The next main phase at Factor e Farm is renewed focus on documentation. This emerged from our production run, where we learned that we could get perhaps 30-50% more accomplished if we had professional-quality fabrication drawings, detailed fabrication procedures on the wiki, CAM files available, and quality video Instructionals for preview by any participants. These tools become indispensable from the management perspective for any distributive enterprise – especially when the number of production run participants exceeds 4 people.
We are calling for volunteers to take on Dedicated Documentation Project Visits – which are Dedicated Project Visits focusing on documentation. We have the CEB Press, Tractor, Power Cube, and Soil Pulverizer in need of complete documentation – for the purposes our future production runs, fabricator training, and replication of production to other individuals and distributive enterprises. We are looking for 4 on-site docuemntors. We estimate that each project would take about a month of dedicated time to docuement, and probably more if we are to create thorough, well-edited instructional videos.
We have discovered a remarkable point during this production run: that unskilled participants can join the production run when the tasks are broken down sufficiently, and clear procedures are outlined. This carries remarkable potential for reinventing local production. Also, people have a deep hunger for true productive power – something that has been obliterated in modern consumer society – but also something that will never disappear from the human psyche.
NOTE: As of today, the wiki CEB Documentation page is under active development. If you want to contribute, please start organizing material as discussed there on the task list, and as documented at the Pivotal Tracker –
When creating the instructional videos please pay attention to the quality of the audio. At times, some of the ones posted on the Blog had audio that was nearly unintellegable due to wind, distance of speaker’s mouth from the microphone, and other nearby activity.
A steadier camera wouldn’t hurt either.
Good idea.
That’s one of the key point for an open source project.
I m so disappointed that I can’t come to help you now. I will have the opportunity to come in one year I thing. I would love to do this kind of documentation.
I thing Edward is right, the video asn’t to be a profesional one, but at least a video of good quality.
regards and support
I think the instructions given on the blog post for would-be contributors could be a bit more clear.
I followed the link to “CEB Press Documentation” and there is no “task list”. The Pivotal tracker link takes you to the project, where you only see the current task “Organize all Media Footage”. Only when you press “Icebox” do you see further tasks that have not yet been started. One of them is “Document Fabrication procedure for CEB Press”, which contains 9 actionable items.
Digging a bit too deep if you ask me.
Btw., Pivotal looks nice. I use a similar workflow at work, some mixture of Scrum and Kanban.
[…] documentation on the wiki is improving dramatically. Ryan Lutz joined us for a month on a Dedicated Documentation Project Visit and contributed significantly to formatting. Read his Wiki Reorganization call-out to the […]