a million monkeys typing

A plea for expert help

Posted February 9th, 2005 at 07:39am

Version 2.0 of the DIY Planner should be released in early to mid-March, and to that end, I’m looking for a bit of help. There are some templates I’d like to produce, but don’t know enough about the subjects to feel I can do a good job. I can use another planner system’s forms as a basis, but then I’m concerned about infringing upon their copyrights, which –in this sue-happy age– is something I really want to avoid.

1. A few people have requested “fitness” or “exercise” templates. Not being a fitness buff (well, except for cycling and hiking), I have no idea of the best way to structure such a form. It has to be generic enough to allow for different exercises, reps, time durations, etc., but still allow for ease of use and adequate space (perhaps this one should be sideways?).
2. Daily Finances and Expense Report. Again, I’m trying to avoid copyrighted “look and feel” issues here. Anyone have any good ideas for these, especially those that can address the limitations of other planners’ forms?
3. Vehicle Service Record.
4. Insurance Information.
5. I’m also looking for reference cards and “cheat sheets”, all non-copyrighted, of course. Weights & Measures, Area Codes, Time Zones, First Aid, Windows Shortcuts, Mac OS X Shortcuts, common bash commands, and anything else that might be very useful to many users. I’m going to resist the urge to do anything too technical or niche here, with the possible exception of bash (because it’s something I –and many people I know– would probably use). I’ll probably put these cards into a separate PDF file within the package.
6. Anything else you’d like to see?

If you’d like to help, please leave a comment or drop me an email (see my address at the bottom of the menu at the right). A few things to point out, before you do:

• Let me contact you before you go through any degree of effort. There may be somebody already volunteering to help produce the same material.
• You must be prepared to hand over any ideas to me, and not claim ownership of them in any form. (This is my “cover my legal ass-ets” disclaimer: I don’t want anybody coming back to me at a later date with a subpoena, alleging that their idea is what made me a millionaire. ) However, I will be duly noting any volunteers in the credits along with their web page links and/or email addresses, so everybody can recognise your contribution, you can feel good about helping other organisational geeks, and you can even get a little traffic to boot.
• You must state that any ideas you put forth are not copyrighted by anyone, as far as you can determine within the limits of reason. The finished templates and references will go under the Creative Commons license with the rest of the package, under the same terms and conditions (see the package’s accompanying HTML file for more details). If something is public domain (say, a diagram or a particular chart), I will note it in the credits file, so this shouldn’t pose a problem.
• If you are either artistically inclined, or are capable with an office or graphical program, please feel free to send mock-ups or layout ideas. If not, just basic text information or ideas would be fine.
• Keep in mind that any template information, mock-ups or layout ideas you pass along to me should not ressemble or make use of any copyrighted material. I can’t stress this enough. I don’t need a mega-corp hauling my derriere to some expensive U.S. kangaroo court where they’re represented by a $1000/hour lawyer and my spokesperson has all the legal knowledge of a backwoods muskrat (i.e., “me”).

Upon the release of 2.0 in 5.5″x8.5″ form, I will be following it up almost immediately with an A5 version (which is just a bit of a resize, really). It would appear that my volunteers for producing letter-size and A4 are going to be busy till at least April, so I might put out a call for other help next month unless my schedule opens up enough to produce these versions myself within a reasonable timeframe.

I just wanted to offer a big thank-you for all the feedback so far. It’s been invaluable to the production of these templates, and I’ve learned a lot about how others work effectively. Surely, this will help my own productivity in the long run.