Scott Rhoades wrote:
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
Hi Scott!
Welcome! I'm happy for the project to gain someone with your depth of
experience, both in technical documentation, and in OOo. I'm the editor
the Writer Guide. Jean Weber is our Editor in Chief, but I think she
just left for a week of vacation.
Take a look at the English section of our website
(http://oooauthors.org/en/) to get an idea of how we operate. Generally,
we suggest reviewing chapters that others have written, as a way to get
your feet wet. It's also a good option if you don't have lots of time.
However, if there's a chapter you'd just love to write, don't hold back.
(But please do use our template, and review our style guide and
guidelines for writers.) We try to keep the number of rules to a
minimum, to make it as easy as possible to contribute.
When you're ready to write or review something, let us know your login
on the site, so someone can give you "author" access, so you can upload
files.
--
Janet Swisher --- Senior Technical Writer
Enthought, Inc. http://www.enthought.com
