[SeasonOfDocs] Hello

[Nick Bearman]

Thanks for the introductions everyone!

Cameron - thank you for your question. I can answer this (or attempt to
answer) with two hats on!

With my academic experience (currently as Teaching Fellow at UCL) I think
there is potential for collaboration across different universities, but one
of the issues here would be making the material project specific. For
example, a Geography department would want a GIS practical with a very
different focus to a International Development School, for example. The
Geography department might want a focus on physical science, e.g. sea level
rise, where as International Development might want a focus on Population
Data or Human Development Index. They would also need to be specific to a
particular version (different unis tend to use different versions of QGIS,
and some are still using QGIS 2.18!) and academics tend to leave things to
the last minute, so coordinating is difficult, and creating something in a
more flexible environment (e.g. that could be re-purposed easily) is more
complex and time consuming than creating something in an environment you
are familiar with (e.g. Word).

With my commercial hat on, I worry about the potential of sharing my
material too widely will result in undermining my own commercial work. I
have to earn money to put food on the table / pay the mortgage etc. and I
see the risk of making my material widely available will result in someone
picking up the material, running a course and undercutting me. I know of at
least two others who also share this view. There seem to be quite a few
QGIS courses around at the moment (which makes the risk of material reuse
higher) where as with material in more of a niche area (e.g. R) there is
maybe less risk. This is a bit of a fuzzy worry and may be an unnecessary
concern but if I make the wrong call on this, it is very difficult to undo!
Jo - what are your / Astun's thoughts on this?

I like the idea of preparing materials for schools and this could be a way
around this, perhaps.

I think Matteo is right about the complexity of contributing putting people
off, but I remember when I contributed a typo to QGIS Documentation, it was
actually quite easy! I think if we can address some of these issues then
that would be really helpful.

I hope this makes sense - comments / thoughts welcome!

Best wishes,
Nick.

On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 at 22:28, Johanna Botman <johanna at jbotman.com> wrote:

> And an introduction from me too ...
>
> I am an Assets / GIS Officer with a local government body in Melbourne,
> Australia. My professional background started as a High School English
> teacher and meandered through IT and now into GIS. I have been responsible
> for writing training material for a wide range of software and delivering
> it through face to face and what was once called Distance Education.
>
> I love QGIS as software, and I admire the community that brought it to
> life and continues to maintain it. I want to make a contribution to that
> community and the FOSS community and I've been around long enough to know
> that I will never be a coder, so understand that my role will be in
> documentation. And I've had my share of frustration trying to make sense of
> the current processes to contribute.
>
> I'm looking forward to being mentored through the Season of Docs to build
> better skills and eventually share them with more writers and more FOSS
> projects.
>
>
> Johanna
>
>
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>


-- 
Nick Bearman
01209 808910 | 07717745715
nick at geospatialtrainingsolutions.co.uk

Due to my own life/work balance, you may get emails from me outside of
normal working hours. Please do not feel any pressure to respond outside of
your own working pattern.
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