[Fhsst-physics] FHSST year end summary

[Mark]

Hi everyone

I would like to thank everyone who helped make 2004 a successful year 
for FHSST! Many people contributed and its been
great to watch the content grow. I must apologise for not always having 
enough time to act on everything I have been sent
immediately and thanks for having patience with me.

We (I'll keep is short)
- went from ~100 pages of content to ~600 pages! Physics - 95% done, 
Maths and Chem - about 50% done
- we have restructured all the books to actually meet the syllabus 
requirements
- updated our website
- produced book covers, posters for the project and a logo
- attended the Shuttleworth Innovation Bazaar and this has resulted in 
us being asked to fill in forms to funding
  from the DG Murray Trust which are due later in January
- agreed with the Shuttleworth Foundation Open Source division to 
co-brand our content and put
  it on WikiBooks on its own bookshelf (this will happen this month). 
Our content will also help in their tuXlabs.
- submitted our application to be a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) in SA 
so we can start to raise money
- were invited to attend the South African Science Festival as part of 
the University of Cape Town contingent
 (as far as I am concerned this amounts to a public endorsement of our 
project)
- we have lined up volunteers for the computer science and biology 
books but I don't want to start these until
   we have something finished.
- we also learnt a lot about how to best handle volunteers and now we 
make self-contained files so people
   don't have to learn CVS and LaTeX, especially if they are unfamiliar 
with both and with Jaynie's help we've
   been able to more easily convert MS Word files.

We also learnt just how hard it is to find time to work on such a 
project but I think that we have shown that
many small contributions can really add up. If we just keep on trying 
our best we get these books done.

For 2005 I'd like to see us get Physics, Maths and Chemistry finished 
and launched. I am very optimistic - no matter
how much we struggle to find time (I certainly find it hard to find 
enough time to do everything) to work 
on the project, content continues to flow in.

My appeal to all authors/members for 2005:

- if you can find time to write a small section please help - every 
little bit counts!
- if you can't find time to write - help advertise and recruit - we 
always need new people to contribute and the more
  exposure we get the better
- if you have an idea for an essay we can include in the books please 
act on it - send the idea to me or feel free to ask
  someone in industry to write an essay for us. Thanks to Fernando, 
Asogan and Tom we have some example essays now
  in the books.

I hope everyone has a great year and I am sure that it'll be an epic 
year for FHSST!

Cheers,

Mark

--
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Mark Horner                                                                                                         
Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn                                                               

Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

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