8:43 a.m.
Today when discussing this with Bryan Behrenshausen, he suggested a
middle road that I really liked. I opened this thread partially to
tee-up his presenting that idea.
Thanks, Karsten, for kicking this off. I think these two items from your
list of issues frame our conversation nicely:
3. We have momentum that we don't want to lose by dragging out
the
schedule too much.
4. Ultimately, we shouldn't force those who are able to act now wait for
others to come along before they can make progress and complete
chapters. Early and late contributors should be welcomed and enabled to
be successful.
Our goal is to balance the need for project momentum with the need to be
as inclusive as we can given our extraordinary global circumstances.
Maintaining a project timeline is essential for maintaining forward
movement, but plowing ahead with it unmodified might lead to the same
destructive consequences we'd experience if we lost momentum altogether.
So Karsten and I were discussing this option:
One option is to shift the release date out and give us another month
or
two of recruiting writers. People are already writing, but they would be
looking at a longer time until the gratification of publication.
The idea here would be to extend the overall 2.0 release timeline but
add a new milestone on our path to it (something like a version "1.5,"
etc.). For that milestone, we'd target releasing a kind of guidebook
"preview" or "teaser" that ships two or three chapters already under
heavy development. I think this has several advantages:
- It allows those already writing to maintain their momentum with a
concrete goal in mind (perhaps even with more energy, because we'd be
able to tell them that their chapters are also going to function as
shining examples of what other interested parties could themselves
contribute).
- It allows us to release something earlier and hopefully catalyze
additional project activity (potential contributors would have an
artifact to examine and hopefully "see themselves" in, enticing them to
contribute); contributors would be contributing to a Thing That Exists,
rather than an idea that doesn't *fully* materialize until 2.0.
- It facilitates early experience with our editorial workflow and
publication toolchain, so we can experiment with them on a smaller scale
before we tackle 2.0 (and work out the inevitable kinks).
Two cents from me. Curious how others feel about it.
BB