[SeasonOfDocs] QGIS Training materials and so on

[Cameron Shorter]

Thanks Piers for sharing.

I'm forwarding to the QGIS Community page where qgis documenters are 
communicating.

QGIS writers, I suspect you will want to monitor and contribute to our 
OSGeo Season of Docs communication. You can subscribe at:

https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/seasonofdocs/

On 21/4/19 1:06 pm, Piers Higgs wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Cameron and I had a brief discussion this morning via email, and he 
> asked if I'd share some of my thoughts here on the list - so I've just 
> joined up to do so.
>
> I probably don't know many people on this list, but I run a little 
> tech shop called Gaia Resources in Australia.  You can find out more 
> about us on the www.gaiaresources.com.au 
> <http://www.gaiaresources.com.au> web site, but I've had a background 
> in spatial tech myself, and while we're tech agnostic, we also prefer 
> open source and try to give back where we can.  We've been doing a 
> bunch of things with QGIS for a fair while now, and trying to get to 
> events and support the open source community where we can.  Our freely 
> available online QGIS course seems to be reasonably popular (more on 
> that to come).
>
> So some thoughts on technical writing, training materials and courses 
> to follow - happy to carry on the conversation here on the list or 
> personally, if you prefer.
>
> _Technical writing_
> I am a keen (technical) writer myself, but I am probably the most time 
> poor person at Gaia Resources.  While I'd personally love to be more 
> involved in helping with the writing and putting our names down across 
> some of the season of docs stuff, we're probably not going to have 
> time to really provide a lot of input.  We are pretty busy with the 
> operational side of the business, and all of us already volunteer in 
> different ways outside of work hours, or have families to look after.  
> So I'm not sure that as a company, we could be heavily involved in the 
> technical writing component.
>
> We might be able to help here and there, but as a small business we 
> often have a lot of competing priorities, and keeping the lights on 
> with paid work will always trump our idealistic natures :)
>
> _Training materials_
> Our freely available QGIS training course (which focuses on the 
> environmental side, as per 
> https://www.gaiaresources.com.au/our-services/online-training/) was 
> released last year, which has:
>
> * A series of youtube videos - 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fag9Yn65Qy0&list=PLfInsSYJw1lQ_vii1wxePr7aKqBOziKVQ
> * A manual that has been designed around these chapters, and
> * A data package that contains all the data to run the course.
>
> All we ask is that people let us know that they want to use the 
> course, and then we can see who around the world is using it and to 
> see if there is any demand for updates.  Once we get a request, we 
> just send a link to a Dropbox folder where they can get the manual and 
> data.  We also run our own commercial training courses, but we mainly 
> do that for clients that are after us to train a bunch of people at 
> once - a lot of the individual requests are too hard to set up 
> training courses for, so we point them at our free training instead. 
> Our commercial training uses our manuals and data but not the videos, 
> so we run those in the latest Long Term Release (LTR), which keeps our 
> materials up to scratch.
>
> The videos are a different story.  They are based on an old LTR, 2.18, 
> and we're currently working on a new 3.4 version which we hope to push 
> out a new set of videos for in June.  By that stage QGIS will have 
> probably evolved a bit further, so the overhead of keeping these 
> videos up to date is a pain (the manual and data, much easier!).  
> Video assets are just time consuming to maintain.
>
> So, we do have people using our course from all over the world (a few 
> are - see the map 
> athttps://www.gaiaresources.com.au/our-services/online-training/) and 
> a lot of what they say is that it does lower the barrier to entry (at 
> least to the people wanting to use QGIS), which is what I think you 
> are all trying to do.  To be frank, better documentation isn't (by 
> itself) going to lower that barrier for a lot of people who want to 
> get started with something more hands on and useful, rather than 
> trying to read lots of written stuff.  Which is why we were keen to 
> get this course made and out there.
>
> Our aim is to keep updating our course and making it freely available 
> (yes, I hate monopolies too).  We'll keep having an "environmental" 
> bent in it, but hopefully a few others might take this on board and 
> start putting together courses that cover other disciplines, such as 
> geology, planning, etc.  It shouldn't be too hard to set that up (if a 
> small business in Perth can do it... ;)  We haven't found that putting 
> this course out there has eroded the demand for commercial training, 
> too - it's probably increased it, if anything.
>
> I don't know how this would work, but if our training materials can 
> get used to bootstrap something, I'm all for that (some sort of 
> Creative Commons licence would probably work here).
>
> _Ongoing courses_
> We are happy to run this training course at any of the FOSS4G 
> conferences that we attend, or get involved in those more if you 
> like.  The last FOSS4G one in Australia was pretty good - our team 
> really liked it, we learned a fair bit, and hopefully contributed 
> enough - so we've generally got this on our radar.  Not that we're 
> going to be heading to every one and all over the world - we do have 
> to keep an eye on the return on our investment there!  But I'm happy 
> to have further conversations around that.
>
> So there's a few thoughts from a small group in Perth that might help.
>
> Happy Easter all,
>
> Piers
>
> -- 
> ------------------------------------
> Piers Higgs
> Gaia Resources
> p +61 8 92277309
> m +61 411754006
> w www.gaiaresources.com.au <http://www.gaiaresources.com.au>
> e piers.higgs at gaiaresources.com.au 
> <mailto:piers.higgs at gaiaresources.com.au>
> ------------------------------------

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254

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