FLOSS Manuals

This week-end, Nicolas Dufour, Cédric Gémy et Elisa de Castro Guerra will be in Toulouse for the “Capitole du Libre”, the major event of the “Pink City” focused on free software.

FMfr will present two sesssions:

• Fmfr or the new bet for quality free documentation on free software
• Profesional use of Scribus and impact of Scribus in the African publishing industry

FMfr will also animate workshops on Inkscape, Gimp and Scribus documentation.

Today, in the suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe, a book sprint has started to write one manual (or more) on the Freedom Fone solution.

Freedom Fone is an open source telephony platform that can build interactive, two way, phone based information services using interactive audio voice menus, voice messages, SMS and polls.

Freedom Fone is a project initiated by The Kubatana Trust of Zimbabwe, an aggregator of civil society information in Zimbabwe. Freedom Fone is relevant in many contexts of interest for civil society around the globe, such as election monitoring, health information campaigns, citizen journalism, emergency response to humanitarian crisis…

From November 5 to 9, a book sprint is taking place in Rennes (France), organized by FLOSS Manuals Francophone (FMFR)

7 authors are gathered to write a free books on Libre/Open Fonts:

•  Frank Adebiaye (Bénin / France)
•  Denis Jacquerye (Congo R.D. / Belgique)
•  Cédric Gémy (France)
•  Pierre Huyghbaert (Belgique)
•  Boureima Kinda (Burkina Faso)
•  Murielle Souryis (France)
•  Nicolas Spalinger (Suisse / France)

This book sprint is facilitated by Elisa de Castro Guerra.

MOVEMENTS.ORG, a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, connecting, and supporting grassroots digital activists from around the world, has just decided to strengthen its toolkit with our beloved “How to Bypass Internet Censorship”:

http://www.movements.org/how-to/entry/how-to-bypass-internet-censorship

As you may already know, the “How to Bypass Internet Censorship” manual was put together in a booksprint facilitated by FLOSS Manuals last February in Berlin.

Since February 2011, “How To Bypass Internet Censorship” has been translated into Arabic, Farsi, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Chinese and Burmese.

I was asked by Adam from Floss Manuals, if I could facilitate a workshop on Documentation for the TEH network in Bordeaux in late Oct 2011. I was keen to do it, partly because I was travelling through that part of the world in a small camper van and was happy for a break in a hotel, and partly because the idea of teaching a day long workshop on distributed and collaborative documentation was a good incentive in itself.

Great insights (incites?) as always from Andy Oram from O’Reilly this time about the difference between traditional book writing and collaborative authoring.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/10/wrap-up-from-floss-manuals-boo.html

There’s also some thought provoking stories on the Out of Ink project website from the Network Cultures people.http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/outofink/?cat=20

Especially worth checking out is this story of the birth of the BookSprint from Thomas Kraag.

A nice interview of Tuukka Hastrup, member of the board of FLOSS Manuals, where he  presents FLOSS Manuals at the 2001 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) San Francisco Community Summit, in October 2011.

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Community spotlight: Scott Nesbitt, contributor to FLOSS manualsPosted 21 Oct 2011 by Jason Hibbets (Red Hat) (original article here)

Meet Scott Nesbitt. He’s a freelance writer and consultant in Toronto, Canada. He uses open source tools for more than 85 percent of the work he does. He’s idealistic about more getting more open data from our governments. Nesbitt also contributes to FLOSS Manuals (FLOSS stands for Free/Libre open source software) by helping to document open source projects. Documentation for the win!

PRESS RELEASE

Collaborative Book Writing Event on Arduino to Take Place in Dakar, Senegal 

From October 19th to 23rd, Francophile techies will gather at Kër Thiossane Villa in Dakar, Senegal to create a user-produced manual for the open source Arduino hardware and software. The 5-day event known as a “Book Sprint” is sponsored in part by the French chapter of FLOSS Manuals (fr.flossmanuals.net), an international organization committed to producing free manuals for free software, and brings together an international group of seven co-authors from different countries who share a common expertise in the Arduino platform. 

This group includes:

*Roland Kossigan Assilevi (Senegal), who is a digital trainer and member of Kër Thiossane;  

* Mamadou Coulibaly (Mali), a digital trainer who is part of the team that drives the Yeta Collectiveand medialab in Bamako, Mali;  

* Donneaud Maurin  (France), who is an Interaction Designer,  physical objects programmer, and lecturer for the Art Sensitif Ressource Center (Cras) and for textile design schools (ENSCI Paris, ENSAAMA Paris, London CSM);

* Cédric Doutriaux (France), multimedia artist and trainer;

* Simon Laroche (Quebec), artist, teacher and interactive designer, specializing in audiovisual equipment and robotics, collaborator (with designer Ying Gao) in design of interactive clothing;

* Florian Pittet (Switzerland), interactive designer and new media teacher at the School of Applied Arts in Lausanne (ECAL);

*Marie-Paul Uwase (Rwanda), university lecturer, Secretary of the African Network of Users of Free Software (RAL), and President of the Rwandan Association for the Promotion of Free Software in Rwanda.

The Book Sprint will be facilitated by Elisa de Castro Guerra, a graphic designer, BookSprints.net trained facilitator, and President of FLOSS Manuals France. The event is made possible thanks to the support of the International Organization of la Francophonie in partnership with Kër Thiossane, the Yeta Collective, PiNG, and Mains d'Oeuvres .

Any and all who wish to participate online can do so by joining the #flossmanuals channel of the irc.freenode.net network from October 20th onwards. 

For more information, see: 
http://www.booksprints.net
http://www.flossmanuals.net
http://www.ker-thiossane.org/

Contact: 
Camille E. Acey
FlossManuals.org
+1 (347) 267 2016
press@flossmanuals.net

FLOSS Manuals sprint starts at Google Summer of Code summit
by Andy Oram

(original article here)

Five days of intense book production kicked off today at the FLOSS Manuals sprint, hosted by Google. Four free software projects have each sent three to five volunteers to write books about the projects this week. Along the way we’ll all learn about the group writing process and the particular use of book sprints to make documentation for free software.