Make Collaboration Easier

Making Collaboration Easy

In the end, Trina decided to incorporate the expertise of 54 collaborators from 14 different countries into her finished book. Crazy, right? Clearly, collaboration tools that would keep her from being the sole gatekeeper (while simultaneously running her company) were pretty important.

Enter O’Reilly Atlas. Atlas is a web-based publishing platform with rich collaboration tools, robust version control, and an easy-to-use editor. Atlas allows you to publish content to web-optimized PDF, EPUB, Mobi, website, and print-ready PDF—every format on the marketplace today for every type of device—with a push of a button.

With Atlas, Trina was able to invite multiple collaborators to the project. They could add their own content as well as review and make suggestions on each other’s contributions.

Managing a Crowd of Collaborators

Early on, Trina launched a write-a-thon in Chicago to test how the writing process might work. About 20 people gathered, listened to data experts, and then split into groups to work on specific chapters.

That experience showed her that writing, while important, was just one of the roles that would be necessary to complete a successful book. She and Dyanna assigned every volunteer a task: one person was assigned to write each chapter, and several people were designated as project managers to ensure specific parts of the book were completed on deadline. Some volunteers were part of a distribution team to ensure that word got out about the project around the world. Some people were assigned to be researchers, and others to be editors—and Trina made sure that every section was reviewed by both technical and non-technical editors.

“We wanted to be sure the information was correct, but we also wanted to be sure that someone who wasn’t a data scientist could understand it. We wanted it to be friendly and accessible to someone who might have a design focus but was math-phobic, for example,” she explains. “Having non-technical editors as well as editors who really understood the subject matter look at it ensured that it was understandable.”

This system worked well. “People were very excited to be involved in making data easier to understand. But it was a commitment, and our volunteers are very busy people,” Trina says. “I was surprised that our drop off rate was as low as it was.”

Intuitive Editing Environment Flattens the Learning Curve

Having so many collaborators on a project meant having people with a wide range of technical skills. Atlas allows you to either work entirely within the editor or to import your work from other sources (such as Git, Word, or other text editors). Not all of the collaborators worked within Atlas, but of the 8 or so who did, some were comfortable with HTML and Git, and others were simply more comfortable working within the Atlas editor (which has an intuitive, Word-like user interface).

“Atlas made the process easier because I could have people working on it all at the same time, without sending documents or emails back and forth, she says. “It has a really clean commit log so I could see who was working on it, and how much progress was being made. Being very clear about our expectations and deadlines, and being able to know right way when a chapter was in, helped make the project go smoothly.”

Simplified Version Control for Not-So-Simple Revisions

Trina was able to review and approve all content added by her collaborators, see and approve suggested edits (and who made them), compare the current revision to any previous version, and revert to any previous version at any time.

That level of version control is handy for any project, but was imperative for a project with so many elements and so many collaborators.

Design & Layout with Atlas

“One of the things that really impressed me with Atlas,” Trina says,” is how carefully they thought out all the parts of a book. They’d done all the hard semantic work, so I didn’t need to spend a lot of time thinking about it. I didn’t have to think about how to set up a sidebar or a subhead. It was all thought out and organized for me.”

Because the design and layout was set up in advance in CSS, Trina’s collaborators could stay focused on the content. They could input the text and images, push the “build” button, and see exactly how the completed book would look.

The ease of inserting non-text elements was also a plus. Atlas is digital-native, which enables content creators to embed dynamic content like video, audio, interactive data visualizations, coding environments, interactive widgets, etc. Once embedded into an Atlas project, dynamic content can be rendered into any format able to display it. So, for example, you can embed a video into an HTML version; if you want a print version of that same content, Atlas will replace the video with a screen shot (or any other element you wish to substitute). Data Made Simple is, appropriately enough, fairly viz heavy. With Atlas, it was easy for collaborators to insert images and dynamic elements into their content.

Push-Button Publishing

Atlas renders your content into any format you choose—web PDF, EPUB, Mobi, website, and print-ready PDF—in minutes.

For now, Data Made Simple (published with the support of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute) is being released only in e-book formats. However, Trina hasn’t ruled out publishing the book in other formats, and says she’s already had people make suggestions for a second edition, as well as offer to translate the book into German and Spanish.

The good news is that Atlas will make those updates easy. Changes can be made in the last version of the book available on Atlas. When updates are added, Trina will just hit the “build” button, and the entire book will be laid out, re-paginated, and rendered in every desired format again—in minutes.

“Atlas is really a valuable tool for collaboration,” says Trina. “I’m glad I found it.”

Data Made Simple is free, published under the Creative Common license. You can download it free from https://infoactive.co/.