Meta:BSoD/2006/Guidelines

Introduction

The Blender Summer of Documentation is a project that is offering users grants to develop documentation for Blender. The goal of the project is to inject a significant amount of high-quality, user-level documentation into the online environment, and hopefully, at some stage, inclusion in print materials.

It has been decided that the theme of this program will be "Blender Basics Bootcamp", thus we are looking specifically for documentation that will lead a beginner through the features of Blender in a coherent and organised manner. That said, we would also like to see each project develop into more advanced concepts, and how it can tie into other areas of Blender, since often taking the jump from beginner to intermediate user can be the most difficult. A simple example may be documentation on lighting, starting with the basic lamp types and leading into lighting setups, skydomes and perhaps even radiosity.

This is user-level documentation, projects proposing code documentation will be automatically rejected. As previously mentioned, the final results of this project may be included in a future version of a Blender Manual, thus, all work must be of written type, with images. All project work is to be written directly into the Blender Wiki (mediawiki.blender.org) utilising a unifying template we have developed. Unfortunately we cannot accommodate video tutorials in this program.

For the above reasons, this program necessitates that the participant release their work under a Free Content type license such as Blender Open Content - http://download.blender.org/documentation/NaN_docs/license.txt - or Creative Commons - http://creativecommons.org/

The Blender Foundation is funding this program, providing 10 grants of 500EUR, open to all experienced Blender users, of any nationality, including those for which English is not the primary spoken language. In cases where the writer is more proficient in another language, we will employ the use of translators for the conversion to English. Furthermore, we will be looking at using translators to provide this non-English version of each accepted project.

The program time line is as follows:

1. Program starts, and proposals are accepted, 27th May 06, 0000GMT+10
2. Proposals close, 10th June 06, 0000GMT+10
3. Program leaders rank proposals.
4. Accepted projects are announced, 17th June 06, 0000GMT+10
5. Participants start work, 19th June 06.
6. Project finishes, 19th July 06, 0000GMT+10

Once proposals have been closed and finalised, the project leaders will evaluate and rank each proposals and the top 10 finalists notified by emails and the results posted on blender.org. The lead team will be responsible for oversight of the program and will be keeping in close contact with all participants throughout.

This project has the intention of equating to around a week of fulltime work, to be completed over a period of a month. We expect that the end result of each project will be a minimum of twenty(20) pages of written text, along with demonstrating images as required.

Entry and Proposals -

The sole restriction being placed on participation is your ability with Blender, and you must be able to prove this ability, either by reputation, or through images/demonstration of past documentation, at our request.

To be considered as a candidate for BSoD, you must submit a proposal. This proposal is to provide the program leaders with a basis for judging your suitability for the program.

To that end, it is expected that you should layout, in detail, the topic and basis of your project, covering at least the following points:

• Synopsis - a summary of what you will write about.
• Scope/Breakdown - what topic(s) will be covered, and how will it be structured.
• Deliverables - what the result will be, in terms of quantity, type, etc
• Biography - Blender knowledge level, past experience, links to existing work, etc

You must provide detail such that the program leaders can assess your suitability for the program. Please feel free to link to images, past documentation, past writing samples, etc., etc.

Do not feel that you may not enter if you do not have past documentation experience. Whilst your proposal will be scrutinised more, we will not reject it simply because of this lack. You may, however, be required to undertake a small writing task that we have developed to assist in providing the required proof of competency.

Once you have completed your proposal, you may email it to bsod-mentors@blender.org where it will be reviewed and discussed by the lead team.

Project Coordinators -

• Timothy Wakeham (timmeh)
• David Millet (spiderworm)
• Stefano Selleri (s68)
• Dolf J. Veenvliet B.A. (macouno)
• Eugene Reilly (etr9j)

--timmeh 16:12, 13 June 2006 (CEST)