Re: Google Doc Camp

On Aug 3, 2013, at 18:45, Craig Kerstiens <craig(at)heroku(dot)com> wrote:

> There's a great set of reference docs, but in terms of getting started its quite painful.

Yes, I can speak from experience that getting started with Postgres is definitely the biggest obstacle to its adoption. The Postgres docs don't help enough. Even the reference doc, as excellent as it is, fails to document all the options faced by a newbie in the "New Database" dialog/wizard in the pgAdmin app. The commercial book publishers offer nothing for newbies, at least not anything updated for later generations of Postgres. I could not find much useful material on the web for getting started. Frankly, I would have given up on trying Postgres had it not been for the friendly folks at a recently founded local Postgres user group (Seattle).

--| About BookSprints |----

These flossmanuals.org folks seem to have worked out a methodology for a very intensive process to produce an _entire_ book. This not a casual get-together to talk about working on a few chunks of material. They call it a BookSprint, like a code sprint. A facilitator has been assigned (Adam Hyde).

--
A sprint brings together a group of writers, editors, and perhaps an artist and production specialist, to go from outline to published book in five days.
--

I can see that a focused multi-day in-person collaborative effort with an experienced facilitator might be vastly more productive than a weak effort distributed over space and time. Having Google provide space and food makes for an exceptional opportunity.

--| About Me |----

I would be glad to contribute to the Postgres project by committing to the full 5 days of this Doc Camp.

I'm not a Postgres expert, just an infrequent user over the last 3-4 years. I expect to become a full-time Postgres user, but my recent projects did not go that direction. I've attended most monthly meetings of our local user group, and I attended the PostgreSQL Conference West 2010. I've done a couple of evangelizing "Intro to Postgres" presentations at a different user group. I'm an old-hand at relational databases (4D.com) building database-backed apps for client company workgroups and departments. But I am relatively new to SQL.

In a past life, I was a technical writer at a large proprietary software company. I later spent a couple years teaching a pair of week-long seminars, one for novice database programmers and another advanced one for professionals. So I am skilled at technical writing and instructional design. And I'm willing to do much of the scutwork, such as typing and copy-editing. I have an eagle-eye for detail in writing.

--| Going Forward |----

Unfortunately, the "2013 Doc Camp Call for Proposals" had a due date of August 7, three days ago. Perhaps if we organize quickly, we can still slip in under the wire.

http://www.flossmanuals.org/news/2013-doc-camp-call-proposals

Looks like they are aiming for 4-5 individuals per team. I'm not clear on this, but it seems we might pick up individuals during the first part (2-day Unconference) who may not already be committed to a project. Nevertheless, I believe we should apply only if we have multiple people willing to commit now.

Anyone else interested or willing to commit?

--Basil Bourque