Community Projects

16 December 05

An excellent way to keep up with happenings in a given special interest is to get involved in online communities pertaining to such interests. Even better is to take part in community projects when such opportunities arise. I figured it a good excercise to keep profiles of the community activities I come to be involved with.

Web communities, whether open forum environments or those available through membership in professional organizations, are valuable in many respects. For one thing, communities are rich resources for learning about standards, trends, tools, and evolving techniques.

Communities are also great places to contribute one’s own knowledge and insight for the benefit of others. Individual contributions are key to a community’s success, and helping others can be a very satisfying thing to do.

Furthermore, communities are great places to network and to get involved with group projects as they are planned and take flight. Such projects provide participants with practical rewards, not the least of which is hands-on experience and application of the very things one is interested with—and therein lies the magic of community involvement.

I am currently involved with the following community activities:

  • TextBook Project: The online documentation project for the open-source content management system, Textpattern.
  • STC Dynamic Web Services Project: A coordinated effort within the Society for Technical Communication to produce communication and publishing products based on open-source and Web standards.