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On 05/08/11 01:46, Suchith Anand wrote:
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi Cameron,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As you know, the e-learning platform for
the Open Geospatial community (ELOGeo) is now ready. It will
be really good if the quick start guides, tutorials etc in
OSGeo LiveDVD are put in the repository. We can create
separate section for LiveDVD articles in the repository. We
greatly welcome your suggestions and inputs for this.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Suchith</p>
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<br>
Suchith,<br>
CCing osgeo-live and education lists, with your permission.<br>
<br>
I agree that it would be valuable to align OSGeo-Live and ELOGeo
efforts. What I think is important is that we define what we would
like our documentation repository to look like in 3 to 5 years time,
beyond the initial project kickoff, and then focus on putting
processes in place for maintaining the documentation repository in
order to get to our goals.<br>
<br>
You see, documentation becomes dated, and needs to be maintained if
it is to remain current. Documentation is developed to different
target audiences, is written to different depths of completeness,
and to varying levels of quality.<br>
The challenges that ELOGeo can help solve is:<br>
<br>
1. Make it easier to publish and find related documentation about
open source geospatial topics.<br>
<br>
2. Help keep existing documentation up to date, by matching
maintainers with source authors, and providing processes and tools
for updating documents.<br>
<br>
3. Remove, hide, or make less important, dated documentation, so
that it is easier to find the relevant documents.<br>
<br>
4. Increase consistency, quality and inter-relatedness of
documentation. In particular, ensure that created documents connect
with each other. Ie, all document authors shouldn't need to write a
history of GIS. That could be handled once, then everyone else can
reference the one document.<br>
<br>
From what I've seen so far, it seems that ELOGeo is currently only
tackling item 1: building a register of documents, something like
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://freshmeat.net">http://freshmeat.net</a>. This is valuable in that it helps build an
audit of what is available, but there is still a lot more work
required before it will be very valuable. And by very valuable, I
mean that I'd like to see the majority of lecturers and educators
around the world use the ELOGeo repository as a primary source of
teaching material, and to maintain existing material as part of
their day to day work, because doing so is easier than not!<br>
<br>
I'm convinced that this goal is possible, because in a small way, we
have done something similar for OSGeo-Live. But what I believe is
required is:<br>
<br>
1. A vision of what a full set of course material will look like,
along with a definition of end users and links back to training
goals (like the Body of Knowledge and University training courses).<br>
<br>
2. Writing templates and guidelines, and supporting tools.<br>
<br>
3. Associated processes and workflows for document creation.<br>
<br>
4. A dedicated editor/technical writer charged with providing the
technical review.<br>
<br>
5. A project coordinator / champion who will help attract authors,
and help authors write funding proposals for their external
organizations. <br>
<br>
-----------------------<br>
<br>
That said, I think you were just asking about the short term goal of
how to get OSGeo-Live listed in the existing ELOGeo repository.<br>
My suggestion is that it just becomes part of the OSGeo-Live release
process. We should keep such registration simple, so that it
continues to be maintained in future.<br>
So I suggest just one entry for all of OSGeo-Live, rather than
writing an entry for all 50 odd projects.<br>
I also feel that it is important for the point of truth for latest
material should point back to the source, in this case,
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://live.osgeo.org">http://live.osgeo.org</a>.<br>
I'll have more time to look at the details after the upcoming
release of OSGeo-Live. (Feel free to remind me if I forget).<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Director
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.lisasoft.com">http://www.lisasoft.com</a>
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