I’m excited to say that I turned in my manuscript for the ActivityPub book for O’Reilly Media today. I started working on it in September of 2023, with a lot of interim checkpoints and deadlines since. In April 2024, I finished the first draft of the manuscript. Over the month of May, I’ve been working on improvements suggested by the technical reviewers who agreed to look over the book, and from my own re-read.
In total, my TODO file for this month has about 250 changes to be made. Some are small — just changing a word or two — but one required adding a whole new chapter, and many required multi-paragraph sections.
I took the last week of May off from my work at Open Earth Foundation to concentrate on making changes. My team was really supportive, which I deeply appreciated. I went to our country house in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and I spent the week writing, editing, drawing and thinking.
Now, the next stage of book making starts: production. The production team at O’Reilly will be copyediting, indexing, and laying out the book. Their designers will be taking my UML diagrams and turning them into professional-looking illustrations. We have two rounds of quality control on code samples and fact checking on content.
In September 2024, the final e-book will be available for sale. I’ll have a link here for the pre-sale version when it comes out. If you’re eager to read the book, I highly recommend reviewing the early release version.
Thanks so much to my friends, family and colleagues who’ve made space and time for me to do this work. It has meant a lot to me. I hope the final product helps more developers create cool projects using ActivityPub.
Evan Prodromou's Blog 
@evanprodromou are you sure you didn’t spend half the month pulling out stubborn weeds? 😄
@evanprodromou congrats Evan!!! this is so exciting!!
@evanprodromou 💚
@evanprodromou Congratulations! Can you speak to the bird species on the cover (a Budgie?) and the reason it was selected? Or is that secret O'Reilly stuff. 🦜
Yes, I wrote a whole post about it! https://evanp.me/2024/03/15/cover-animal-for-activitypub-book/
@evanprodromou @box464
"They breed and raise their young in separate, private nesting holes, but when breeding season is over they join into large roosts with many, many birds, connecting their small family units into a bigger flock network.
I couldn’t think of a better description of what ActivityPub is and does."
You don’t have to!
@evanprodromou can’t wait to pick up the ebook September! Congrats!
@evanprodromou CONGRATULATIONS!
P.S. you’re lucky to have a vacation home in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. We’ve been up (from New England) several times to cycle, kayak and relax.
@evanprodromou congrats. I know you worked hard on it
@evanprodromou Do you know if there will be a print edition?
Right now, no, unless there is some demand. If you would like to see one, please email O’Reilly and let them know!
@evanprodromou I would love to. Is there a particular best address to send that feedback to, or should I just look for their general contact information?
I don’t know a good address, so maybe whatever is linked on their site
@evanprodromou appreciate it!
@evanprodromou
Can #activitypub be extended for media like podcasts or…I dunno, something, down the road? Because it seems to have some similarities or crossover with and to RSS feeds.
@evanprodromou
It looks like there are least some efforts in that direction:
https://minipub.dev/info/activitypub-for-podcast-apps/
although I've not looked into it all beyond a cursory search.
#podcast #activitypub
@nicholas_saunders @evanprodromou Check this out — @samsethi can tell you more.
https://www.futureofpodcasting.net/what-activity-streams-could-enable-in-podcasting/
@chrismessina @evanprodromou @samsethi
Looks interesting. Would be amazing if #acrivitypub were to tie in with podcast players. I think that the push (?) nature would be a game changer. Well, interesting, at least.
@nicholas_saunders @evanprodromou @samsethi There's actually a proposal already in the Podcast Index work here: https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/main/docs/1.0.md#social-interact
@evanprodromou 😎 ⚡ 🚗 👍
@evanprodromou
Congratulations!!
@evanprodromou Bravo and Congrats. I look forward to checking it out.
@evanprodromou Wow, congratulations!! Finishing a book is a mighty task. We are grateful for your careful work of building, documenting, curating, and spreading the good word!
@evanprodromou Well done. We are all better off as a result of the work that you have done.
congrats @evanprodromou
@evanprodromou I've just read the book, it's awesome. Wish I had it 12 months ago!
I was a bit surprised to see Group actors described as a way to clump people as Lemmy, Mbin and PieFed use it as a way to categorise *posts*.
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1b12/fep-1b12.md
I would have thought Organisation was for clumps of people?
It's a very small thing.
Amazing work, thank you!
@evanprodromou that’s fantastic! I’m already reading the early release and it’s helping me as I build my fediverse blogging project. Can’t wait for the final version!
I hope you really enjoy it. I’m very interested in the federated blogging project!
@evanprodromou I’m incredibly excited about this book. Congratulations and thank you for all the important work you and your colleagues have done to make the fediverse happen.