One of the hard things to come up with is a plan that breaks things into manageable steps.

Right now you and your team have done a number of steps and you see many steps ahead of you.

It would be good to list the steps you've taken--lol I know that you don't have too much time to spend on the Internet. One good thing about posting on the Internet is what you write and put up gets saved. And with a little organization it's easy to get into taking steps that build things.

On the first matter of steps you've already taken it seems to me that you've mentioned you have created a manuscript, but it's been difficult to publish this manuscript so far.

I wonder how is this manuscript kept now? Is it hand or typewritten? Is it in a digital format like Microsoft Word? If it is a digital file then there are options about editing it and formatting it for print. There are so many print methods too. So I would be very interested in learning a bit more about this text. You don't have to tell me all at once, but more information would be very helpful to me.

The second project you have do is to actually go out into schools and do some science instruction. This part may not seem really important to your book publishing plans, but I think that it actually is very important. It's a concrete example of something members of this team have done. It's worth studying this part and sharing it. The story of your teaching is one that will be useful to craft carefully.

On the second matter of all the steps you see in front of you makes me think that saying "steps" isn't really the right way of saying it. Actually it's not clear what the next thing to do is, and then the thing after that, the next thing after that, and so on. That's where some planning and decision making comes into play.

Experts are good, but most people have more expertise than we are given credit from. When collaborating online, ordinary people are often the most helpful. It is good often time to look for the right people, but it's not always clear at the beginning who those people are. Right now you've got the interest of some people here at Ned. You can look at profiles and if you do you'll discover that people here are expert at some of the skills that will make this project go. The important thing to remember is that everyone has something to offer and when they offer it's a gift.

That last part is a bit funny. Some people are very fond of the idea of making gifts of themselves. There are some sort of unwritten rules, for example people like to be appreciated when they give gifts, and they want to give their gifts on their own terms. Really there are lots of rules and some people imagine that there are so many rule that hardly anything will get done by people giving gifts. But I know that much can be done this way, but most people really aren't so good at figuring out the rules. So it takes some time to experiment and a willingness to be open to learning how.

I see lots of things that need to be done to get this project running. And I also know that you all are still in school. That's the most important thing to concentrate on now. But I also know that because you are leaving school soon that you feel some urgency to get things done. Something I'm almost 100% sure of is that money will not fall out of the sky to provide all of the things you need. I'm also sure that with work and good planning that much can be done to make your goals.

Please don't think that planning takes too much time, because planning--making a good plan--really is doing the good work you want to do. Nothing with happen faster because you don't take time to plan, in fact things will only happen as a result of good planning.