On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 21:11 -0500, Sarah Grover wrote: > Hello! > > I am interested in writing tutorials, guides, FAQs, or anything else. > I am 29 considering a career change into technical writing and/or > technical editing. My online research lead me to 2 different sources > (Jean Weber's website, as well as docsymmetry.com) both converging on > OpenOffice suggesting I get involved. > > Be forewarned, I am probably as green as they come as far as HTML and > web software. What kinds of contributions are you looking for? I > have a degree in environmental engineering from Northwestern > University, and have working for 8 years in 3 different environmental > health and safety professions. I have a good deal of experience > reading federal, state, and city environmental or health regulations > (think EPA, OSHA, DOT). I can give you more details if you'd like. > > Clayton Cornell replied to my initial email to > d...@documentation.openoffice.org and gave me the guidance to subscribe > to this list. He also suggested I read the ODFAuthors page and the > wiki page introducing ODFAuthors. > > I really have zero experience, but I am smart and eager to find out > more about all of this. Please let me know in what ways I might be > able to contribute and get my feet wet. I'm truly open to anything > (no pun intended). Thanks! > > Sarah Grover
Sarah, welcome to the group. As the person whose website helped lead you to us, I'm particularly delighted to have you join us. If someone else doesn't get to it first, I'll set you up with an account on our website, odfauthors.org, and email you the details privately when that's done. Regarding experience: well, you can put together coherent sentences and paragraphs, which is better than a lot of people can do. Have you used OpenOffice.org much? Which components? With a background in environmental engineering, I would guess you've had some spreadsheet and/or database experience, though probably with MS products. People usually start by reviewing user guide chapters for organisation, correct instructions, and whether they are up to date with the latest software -- or by editing them for clarity, correct language, and so on (some of our writers are not native English speakers). At the moment, we're working on updating the Draw Guide: the first 5 chapters have been updated but not edited; those chapters are on the Review List, which you will see after I get your account set up and you log in to the website. As Gary noted, OpenOffice.org is in a state of transition at the moment. We're finishing the work that is in progress, and IMO it's worth doing some planning for future work (in addition to updates when a new release of the software is pending). IMO, the transition offers an excellent opportunity to clear out (or at least archive) some of the older howtos, tutorials, faqs, etc, reorganise what's left, and plan for filling in the gaps. I expect we'll be talking about this a lot on this list over the next few weeks and months. Gary also mentioned LibreOffice. If you were interested in installing that in addition to, or in place of, OpenOffice.org, the LibreOffice Docs team could use more help with rebranding and updating the OOo user guides for LibreOffice. I can give you more information about that if you're interested. > > PS - I saw reference to most people using psydonyms. Could someone > explain why this may be a good idea? I could also subscribe using a > new Gmail account, as this one is a giveaway. Thanks! Here most people use their own names, but some use pseudonyms. Some reasons for the latter might include wanting to keep one's participation clearly separate from one's paid work (not necessarily hiding it from one's employer; just keep it separate) or preferring to use a nickname from one's other activities (role-playing games, for example). -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to authors-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@documentation.openoffice.org with Subject: help
