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It’s In The Mix: User-Generated Software Documentation - The FLOSS Manuals Story
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Usability Matters ... Or, Why On Earth Did They Design It That Way?
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Who Put the Video in My Content? ...Or How to Become a Video and Rich Media Superhero
Program
It’s In The Mix: User-Generated Software Documentation - The FLOSS Manuals Story
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User-generated content is most often associated with comments on blogs, ratings and reviews on book, movie and music websites, and the like. But there’s a new trend that’s flying low, beneath the radar of most conference attendees. It’s called user-generated software documentation, made possible by an innovative web-based open source content remixing tool known as FLOSS Manuals.
FLOSS Manuals is a non-commercial software tools that makes it possible for users of free software products to create user manuals and help guides online—all that’s needed is a web browser and a connection to the internet. FLOSS Manuals fills a big void in the free software arena. Most free and open source tools fail to provide useful documentation, if they bother to document the software at all. By allowing users to create software documentation in a collaborative environment, FLOSS Manuals user guides are constantly evolving. Like Wikipedia, user-generated documentation can be improved by users over time because the quality and accuracy of the information relies on the wisdom of the crowd.
But, that’s not the best part. FLOSS Manuals also allows users to remix content from within a web browser! Users can drag and drop content from existing manuals to create new, derivative works. Users select a style sheet and an output format (PDF, HTML, even a widget) and FLOSS Manuals formats the content and produces the desired output. The new manuals become part of the documentation library and are available to be improved by future users.
Popular presenter, Scott Abel (aka The Content Wrangler) will share the story of FLOSS Manuals, briefly demonstrate how the software works, and explore the many ways this user-generated content approach might be used to create useful content with the help of the crowd. Abel will explore how FLOSS Manuals is making it possible for the One Laptop Per Child Program to include user-generated documentation on the laptops they intend to distribute to needy kids everywhere. And, he will provide advice on how to set up a Book Sprint, a coordinated user-generated documentation project in which writers work collaboratively (in person and remotely via the web) to document free software products in only a few days time.
Laptop computer required for this session
