Date: February 2001
From: Ron Tomich
To: Frankly Speaking
Subject: Chinese-Lanuage Tech Reviewers

Dear Frankly,

It seems, from the gist of the reply in your last column, that our U.S. offices are awash in technical-review talent and, thus, can be choosy. Out here in O'Reilly's Beijing office, where I oversee our fledgling Chinese publishing venture, competent and available tech reviewers seem to be about as abundant as pregnant pandas, which is to say, we rarely find any. Though our well-meaning Chinese translators struggle mightily to capture the flavor of our original English titles, the reality is, because O'Reilly's titles are often cutting edge, few in this land can offer the level of careful, sound technical interpretation we desire, and those that do possess the polish are inevitably saturated with their own IT work challenges and have little time to devote to our needs.

So, let me seize this moment to call out to any Chinese technical wizards (simplified) who dwell in China and might visit this space. If you feel you can help us, email me. We need you.

Ron Tomich
Managing Director, Asia Pacific
O'Reilly & Associates
ront@oreilly.com

Dear Ron:

I often wonder, when I write a Frankly Speaking column, whether anyone is going to read it. Do I have any loyal readers? Thanks to you, Ron, I have an answer to this question. This is your second time replying to one of my columns. This makes you my most active reader. Congratulations.

Your need for tech reviewers for your Chinese-language program is an interesting problem. As far as I know, O'Reilly U.S. has never had this problem. It would appear that O'Reilly Germany, O'Reilly France, and O'Reilly Japan have also had good luck finding good, dedicated reviewers. All these countries have such a strong network infrastructure that it can be easy to find already-formed communities around the most important technologies. Of course, O'Reilly began writing about Unix-based topics, and Unix system administrators and programmers are among the most talkative and opinionated humans on the earth, so finding people willing to evaluate a book and tell you what they think was easy.

As for the "cutting-edge" nature of O'Reilly books, I wonder if the books that might interest your Chinese readers are some of the smaller, Unix-based books we have, books like Managing Usenet, Learning GNU Emacs, and termcap & terminfo? Is China backing the Linux and open source technologies, or is Windows the more popular system? Certainly, one of the ironies of Linux is that its primary virtue is running easily on older, less powerful, smaller machines. We find that the local computing environment of many Linux users is not greatly different from users of commercial Unix from seven or eight years ago.

In China, I would think that your best bet is to work with universities where a particular technology is being used or researched and with large companies with the same characteristics. They might be able to identify key individuals in their organizations who would welcome a chance to review our books.

What about Chinese speakers and readers who live outside China? Are there some Chinese-speaking graduate students in the U.S., Canada, or Europe who might be interested in reviewing these texts? (If so, please email Ron or me.)

To those of you reading this column who could review Chinese-language O'Reilly books, let me urge you to do so:

• You'll be helping to increase the amount of technically accurate technical literature available in Chinese.
• You'll make it easier for others to use a technology that you care about. Every reader is a potential new contributor to your technical community.
• You'll be able to see a book on a topic you care about before it is published, well before others get to see it.
• You'll be gratefully acknowledged by name in the preface. That will increase your visibility in your technical communities and enhance your reputation.
• You will earn the gratitude of O'Reilly & Associates. You might even receive an honorarium.

I hope you get lots of reviewers, Ron. The release of O'Reilly books in China and in the Chinese language is just spectacular.

Frank Willison
Editor-in-Chief, Technical Publications
O'Reilly & Associates