Think you can do better than Speck? http://www.sofobomo.org/2009/
What is SoFoBoMo? SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month - a group event where a bunch of photographers all make solo photo books start to finish, in 31 days, at more or less the same time. It's modeled loosely on NaNoWriMo, where participating writers all write novels in a month, and NaSoAlMo, where musicians write and record solo albums in a month. So far 330 people have signed up for SoFoBoMo '09. View a list of all SoFoBoMo '09 participants For SoFoBoMo, the goal is to make the photos, write any needed text, layout the book, and produce a PDF image of the book, all in 31 days. Rather than confining it to a single calendar month, we use a 'fuzzy month', where you can pick any contiguous 31 day period inside a two month window - this makes it a bit more flexible and encourages broader participation. When is SoFoBoMo? This time around, the fuzzy month is any 31 day period you please, provided that it starts no earlier than May 1, 2009, and ends no later than June 30, 2009, at midnight in your local time zone. Where is SoFoBoMo? SoFoBoMo is an international thing. You don't have to be anyplace special to participate - wherever you are is just fine. On the map below, you can see the locations of some of the folks who have signed up for SoFoBoMo 2009 already. We've got people all over the world. Why SoFoBoMo? Why should you participate in SoFoBoMo? There are a lot of reasons. A lot of photographers have considered doing a book, but various concerns have stopped them. Heck, the same concerns stopped us. We worried that our photos weren't good enough. We worried that we didn't have enough photos. We worried that we couldn't write decent text, or couldn't do a decent job of layout, or that we didn't have the time to do a good job. SoFoBoMo gives us (and you) an end run around those fears. There's no requirement that the photos be good. (but we suspect you'll be surprised by how good yours are if you participate). There's no requirement to have any text at all. And there is no requirement on quality of layout. There's just three constraints: all the work must be done in one 31 day stretch that falls completely inside the two month window, the book must contain at least 35 photos, and you have to generate a PDF of the book. That's it. Who runs SoFoBoMo? SoFoBoMo was started by Paul Butzi, but it exists because of the efforts of all the participants. There are no fees, so we don't collect money. This website is developed and maintained by Bernie Sumption. Many of the participants write about their experience doing SoFoBoMo on their blogs - and reading those blogs is a great, fun part of the SoFoBoMo experience. Bottom line: SoFoBoMo is a bunch of photographers all around the world who want experience turning their photos into books, and all do it at the same time to help one another be successful. No one is excluded. Everyone is free to participate. The more, the merrier! Have people actually done this? Was it fun? Yes. Roughly 170 people signed up for SoFoBoMo 2008. Of those 170 people, 60 actually finished a book. You can examine the books they made on the 2008 books page - all sixty of them. It was fun. It was by turns exciting, and frustrating, and educational, and challenging and uplifting and rewarding. And it was really, really fun. So we're doing it again this year. If you're uncertain, take a look at Gordon McGregor's essay on why you should participate. And then go and sign up. -- The fastest way to get your question answered on the net is to post the wrong answer. Larry Colen [email protected] http://www.red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
