Drupal 8 has very good media handling support. Media team has (and still is) working hard to make Drupal the best CMS in the world when it comes to managing media. We have many modules in the contrib space that solve most of the common use cases in the domain. There is one problem though; there are many of them and some of them are quite complex and abstract. I've noticed that many times users struggle to completely understand what each module is responsible for, which features it comes with and specially how they all together fit into the bigger picture.
There are so-called feature modules (such as File entity browser, Media, Content browser, Media entity browser, ...) and distributions (such as NP8, Thunder, Lightning, ...) which ship with default configuration for the 80% use case. They are plug and play solutions, but it is also possible to use them as a base for learning and research of the ecosystem.
But unfortunately that's not enough. While some people learn the quickest by exploring existing solutions (myself included) that isn't the case for everyone. A lot of people need more guidance and those are the users that we're currently not supporting as much as we should. In order to drive further adoption of the media ecosystem and Drupal 8 itself we need to solve this knowledge sharing problem that I believe we have.
I was thinking about this problem a lot lately and I think I came up with an idea that could help us solve it.
It is a book.
A problem solving oriented book which would guide users through the ecosystem, explain individual parts and, most importantly, offer a bunch of recipes for the common problems. It wouldn't be one of those 800+ pages technical books (who has time to read that?!). Rather it would be a compact source of information which you can have on your desk and use it when you run into a problem. We all want to build websites and the purpose of this book would be to help you do that as fast and as efficiently as possible.
Book would produced by the people that designed and built the Drupal 8 media ecosystem, which would ensure highest levels of quality. It would be released under a Creative commons license with its sources publicly available on GitHub. Printed and compiled eBook versions would be sold through the standard channels.
Why copyleft?
I honestly believe into the free sharing of knowledge in our society. My opinion is that the only way to evolve our civilization is to freely share the knowledge that we have. There are also practical reasons besides the philosophical one. Making the book publicly available ensures that it will be likely updated as the ecosystem and Drupal itself evolve and change. This wouldn't necessarily be the case if the standard copyright license would be used.
Great idea! Why didn't you realize it already?
I am glad that you agree! :) Well... it is not that easy. Producing a real book is not that simple and it also comes with quite some expenses. There is the cost of the content production, proofreading, design, print, shipping, ... I've done a back of a napkin calculation and estimated that we'd need around 20.000€/$21.500/17.000GBP to do it.
My idea was to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise this amount. Backers would, depending on the perk level, get an eBook, print edition or both. Besides that they'd also get early access to the repository with the ability to provide feedback during the process of writing.
Now I need your feedback
I need to hear from you. Is this something that would benefit the community? Is there any better way to educate users about the ecosystem? Would you prefer an online video course instead of a book? In-person training? Something else? Would you be prepared to back the crowdfunding campaign? If yes, what amount would you be prepared to invest?
Please use the form below to share your thoughts. Thank you! I appreciate it.