For the Business Plan to work, the target audience must have a strong reason to procure a printed copy (rather than downloading a free pdf copy.)<br><br>In this context, let us see some scenarios:<br><br>If the main theme is "proceedings" (as in IEEE), then the target would be people who are interested in the standardization, policy decisions, impact on CG industry, IP (vis-a-vis competition), product-architecture, continued compatibility with plugins and other competitive products, etc.<br>
<br>If the main theme is "software architecture ideas", then it will attract software designers and coders. Artists would not be interested.<br><br>If the main theme is "tutorials", if the complexity is low, hobbyists and graphic design schools would be interested. With high-complexity articles, commercial artists and studios would be interested.<br>
<br>On the whole, it may be prudent NOT to have the online free pdf copy, so that the exclusivity of the contents assume greater value for the subscribers. <br><br>****<br>Compared to all this, the Blender wiki printed as books will definitely fetch a much larger revenue, as a huge number of people would prefer to have a reference book on their desk. <br>
(The magazine on the other hand is "coffee table" variety, with far lesser takers.)<br><br>Since Blender is totally revamped, even old Blender users will grab this book series.<br><br>The wiki can be split into 3 books: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels.<br>
Each book should cover underlying theory, tutorials and graded exercises+answers.<br><br>Revised editions of these books can be printed periodically for additional revenue.<br><br>The problem is, there is no clarity about the status of wiki.<br>
When are we going to have a wiki update sprint?<br>
There are very few items left in the TODO list, and very few bugs left in the tracker.<br>
Does it not mean that the time is right to update the wiki?<br><br>A week's delay in publishing the wiki books will probably wash out any proposed revenue from selling magazines. Therefore the wiki should be launched ASAP.<br>
<br>We should have some pages at the Blender.org website to guide volunteers, about<br>documentation team structure, who are the managers, what are the different types of contributions possible (e.g. technical writing for theory, tutorial-writing, illustrations, demos, videos, proofreading), whom should a volunteer contact to start off, what are the milestones for preparation of wiki, etc.<br>
<br>Also to be clarified is the issue of structure of the wiki itself: Is it to be changed, and if yes, when?<br><br>We should get rid of this uncertainty ASAP and kick-start wiki-writing.<br><br>Cheers!<br>