Hi- I've been thinking about joining this list for quite some time and finally decided to take the leap.
I've been a tech writer at Novell for 14 years with various roles, including writer, editor, manager, and doc project manager. Before that, I was a tech writer at Everex Systems. And somewhere back in ancient history I was an editor and writer for Atari. I used to do quite a bit of freelance work for various hardware and software companies as well, and did various kinds of freelance editing for Waite Group Press before they were bought out and became whatever they are now. I've been using OOo since version 1.something--about three years, I think--when I discovered it during a fit of frustration about Word's lack of a working master document feature, something I really wanted for my fiction writing. It didn't take much playing before I discovered that I really liked Writer better than Word. Since then, of course, Novell has switched to OOo and, because I was already familiar with it, I became the doc dept.'s OOo "expert," the guy people come to with questions. Just this week I finished putting together a little guide (40+ pages) about OOo for Novell employees. My strategy was to doc some really basic things and the types of problems that people have when they first make the switch. I discovered in the process that I like writing about OOo as much as I enjoy telling people they should use it (which I do often enough that it's probably a little annoying). Between work and play, I don't have much spare time, but if can contribute a little bit to my favorite open source project, I'd love to get involved. Scott
