Self-Introduction

[Scott Bicknell]

Hi all,

Let me tell you about myself.  I am the father of two children living in 
Washington State in the USA and a former bus driver who has returned to 
college to pursue a liberal arts degree.  My computer experience is mostly 
non-professional.

I wrote a user tutorial for the GIMP Animation Package (GAP) a few years ago 
and published it at gimptalk.com at the request of one of their moderators.  
It remains as a primary tutorial on that site.  My other writing experience is 
confined to blog postings and college essays.

In mid-March I plan to take a break from school and to devote my free time to 
contributing to this project.

My computer skills include installing multiple operating systems in dual-boot 
configurations and solving configuration problems.  I am not a computer 
professional; I am a hobbyist with extensive DOS, OS/2, and Windows experience 
and twelve years of desktop Linux experience.

Some of my previous work may apply to this project.  In two jobs I designed 
and maintained multiple web sites.  For one of them I wrote a suite of bash 
shell scripts that automated content updates on several web sites.

Fedora is my primary desktop operating system.  I have used it continuously 
for more than two years.  Previously I used K/X/Ubuntu, SuSE, Slackware, 
Mandrake, and Red Hat Linux beginning in 2001.  From my first day with Linux, 
it has been my primary desktop OS.

My long experience with desktop Linux installations while maintaining a non-
professional user's perspective combined with my writing skills may help make 
Fedora's documentation more accessible to less-technically-inclined users.


pub   1024D/884DE65B 2012-06-13
      Key fingerprint = EC25 A9D3 15AD 4B6D 2754  D5E5 27EB 101B 884D E65B
uid                  Scott Bicknell <sbicknel(a)gmail.com&gt;
sub   1024g/BCCFA7ED 2012-06-13

-- 
Scott Bicknell
:wq

[Pete Travis]

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Hash: SHA1

On Saturday, February 09, 2013 12:47:11 AM Scott Bicknell wrote:
>  Hi all,
>  
>  Let me tell you about myself.  I am the father of two children living in
>  Washington State in the USA and a former bus driver who has returned to
>  college to pursue a liberal arts degree.  My computer experience is mostly
>  non-professional.
>  
>  I wrote a user tutorial for the GIMP Animation Package (GAP) a few years ago
>  and published it at gimptalk.com at the request of one of their moderators.
>  It remains as a primary tutorial on that site.  My other writing experience
>  is confined to blog postings and college essays.
>  
>  In mid-March I plan to take a break from school and to devote my free time
>  to contributing to this project.
>  
>  My computer skills include installing multiple operating systems in
>  dual-boot configurations and solving configuration problems.  I am not a
>  computer professional; I am a hobbyist with extensive DOS, OS/2, and
>  Windows experience and twelve years of desktop Linux experience.
>  
>  Some of my previous work may apply to this project.  In two jobs I designed
>  and maintained multiple web sites.  For one of them I wrote a suite of bash
>  shell scripts that automated content updates on several web sites.
>  
>  Fedora is my primary desktop operating system.  I have used it continuously
>  for more than two years.  Previously I used K/X/Ubuntu, SuSE, Slackware,
>  Mandrake, and Red Hat Linux beginning in 2001.  From my first day with
>  Linux, it has been my primary desktop OS.
>  
>  My long experience with desktop Linux installations while maintaining a non-
>  professional user's perspective combined with my writing skills may help
>  make Fedora's documentation more accessible to less-technically-inclined
>  users.
>  
>  
>  pub   1024D/884DE65B 2012-06-13
>        Key fingerprint = EC25 A9D3 15AD 4B6D 2754  D5E5 27EB 101B 884D E65B
>  uid                  Scott Bicknell <sbicknel(a)gmail.com&gt;
>  sub   1024g/BCCFA7ED 2012-06-13 

Hello Scott, and welcome!

	I think your perspective and skills will be a valuable addition to our 
team, and I look forward to working together. We have a few more hurdles for 
you to jump over, but they aren't too high.

	If you haven't discovered it yet, there's a wiki page[1]  on joining the 
group.  Once you have an FAS account set up, we can sponsor that account into 
the Docs group.  Many of us idle in #fedora-docs on freenode if you have any 
questions. We meet in #fedora-meeting at 1400 UTC on Mondays, and you are of 
course invited to join us. 


	Our workflow is fairly straightforward. The source for our documents can be 
found on Fedora's cgit instance[2] with hopefully self-evident names.  You can 
start with an idea for an improvement, a bug filed against a document[3], or 
just a sense of adventure. The source is markup written in docbook 4.5 and 
juggled between us via git. As a new contributor to a Guide, you should chat 
with the Guide owner[4] when you get started.  The best approach seems to be 
cloning the git repo, creating a local branch for your work, making the 
changes with ample commits, and submitting a merge patch in a bug against the 
guide.

	You could also do some gardening in the wiki, to clarify and update 
existing pages. Almost all pages are editable with only an FAS account, so 
feel free to be bold, editing and creating at will. The wiki is used as a 
staging area for some of our work[5] as well as a user resource.

	This should get you started on the *how* of it all. Please do ask if there 
are any questions, there is a team of people ready to support you.

Do you have an idea of what you'd like to write about?


[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_Docs_Project
[2] http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/
[3] 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&classif...
[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_guides_table
[5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats
- -- 
- -- Pete Travis
 - Fedora Docs Project Leader
 - 'randomuser' on freenode
 - immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org
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[Scott Bicknell]

On Saturday February 9, 2013 11:27 am Pete Travis wrote:

>  Hello Scott, and welcome!
>  
>  	I think your perspective and skills will be a valuable addition to our
>  team, and I look forward to working together. We have a few more hurdles for
>  you to jump over, but they aren't too high.
>  
>  	If you haven't discovered it yet, there's a wiki page[1]  on joining the
>  group.  Once you have an FAS account set up, we can sponsor that account
>  into the Docs group.  Many of us idle in #fedora-docs on freenode if you
>  have any questions. We meet in #fedora-meeting at 1400 UTC on Mondays, and
>  you are of course invited to join us. 
I will definitely do that.  My free time for contributing to this project will 
begin in late March, and I want to use the time until them to get oriented and 
to set up my system and get accustomed to using some of the suggested 
software.

I am not familiar with Git or with Docbook, but I don't anticipate having much 
trouble familiarizing myself with those.  I already have a Git account, but 
have not used it for anything.

>  Do you have an idea of what you'd like to write about? 
I have only vague ideas right now.  As I become more familiar with existing 
documentation, I will probably find my focus.  The main reasons I want to join 
are to contribute back to free software and to gain experience with technical 
writing.  I'm not a programmer, unless you count writing bash scripts (which I 
don't), but my writing skills could prove valuable.  There are many times when 
I have read documentation and thought to myself, "I could have written that 
better."  In anticipation of having a lot of free time on my hands, I thought 
about how to fill it.  Several ideas crossed my mind: starting a blog, 
independent study/research while away from school, and other, less viable, 
ideas.  Then my wife responded to a comment I made about the lack of help 
documents for a program I was using by saying, "Maybe you should spend your 
time off from school writing documentation."  I thought it was a brilliant 
idea.  All I needed to do was to figure out where to contribute.  I thought 
about what software I use most and realized that no matter what else I am 
using that I am always using the OS.  That decided the issue for me.

I anticipate having some technical questions about the software and processes 
used by your team, but what I have already found seems fairly complete and 
clear.

-- 
Scott Bicknell
:wq

[Scott Bicknell]

On Saturday February 9, 2013 11:27 am Pete Travis wrote:

>  	I think your perspective and skills will be a valuable addition to
> our
>  team, and I look forward to working together. We have a few more hurdles for
>  you to jump over, but they aren't too high.
>  
>  	If you haven't discovered it yet, there's a wiki page[1]  on joining the
>  group.  Once you have an FAS account set up, we can sponsor that account
>  into the Docs group.  Many of us idle in #fedora-docs on freenode if you
>  have any questions. We meet in #fedora-meeting at 1400 UTC on Mondays, and
>  you are of course invited to join us. 
OK, I set up my FAS account and signed all required agreements.  My FAS user 
name is sbicknel.  I'll be lurking in #fedora-meeting tomorrow morning and 
will log it so I can pick out anything important later.  In the meantime, I 
will look for some areas where I can begin contributing and start 
familiarizing myself with git and the work flow here.  See you all tomorrow.

-- 
Scott Bicknell
:wq

[Pete Travis]

On Sunday, February 10, 2013 08:40:37 AM Scott Bicknell wrote:
>  On Saturday February 9, 2013 11:27 am Pete Travis wrote:
>  > 	I think your perspective and skills will be a valuable addition to our
>  > 
>  > team, and I look forward to working together. We have a few more hurdles
>  > for you to jump over, but they aren't too high.
>  > 
>  > 	If you haven't discovered it yet, there's a wiki page[1]  on joining 
the
>  > 
>  > group.  Once you have an FAS account set up, we can sponsor that account
>  > into the Docs group.  Many of us idle in #fedora-docs on freenode if you
>  > have any questions. We meet in #fedora-meeting at 1400 UTC on Mondays, and
>  > you are of course invited to join us.
>  
>  OK, I set up my FAS account and signed all required agreements.  My FAS user
>  name is sbicknel.  I'll be lurking in #fedora-meeting tomorrow morning and
>  will log it so I can pick out anything important later.  In the meantime, I
>  will look for some areas where I can begin contributing and start
>  familiarizing myself with git and the work flow here.  See you all tomorrow. 

I have sponsored your membership in the Docs group.  Welcome to the team, 
Scott!

-- 
-- Pete Travis
 - Fedora Docs Project Leader
 - 'randomuser' on freenode
 - immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org