[SeasonOfDocs] Hello

[Cameron Shorter]

Nick, your concerns are valid on both accounts. You are describing the hard
problem of getting a group of people to think collaboratively for the best
interest of the group, for minimal or no personal benefit.
The fact that this is such a hard problem, and so universal, is what makes
it such a valuable problem to solve. And the Season of Docs initiative
might just be the spark and investment needed to get us over the initial
investment hurdle and to the point where working with an existing community
and code base becomes better business sense than going alone.
The challenge we need to start with is to clearly define our "Minimum
Viable Product" that we can focus on in the first initiative. For that, I'm
hoping for insights from you folks with experience in QGIS. What could this
look like?

On Fri, 12 Apr 2019 at 05:47, Nick Bearman <
nick at geospatialtrainingsolutions.co.uk> wrote:

> 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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>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
>>
>
>
> --
> 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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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254
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