Dr. Seuss' FLOSS Manual

Lately, here in San Francisco, we here at Aspiration have been working with a bunch of hardware donations, building the content for our ANSWR website and doing the usual Social Source Commons maintenance and managing. It's been pretty engaging though because I'm learning about building a website with a content management system (Joomla) as well as how the hell to upkeep it once you do. So my FTP client (Cyberduck) has become my best friend. On January 30th, we had an Aspiration "retreat" where we basically mapped out the major events, goals and whatnot for the coming year or at least for the next couple of quarters. (Everyone around here talks about Q1 and Q2 and it just sounds like Dr. Seuss to me) The retreat was extremely helpful for me and I only wish that it was doable to have them more often. It's amazing how much more on point I am with my work when there's an over-arching timeline and guide for what it is I'm doing. I mean, even though Basecamp can be a pain in my ass, I do really appreciate the organization aspect for work.

Can I just take this middle paragraph and lend a shout out to FLOSS Manuals? They're a great organization headed by my kiwi friend Adam (or EE-dum as he would say) focused on documentation in this crazy software world. They have a system where you can super easily create a manual for any type of software using a wiki system, because let's face it, nobody likes to be the guy writing the user manual. They have a bunch of manuals on Open Source software tools and recently put together a FLOSS version of "Digital Foundations" (a kind of bible apparently in the graphic design world that focuses on Adobe CS) where they took the exercises and design lessons and adapted them for use with FLOSS tools like Gimp and Inkscape. And the PDF versions of the manuals are always free, so if you're ever in need of some graphic design skills but can't afford the mega expensive Adobe products, check out some open source lovin!

Other than working, I moved into a new place right next to Dolores Park which is pretty sweet. My roomies run a nonprofit and were pretty much drooling about the fact that I could help them with tech stuff. Also, I'm mildly freaking out about finding a job when this whole Americorps gig wraps. Everybody and their mother is giving me job advice which is super welcome but now I have to put it into practice. I need to work on my resume, cover letters, LinkedIn profile... We'll see what happens, but for now I'm just trying to figure out how to make an RSS feed a Joomla Page. Eh.