Greetings from a New Member

Hi everyone,

Jean Weber already set me up with an ODFAuthors user account, so no worries
there.

I'm twenty-eight and working toward a masters of fine arts degree in
nonfiction writing at George Mason University in Virginia, USA; I earned my
bachelors of fine arts in creative writing at the Pennsylvania State
University. I write mostly personal essays (a term that often baffles
people at first--think of the nonfiction writing of authors like David
Sedaris, David Foster Wallace, and Virginia Woolf; that's what I aim for)
and some journalism. I also write poetry and a bit of fiction.

I have a good bit of experience in tutoring, editing, copy-editing,
technical writing, and some in teaching, and I have my associates degree in
multimedia graphic design, which includes Web and print design, as well as
3D modeling and animation (truth be told, though, I mostly just stick to
print media).

I'm largely interested in giving back to the LO community because of the
political implications of open source software and the free sharing of
information. It seems to me that free/open information and software means
giving knowledge and power to people who may be otherwise underprivileged.
It's also a way of bucking a global economic system that favors unethical
business practices. Oh yeah, and I don't like paying for software that
looks pretty but slows my computer to a crawl.

Anyway, I don't want to bore/annoy anyone with a long political tirade, so
I'll just leave it at that. I look forward very much to working with the LO
documentation team, and I hope that I can be of some use to you.

Best regards,
Eric Botts

Our biggest ongoing requirement is for people to update the user
guides to keep up with changes in the software, but there are many
other smaller writing projects that need doing. Updating includes
researching, writing, reviewing (mostly checking against the software
to ensure that instructions are correct and up to date), and editing.

Smaller writing projects include the FAQs and short pieces for the
Docs blog, but there are other possibilities as well. I recommend
looking around the Docs wiki to get an idea of what we have and what's
on the wish list. You might have some good ideas for things to fill in
the gaps, expand upon a topic area, reach out to a new audience...

--Jean