Hi.

I am signing up for the fedora-docs group. My name is Ella Deon Lackey (and I answer to Ella or Deon). I live north of Tulsa, Oklahoma (that's Central Time in the US). I am a contract tech writer and freelance writer; I work mainly with software and tech companies, although I dabble in anything - alternative energy, home furnishings, HVAC. I've been a professional writer for over six years.

My main goal for joining the group is to observe, get a new way of approaching my work, forge some relationships with users and other writers. It's easy to get insulated and to fall into a habit with writing and with life in general. I want to branch out. The Fedora Project encourages collaboration and interaction at every stage of a project, and that's awesome.

I'm new to the Fedora Project (despite having used Fedora or Red Hat for a few years), but I do have a lot of experience with two other Fedora Projects, Fedora Directory Server and Dogtag Certificate System (check them out at directory.fedoraproject.org and pki.fedoraproject.org). I think I could help out with the SELinux and RPM documentation on the task list, and I'm good for bug fixing and formatting changes.

I have basically no real programming experience; I'm what I call a "practical user" of RHEL 4 and Fedora 8, meaning I poke around to install and configure things and use it for regular business, but I'm not adventurous about scripting things. I also have a lot of experience with wikis, static web design (HTML and CSS), very limited graphic design skills, and years of experience with DocBook XML and, to a lesser extent, XSLT. For two years, I was a newspaper reporter, so I also have experience writing articles and press releases, researching, conducting interviews, copyediting, and biting my tongue.

I have no idea if I'm an excellent match for the project, although I hope I have something to offer. I think there is a lot I can learn here.

pub  1024D/50464D8B 2008-08-21 Ella Lackey <deon@deonlackey.com>
Key fingerprint = 9723 C4FD 7D97 4169 CD62  92AE CD60 1321 5046 4D8B
sub  1024g/36683B94 2008-08-21

Thanks!
Deon Lackey