[FM Discuss] Recruiting more editors for book sprints

[helen varley jamieson]

what is interesting for me is that the booksprint model breaks open 
traditional methods for book production and offers the possibility for 
different processes, according to the strengths of the collaborators. a 
key task of the facilitator is to observe the group then subtly or 
overtly get people to work on the particular things that they can do 
best. i've gone in to a sprint as a proofreader but ended up doing all 
kinds of other things as well, from structure & editing to writing. the 
combination of the need to just get stuck in & get the job done, along 
with the flexibility to put down one task & pick up another, means that 
you don't lose time struggling with something - you change to something 
you can do better and allow someone else to bring their perspective to 
whatever you were struggling with.

this does result in a broad range of voices within one book, which isn't 
desirable according to traditional book production methods; but within a 
networked, open source environment, what it says to me is that this is a 
book that was created by a community & that has the richness of that 
community embedded within it. it's also never "finished" in the finite 
sense of traditional publishing; it can be updated and improved on an 
ongoing basis.

i think we will evolve new "roles" within the book sprint methodology & 
that at this stage it's important to be as open as possible about how it 
can be.

h : )

On 24/10/11 6:56 AM, adam at flossmanuals.net wrote:
> Just landed in frankfurt. I think we are talking in fundamentally
> different languages andy. I don't challenge the importance of an editor at
> a publisher like oreilly. I do challenge that role in a book sprint.
> Adam
>
>> Had a day to think about editing and group writing...
>>
>> FLOSS Manuals has shown some pretty surprising things about group
>> development. It shows that cooperating amateur authors can produce
>> long content. Wikipedia, in contrast, shows that they can produce a
>> lot of content, but in relatively short pages. The other achievement
>> FLOSS Manuals is striving for, as I understand it, is long content
>> that's cohesive and builds from start to finish, like good books
>> traditionally do. That's where you have to measure your output against
>> the top authors and editors. I admit, lots of traditionally published
>> books lack cohesion and don't build well. But we want great results,
>> not average results.
>>
>> I think you've shown that the cooperating authors can present content
>> from the reader's point of view. They can choose relevant topics and
>> arrange them in a reasonable order. They can even eliminate most of
>> the redundancy that tends to insert itself when many people write at
>> the same time. But I don't believe you've shown that they can do all
>> the things I do as editor, such as make sure introductory material
>> appears in the right place, justify new material to make readers see
>> its relevance, and highlight the most important concepts (which are
>> often implicit). In short, there's kind of a high-level overview of
>> the manual that is more likely to come from an editor than from
>> authors (or from tech reviewers, as I noticed at O'Reilly). This is
>> why I noticed lots of scattered problems along those lines in the
>> second edition of the CiviCRM manual after it was finished, although
>> it was still an impressive product.
>>
>> Andy
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>>
>
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-- 
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helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst
helen at creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.upstage.org.nz
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