[Asterisk-doc] Minutes of the first "conferece call"

[Jared Smith]

Well, we're off to a great start!  By the time I got to the conference,
hermie and I were the only ones around.  The conference call didn't seem
to be working correctly (or maybe I was the only one dialed in), so we
had the discussion over IRC.

Here are the things we discussed:

Project goals:  We discussed the goals of our project, and agreed that
our first priority is getting some good "dead tree" documentation for
Asterisk.  A secondary goal should be to try to get the book published
if possible.  Along those same lines, we agreed that the book should be
published under an "open" license.

Level of detail:  We discussed what level of detail we ought to go into
with regards to Asterisk.  We decided that the book should be aimed
towards someone who has a solid understanding of Linux (or BSD, for
those of you who lean that direction) systems administration.  (In other
words, we're not going to teach you how to use "vi" to edit text
files.)  The book will also assume that the reader has at least a basic
understanding of telephony.

Process:  Until we get so many volunteers that it becomes burdensome,
we'll use the mailing list to discuss changes and propose writing
certain chapters.  The suggestion was also made that we elect people to
be "section leaders" over a section of the book, and they would make
sure all the chapters in that section are being worked on and have a
consistent feel.  In the future, we may write some web-apps to help
facilitate the management of the different sections being worked in.

Focus:  We discussed whether to focus on finishing the layout before we
start writing chapters, or to just get the chapters written and then
finish worrying about the layout.  At this point, we've got a fairly
good layout, and we really need to start writing some documentation. 
The decision was made to start writing docs, and to review the layout at
a later time, when we could view it in the context of having at least a
few chapters completely fleshed out.

Communication:  We discussed having regular meetings to keep up interest
and discuss the state of the project.  We're hoping to make meetings
such as this a regular event.  Should we get together every week?  Every
two weeks?

Leadership:  It was decided that we probably shouldn't elect Blitzrage
as our leader when he's not present in the meeting.  When we have more
people in the meeting, we should elect a leader.  (You dodged a bullet,
blitzrage... you really dodged a bullet.)

That's it, folks... If you don't like what was decided, then show up to
next week's meeting and we'll discuss more.  Until then...

Jared