Announcing The iPhone Recipes Community Book/Call For Submissions

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On September 30, 2009

Great things happen at conferences. Last night, at dinner with some fellow attendees/presenters at 360iDev, we fell into a conversation where we were showing off the snazzy UI elements from apps — not necessarily our own — and then brainstorming about how they were constructed.

Present at dinner was Jake Behrens. Jake, along with a handful of others and I, had submitted ideas for a planned Pragmatic Press iPhone Recipes book. The Prags ultimately decided against pulling the trigger on the book; they couldn’t make the business case for it.

These two things were kicking around in my head at about the same time and it occurred to me: we should do a community created recipes book. In the Ruby world, there’s a tradition of community books. E.g., Sinatra: The Book and The Merb Open Source Book. No reason we can’t do it too!

So: I’m pleased to announce the iPhone Recipes Community book.

You can help in two ways: (1) Have an idea for a recipe? Email me! (2) Please help spread the word by tweeting, blogging and/or submitting it to Hacker News. Please back-link to this post.

I’ll sort through recipe submissions and pick a set that can be organized into a cohesive book. I’ll then put up a scaffolding website/wiki that matches they layout of the book and the authors can start filling the chapters in. Logistically, to keep things sane, chapters will be primarily authored (and credited to) an individual author. After a chapter reaches a done enough state we’ll open them for community editing/expansion.

What’s in in for an author? Reputation. Published authors demand higher rates, get speaking opportunities, have credibility with prospective customers, etc. Also, being a good citizen and giving back to the community is good karma.

The book will reside at iphonedevrecipes.org and will be creative-commons licensed. I haven’t (1) set the site up yet or (2) selected a specific creative commons license because the connectivity at the conference’s hotel is awful. I’ll get cracking on it when I return home.

0 responses to “Announcing The iPhone Recipes Community Book/Call For Submissions”

  1. Ken Pespisa says:

    Awesome, Dan! What a great idea. I see a lot of code sharing in .NET languages too, but this type of site was missing from the iPhone development community.

  2. Great Idea. Look forward to seeing it. – Steve

  3. Dave Thomas says:

    Just for clarification: the book wasn’t dropped because there was no business case. There were other reasons.

    And we’re definitely interested in books on iPhone development.

    Cheers

    Dave

  4. Ling says:

    Exciting idea! Wish it pull off nicely.