Thinking of Models

Possibly a bad choice of title for a post about community models… I have been thinking about the Cabbage Tree Method book and how to improve it. My thoughts have been stimulated by being at the Open Source Leadership Summit last week where I gave out about 40 books or so and talked to many people about the ideas. I think I have two takeaways from doing this.

First, I should get rid of the critique of open source. The open source community is, rightly, proud of what it has achieved against enormous odds. Additionally, many people have given this community their all to improve the greater good. So a critique of open source comes across as a critique of them and it falls on cold ears. While I stand by the critique at the beginning of the book I think I need to make the content more palatable to this community and frame the Cabbage Tree Method not as a reaction to a weakness in open source, but as adding to something already successful.

Second, when I talked to people about how open source solves problems and then discuss why this has not worked for user-facing products (covered in the ‘Thoughts about open source’ chapter) people do get it and generally agree. However, I don’t think I have this argument down smooth enough. This prompts me to perhaps consider removing the chapter on open source at the beginning and write another about solutions models – explaining (what I call) the developer-centric solution model, from the user-centric solution model. If I can frame this right I think it will help people  in the midst of it all see the forest, whereas right now all they can see is trees.

There is a third issue that I haven’t yet resolved. If I talk about developer-centric or user-centric models I am making the models about people ie. developers and users. I’m wondering if this is too confronting. I could use the terms (for example) code-centric and product-centric….I’m not sure about this though. It feels like it weakens idea. If you have any thoughts on this I’d appreciate hearing from you.

Open Source Leadership Summit

Off to the Linux Foundation Open Source Leadership Summit next week. I’ll take copies of the Cabbage Tree Method book and some stickers and see how it goes.

If you have ideas about how to promote the method, please let me know. Also if you would like free copies of the book and/or stickers, then give me a yell! adam@coko.foundation

The Cabbage Tree Method – baking cultural change into product design

Karien Bezuidenhout, from the Shuttleworth Foundation, offered this insight into the Cabbage Tree Method:

The Cabbage Tree Method bakes cultural change into the product design process.

Very wise words and a delicious insight succinctly put.

The book is now available as a book in a browser from https://www.cabbagetree.org/

It is a free book – gratis and libre.

Using Editoria to Write CTM

We used two systems to write the Cabbage Tree Method book – Booktype and Editoria.

Editoria was created using the Cabbage Tree Method. The following are some screenshots of Editoria with the book in production:

Editoria Dashboard showing the (only) book
Editoria Dashboard showing the (only) book
The Book Builder interface showing all chapters and parts plus workflow tools
The Book Builder interface showing all chapters and parts plus workflow tools
Detail
Detail
Introduction Chapter loaded in the Editor
Introduction Chapter loaded in the Editor
Chapter with the chapter structure display (right)
Chapter with the chapter structure display (right)
tc2
Demonstrating Annotations in Action
Demonstrating Track Changes
Demonstrating Track Changes

and finally…

Kate and Cindy (UCP production staff) designing their system (Editoria)
Kate and Cindy (UCP production staff) designing their system (Editoria)