After the "sprint": LocalisationDev.org invites your input

[Donald Z. Osborn]

I had the opportunity to participate in the recent Localisation Development
workshop in Warsaw. This is to forward a brief explanation of the event and
invitation to contribute to its wiki and mailing list (appended below).

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

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Announcing the LocalisationDev.org Wiki and Planet Localisation
We Heartily Invite Your Participation and Contributions!
http://localisationdev.org/

The first Localisation Developers Sprint took place in Warsaw, Poland from 20 to
22 November, 2004. The event brought together a diverse group of leaders and
innovators in software and documentation localisation for the NGO sector to
share experiences, compare projects and practices, and document the same. The
Sprint was organised by Aspiration (http://www.aspirationtech.org) and Tactical
Tech Collective (http://www.tacticaltech.org).

The goals of the Localisation Sprint were three-fold:

* Individuals working in the localisation field rarely enjoy the opportunity to
convene, grow relationships and collaborate on applied projects; the sprint
provided a venue for enhancing the social network of localisation practitioners
while focusing on concrete outcomes.
* Participants mapped out the localisation landscape, from tools to guides to
practices; many exciting projects and initiatives are underway around the
globe, but few top-down views exists into the range of projects.
* Participants laid the foundation and initial groundwork for curricula designed
to educate developers, technical intermediaries and funders in the best
practices and sustainable processes for localisation in a broad scope of
technology and documentation contexts around the globe. The curricula will see
their first use at Asia Source in January 2005 (tacticaltech.org/asiasource),
an event bringing together NGO technology activists and intermediaries from
Southeast Asia to discuss free and open source software deployment for civil
society organisations in the region.

All materials generated at the sprint are being published under Creative Commons
license to encourage the broadest use, adoption and ongoing enhancement of
those resources.

We invite anyone interested in these topics to visit http://localisationdev.org/
to survey the work to this point and to add their own knowledge, experience and
comments to the mix. In particular, we invite you to:

* View the wiki  at http://wiki.localisationdev.org/ and add your knowledge.
We've attempted to create pages aimed at different localisation audiences
(including developers, eRiders, funders, and end users), but there is much to
be done in completing and broadening these resources.
* Visit Planet Localisation at http://planet.localisationdev.org/, check out the
feeds and let us know of blogs we should be aggregating
* Join the loc-dev mailing list and participate in discussions about creating
software that's adaptable for a broader range of locales. To join, send email
to: loc-dev-subscribe @lists.localisationdev.org or go to subscription page at
http://lists.tacticaltech.org/mailman/listinfo/loc-dev

We invite you to please forward this announcement to any appropriate lists,
organisations and individuals. Thank you!
The LocalisationDev Organisers

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