Of course, authoring is only one aspect of producing high quality professional writing. As an editor, it's no surprise that I think all authors can benefit from having someone else read their work. Even an informal review can help identify gaps in an explanation or problems with flow, not to mention typos.
Writers, reviewers, and editors can all benefit from sharing tips, offering advice on tricky problem passages, or just chatting about ongoing projects. That list sounds just like the sorts of things we talk about when discussing programming, doesn't it?
I'd like to bring people together in person for a group discussion and a chance to network. To kick things off, I'm working on organizing a "meetup" as an open space session at PyCon in March. If you are a blogger, published writer, reviewer, or editor -- or aspire to be -- I want you to come and participate. No prior experience is necessary, everyone is welcome.
Let's connect people interested in doing technical reviews with authors and editors. Let's introduce potential writers to the editors and publishers. Let's learn from one another and improve our prose, the same way we improve our code.
We'll have to wait to schedule a precise time until the conference, but right now I'm thinking about late Saturday morning or early afternoon. If you are interested in attending, please post a comment so I can gauge the size of the room we'll need. If you have a preference for the time, make sure to include that information. And if you have ideas for things we should talk about, let's hear them.
Update: Although I was thinking of "print" writing, other forms of publishing like podcasting are welcome, too. We need more good Python podcasts!
Update 2: See the wiki page for updates as we develop these plans.
10 comments:
Count me in! (barring hopeless schedule conflicts)
Count me in too modulo the same life uncertainties... :-)
Yup, I'll be attending if it schedules.
I'm in of course, I'm there from wed. evening through the sprints.
We could have this session one evening, to cut down on conflicts with other talks. Thoughts?
I was thinking of doing an open space called "should you write a book?" which would go into the more serious issues of whether you should, why you should (or shouldn't), problems you might encounter, problems working with publishers, doing print on demand, doing electronic publishing, do books make money? etc. But I'm thinking the subject is different enough that maybe I should do a separate one.
Bruce, it sounds like you have enough material to fill a separate session but maybe you would like to give a teaser at this one?
That makes sense.
It looks like Saturday at 11:40 AM is a good time for this session, so I'm going to plan to have it then.
Turns out there was a conflict at 11:40, so let's make that ~10:00 AM Sat. I went ahead and posted a card on the open spaces board.
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