Updates on Formatting - Sight Reading for Guitar

@apurva @n.aboulmagd @zoe Hello all! I am available 13 May from 2-4 pm (EET) and 14 May all day. I will be traveling from 15-17 May and therefore not available on those dates. Thanks.

May 14 at 2pm EET (8am EST) works for @zoe and me! @n.aboulmagd, does this also work for you?

@apruva @n.aboulmagd
Hi all. That time works for me.

Great, thanks for confirming, Chelsea. @n.aboulmagd, could you confirm as well? If this works for you too, I’ll set up the call and send out an invite.

Hi @apurva! I hope things are going well with you. Now that AUC’s break is ending we will likely hear from Nadine, hopefully confirming our upcoming proposed meeting time and date.

In the meantime, I have a few questions for you.

First, a little background…I am planning to send emails to colleges, conservatories and universities in California in which I propose concerts and workshops related to this resource. I’m hoping to give concerts (in which I will perform the original music from the book) with my colleague in LA, Philip. I’m also proposing workshops in which I teach students how to use the resource in their own practice and teaching. I hope to give these concerts and workshops in fall 2019 in California (since I will be on sabbatical from AUC). I think the timing is perfect, as I aspire to complete the resource by Sept. 1, 2019. In any event, I need to start contacting the programs now since most of them schedule fall 2019 activities at this time!

As part of the initial email to these programs, I’d like to include a link to the REBUS Community page and ultimately provide an overview of the resource. I’m sure the people I email will want to view a bit of the resource before agreeing to invite me to engage with their communities.

Currently I see two potential links, each with different issues. Which link do you recommend I send?

https://projects.rebus.community/project/duFXDJqjAoNpEU4iNhWDP3/sight-reading-for-guitar

OR

https://press.rebus.community/sightreadingforguitar/

The former has some outdated information on the outline, etc. If you recommend I send this one, I would like to update the information. How might I do that? Can you grant me editing access?

The second link seems to go directly into Pressbooks. I can see the entire resource (all 22 Units, etc) but maybe that is just because it recognizes my credentials. Can everyone currently view the resource via this link, or only me? Ultimately however, can this link display the Intro and a few units to people who don’t even have a Pressbooks account or approved access? If so, this might be the better option of the two for my current situation. What do you think?

If we can’t provide a link with a bit of Pressbooks viewing (or if you don’t recommend it at this time), can I offer that a few faculty at these institutions view the book in its current stage of development. Are you okay with that? If so, how might I facilitate that? Shall I email you (along with the interest faculty) to get them set up?

I realize this is a bit of a hassle. It would be so much easier if the book were already published at this time and I could simply provide a link to the completed book. But, at least this will inspire me to work hard all summer to complete the recordings and get the book published by Sept. 1, 2019. In the meantime, I will be so grateful if you could help me strategize how best to provide a preview/overview to the educators/musicians I intend to email in the coming weeks. - Thanks, Chelsea

Hi Chelsea, thanks for the updates. I’ll keep an eye out for @n.aboulmagd’s response!

The concerts and workshops sound like a fantastic idea! Once this is scheduled and ready, please let us know so we can share the news about them in our channels as well. The timing is great, and we definitely encourage creators to talk about their resource whenever they have an opportunity to do so!

As for the links, I’d suggest linking to this page on the Rebus Community platform:

Some of the information here might need updating, but I’ve made sure that you can edit the topics or threads here. You can also include a link to the book on the Rebus Press (https://press.rebus.community/sightreadingforguitar/), so that anyone visiting can view the book. What we like about this page is that it gives anyone interested in the project an avenue to connect with you and the rest of the team. So if you’re presenting about the book closer to the release/launch date, you may already have a good conversation going with potential adopters.

As for the book on the Rebus Press: https://press.rebus.community/sightreadingforguitar/, many of the units are selected to show in the web. Anyone visiting this link will be able to view these units. You can actually sign out of your account (via the button in the top right corner), and see which units have been set to show in the webbook, and if there are any draft/test chapters, you can adjust the settings once you sign in. Simply click on Admin --> Organize --> uncheck the box that says “Show in Web” for the chapters you want to hide. You can still view these chapters in the web when you are signed in, but they will not be visible to anyone without an account on the book. This will probably be the best way for educators/musicians to be able to view or preview the book, and avoids any hassle on our end of managing accounts and users.

Let me know how this sounds, and if you have any more questions.

Confirmed dears. See you all then. I will also invite Maha Bali to join in case she has some ideas.

Guys sorry @cgreen had something come up during that time. Can we meet on the 13th at 2 pm our time?

@zoe is travelling on the 13th. Would later in the day (3 or 4pm EET) on May 14th work for you and @cgreen? Else we could schedule something for the week of May 20.

Tagging Maha @bali in case she wants to join and has any scheduling conflicts.

Let’s meet on the 14th at 3 pm?

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Sure, that works for @zoe and me! Does that also work for Chelsea? If yes, I’ll send out the invite today. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for organising this, team. Look forward to seeing you all! A heads up that I get in late the evening before so will likely be a bit tired from travel, but the jetlag might work in my favour :smile: Talk soon!

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@zoe @apurva @n.aboulmagd May 14 at 3 pm is great. Thanks all!

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I can personally do 14th at 2, 3 or 4pm. But more important of course for it to work for @cgreen @n.aboulmagd

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Excellent, thanks so much for confirming Chelsea (@cgreen ) and Maha! Call is scheduled and invites have been sent your way. Looking forward to chatting with you all next week. :slight_smile:

@n.aboulmagd @zoe @bali @apurva: Hello all! I write to follow-up on a few points from our video meeting of a few weeks ago. In our meeting, I mentioned that I want the videos posted and formatting resolved soon, particularly because I’m planning a series of workshops and concerts to promote the SRG in Fall 2019. My chances of securing bookings will increase if I can show people bits of the completed series, with videos and graphics looking good. For your information, here is the site my friend Philip created to help us inform potential presenters. Please feel free to spread the link, if you find it relevant. http://www.graultygreen.com/

Once Hassan, Nadine and I finish editing the videos–Intro, What to Expect, Units 1.1, 1.2 and 2–I plan to attach them to the book and start contacting institutions for bookings. Hassan is currently working hard to achieve this goal. I think we may reach it by the end of this upcoming work week. Nadine, please let me know if you think there may be issues.

Finally, I wanted to touch base about formatting graphics on the book. It seems like we all agreed that Maha Shawki’s solution was the best, as long as we can find a way to make the graphics look nice across three main platforms: on computers, on phones and in a PDF version. Nadine, do you have any updates on this? My sense was that Maha Shawki was going to experiment a bit more to make sure that the graphics would look okay on cell phones too. If we go with this solution, how do you recommend we proceed? What might the time line to completion be? At what stage will you need my input? Is it possible to complete all the units by the end of July?

Please let me know if I forgot to mention something.

Thank you! - Chelsea

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Thanks for following up! The website for the workshops and concerts look great – I can’t wait to see tour dates and if there are any on the East Coast near Montreal. :smiley: I have a small edit request on the website, hopefully it’s not too much work to modify: could you possibly change “REBUS Foundation” to “Rebus Community” linking to this site: https://about.rebus.community/? If not, no worries.

Fantastic! Thanks to Hassan for his hard work on the videos. I look forward to seeing them in the book soon.

Yes, this was my understanding as well. I look forward to hearing an update from @n.aboulmagd.

That’s about it, I believe – you’ve covered it all. :smiley:

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Hi Chelsea - just want to say how absolutely awesome the website looks! It’s such a great approach, and I’m still in love with the idea of those events. And really, very well done on the site. We’ll definitely give it a boost, especially as we approach release time :smile:

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@apurva @zoe Thanks both of you for the encouragement. I’ll certainly keep you posted.

Apurva, I will make the change you requested, no problem. May I ask you a quick favor? I embedded videos to the Intro (which has 2 videos), Unit 1 (which has two videos), Unit 2 (which has 1 video) and Unit 3 (which has 1 video). Would you be able to adjust the size and placement of the videos so they look nice? Perhaps the units with two videos can feature them side by side and the units with one video unit can feature the video centered.

Finally, quick question: Nadine suggested that I add a paragraph about myself under a heading About the Author. Do you think I should do that? If so, where should I place the short paragraph about myself, in the Intro or in the back of the book somewhere? What do people normally do? Thank you!

Thanks, Chelsea! I appreciate you making the change.

Let me first say that the videos look great! I watched a few minutes of each of the clips, and they are filmed and edited wonderfully. Kudos to you, Hassan, and Nadine (and anyone else I might be missing out)!

The video thumbnails are actually auto-generated in both web and other formats when you enter the URL in the Rebus Press. So the size of the videos is not something we can control. As for placement, side-by-side placement is not possible for the same reasons, but we can definitely centre-align both the videos, like so:


This can be done using the same alignment tools that you would for text, and will not have any drastic/undesired effect on the export formats. The changes in the image above are not live, but just previewed so you can see what it looks like. Let me know what you think, and if you have any trouble implementing this change.

Great suggestion from Nadine! It’s typical to have a separate “About the Author” section in the Back Matter, so you could include a short paragraph, and if you feel comfortable, a high resolution photo as well. See this example here from the Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship open textbook. Some books do have this listed in the front matter, like Blueprint for Success, if you’d prefer to have this section closer to the Introduction. Have a think, and feel free to proceed either way. :slight_smile: