.booksprints.net

[FM Discuss] FM Meet Up Report *important*

[FM Discuss] FM Meet Up Report important