Ubuntu Manual – “48 Hours”

In about an hour, the Ubuntu Manual Team are holding a 48 hour learning event using Lernid and IRC. Appropriately titled “48 Hours of Ubuntu Manual Learning” this event is designed to not only attract more contributors and interest in the project, but also to teach their current contributors about parts of the project they might not be familiar with.

Taken from the UMP 48 hours wiki page:

Purpose:

“To provide information on the tools that the Ubuntu Manual Project uses to help both new and existing contributors to better understand the workflow process. This should enhance productivity and team communication, while reducing interior support requests and overall improve the efficiency of the team and the quality of the final product.”

The event is running several classes at two different times across two days, so that everyone can take part even if they’re in a difficult timezone. Some of the classes are:

• An introduction to the project and Quickshot – Benjamin Humphrey
• LaTeX for authors and translators – Kevin Godby
• Using Ground Control to make changes – Benjamin Humphrey
• The project and social media – Benjamin Humphrey

The event is also the first time that the new ubuntu classroom “ClassBot” will be used in a real environment. ClassBot was designed by Chris Johnston and Nathan Handler to be used in the ##ubuntu-cr channel. It gives extra control over the classroom by allowing the teacher to mute students in the main room (they can still talk in chat) and also elegantly handles questions.

To see how you can take part and view a schedule of classes, visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual/48hours

About UMP:

The Ubuntu Manual Project was started at the end of November 2009 by Benjamin Humphrey writing a 20 page quick start guide on his own in Open Office. Now the project has 250 contributors working towards a 200 page LaTeX manual, compiled into PDF in over 40 languages with 2000+ localized screenshots.

The team are developing their own Python application using Quickly to capture this enormous amount of screenshots. Called Quickshot, the application aims to automate a lot of the process of capturing, cropping and uploading screenshots of the right resolution, dpi and file format. Emphasis for Quickshot is on re-usability with other projects, specifically the docs team. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual/quickshot

Future plans for the project are an HTML5 version on a fully fledged website with downloads in all languages, collaboration with the Ubuntu Learning Team and the Docs Team, different paper sizes, double sided options optimized for printing, and possibly manuals for different variants of Ubuntu. The team would also love to have a version of the manual included on the Ubuntu CD, and in the repositories.