Howard: I agree with the posters that say "refine your code-base" as priority one, and I agree that writing the book is a very close priority two. So the question isn't really which should you do, as both are crucial to Tapestry the product and it's community of users.
The problem is how best to leverage your knowledge. You must delegate and direct, or you become Tapestry's main growth bottleneck. You already know this, of course, so the question is "how do I leverage me"? Number one: find a book author that knows almost as much as you do. Maybe Igor's that person, since he both knows the product (I guess; haven't read his book) and has written a book. The question then is incentives. Writing a book is tough, and Tapestry's market is narrower (but not for long!) than other possible uses of book-writers' time. What can you do to make it economically worthwhile for that book-writer, or an existing book-writer's publisher, to write another? My next phone call would be to Igor's publisher, and say "Hey, you guys just wrote a book for the German market. You already sunk all those costs, now why not make a lot more revenue from your investment? How would you like to do a good translation, and sell into the vastly larger English market (~80Mil audience .vs. 500Mil)?" Tapestry is used in Europe, U.S., English-speaking Asia, Australia, U.K, etc Find out if that publisher's ready to expand into U.S. - that may be on their mind. Also, see about electronic publishing instead of hard-bound. I bought an e-book on Tapestry a while back, and it was pretty helpful. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. That'll reduce the publisher's risk a LOT. Also, there's a good UK publisher that does e-books already, and does it well. I bought a Lucene book that way not long ago, and would use them again in a heartbeat. Think "reduced publisher risk", and "I.T. users are ideal e-book buyers". Next: Think about the steps that the SpringSource people went through as they spun up their business. They added a consulting arm, and that generated enough revenue to do documentation - hiring a full-timer to do it right, did a really strong online reference, etc. Consulting is an excellent revenue-producer. Can you replicate you in that capacity also? Would you want to? How do you see "growth" and "managing" stuff? Some people (very logically) run screaming from the room if the subject's brought up ;) Another idea: ask your contributors here at the forum to consider writing documentation modules. Consider an annual subscription fee of $20-50 to be a member of a support system that has a bunch of contributed modules. Pro-rata distribute the subscription fee to the modules-writers based on hits. There are a number of people here that are capable, and if you provided the incentive...they might do it. If you can provide the money-channel and the set of next-most-needed topics, I bet you might find some takers. The problem is centrally a one of incentives for the right people to step up and do the work. Why would someone want to write documentation? Credit, money, resume-stuffer, book-deal...what? OK, now find a way to get them what they want in order to remove info-flow bottlenecks that are impeding Tapestry's growth. You may also consider moving away from the book format altogether and concentrate your writing onto your website. Make it a knowledge vending machine. Ask your forum of smart people this question: "If I was to design a self-sustaining, revenue-producing mechanism that produced great on-line doc for Tapestry, leveraged all you brilliant people, and made it worth your while to do it, what would that design be like?" I think the key is to leverage existing Tapestry knowledge, especially yours. How can that knowledge be replicated, extended, sub-classed...? How can the knowledge of your many very talented forum posters be captured, replicated, distributed...? Good luck. We all wish for your continued success. I'll be in your neck of the woods 2nd week of Dec if you want to meet for a cuppa joe and discuss it further. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/-Tapestry-Central--Next-Steps-for-Tapestry-tp26248673p26253018.html Sent from the Tapestry - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tapestry.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tapestry.apache.org
