[Bf-docboard] Blender Proceedings

[Raindrops From Sky]

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.)

In this context, let us see some scenarios:

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.

If the main theme is "software architecture ideas", then it will attract
software designers and coders. Artists would not be interested.

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.

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.

****
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.
(The magazine on the other hand is "coffee table" variety, with far lesser
takers.)

Since Blender is totally revamped, even old Blender users will grab this
book series.

The wiki can be split into 3 books: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels.
Each book should cover underlying theory, tutorials and graded
exercises+answers.

Revised editions of these books can be printed periodically for additional
revenue.

The problem is, there is no clarity about the status of wiki.
When are we going to have a wiki update sprint?
There are very few items left in the TODO list, and very few bugs left in
the tracker.
Does it not mean that the time is right to update the wiki?

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.

We should have some pages at the Blender.org website to guide volunteers,
about
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.

Also to be clarified is the issue of structure of the wiki itself: Is it to
be changed, and if yes, when?

We should get rid of this uncertainty ASAP and kick-start wiki-writing.

Cheers!
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