I agree that meeting together for socializing and discussing things would be nice to do.
I had a nice time that time we went to the Japanese restaurant in the center. I've also been a couple of times in the Jerusalem club, and they meet once in a while on a Saturday's night and just hang out in their regular coffee shop. (I don't get a chance to go their lectures, so that's almost the only context where I met these guys).
Haggai
On 10/31/06, Ohad Lutzky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Actually, my problem with the 'SiL' term is that it's rather vague. A
better explanation of it on the site might be all that's required. My
primary point, I guess, was more SiL. While we're at it, some more
suggestions that popped up:
One suggestion - shorter lectures. 2-hour lectures are, well, long.
This makes them difficult to prepare, and tends to swing the subjects
towards the more complicated side. For example, a lecture I want to
give is about package management in Debian-based distros - that is,
the very basics - what a package manager is, how to use it, how and
why apt-get, aptitude and synaptic are the same (with a short
explanation on the unix tradition of having text-based applications
with GUI frontends), things like that. I would find it difficult to
fill two hours with this.
Furthermore - a two-hour lecture is a big chunk of time that many
people simply can't afford (speaking from an undergrad point of view).
"Two hours? But I got homework in some course to do... maybe I'll come
for an hour". They don't show up either, because they figure - what's
the point? If they show up for the first hour, they'll only get the
introduction, and nothing interesting - and if they show up for the
second - they won't know what's going on.
Of course, everybody remembers what a success the lightning talks
were... So I guess this means that for some topics (and in my opinion
- most topics), shorter is better. Perhaps not 7-minutes short, but
short.
And a final reason for shortening the lectures leads me to my next
point - discussion. Mailing lists are nice, and I don't know about you
guys - but I personally really enjoy just sitting with people,
discussing Linux and FOSS stuff. Be the subject some sort of cool
software I found, or stuff that's happening on Slashdot, or whatnot.
It's a rich community with much to discuss, and it's often more
enjoyable in person. Now, for the last four semesters I could often
get hold of Boaz or Haggai, but not always, and never any of the older
guys. Also, very often I have people come up to me and tell me that
they have some kind of hardware issue on their laptop, or they need
someone to explain something to them about Linux - and I would tell
them to come to Haifux. And after the lecture, people would stay and
help out - but it was late by then, and things would be rushed.
I know I'm not making too much of a coherent point... and I'm
certainly not going for an "Is there any new business? Any old
business? Minutes of our last meeting" kind of thing, but I do think
some of the focus should be taken off lectures.
On 10/31/06, guy keren < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> (first - i've no problem with tuesdays as well).
>
> On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Alon Altman wrote:
>
> > I think the format we had - alternating between advanced and entry-level
> > lectures (standard and SiL lectures) is the best.
>
> there are two issues we didn't solve with this:
>
> 1. preparing W2L is tedious. it always was - and it became worse every
> year. we over-engineer it, and eventually get relatively poor results.
>
> i sent an email about this (that seem to have got lost) - that after
> talking with eli, we think a 2-meetings session is enough - one for
> telling people why they should want to try linux, and in the end giving
> them ubuntu CDs. 2 weeks after - a Q&A meeting to answer questions
> people stumbled upon. eli was prepared to handle the first meeting. the
> rest of us will then handle the Q&A meeting (mostly by showing up).
>
> 2. we have no mechanism for propagation between SiL and the non-SiL
> lectures. moving frmo W2L to SiL is trivial, since SiL only requires
> W2L knowledge. however, there's no clear point of when people can feel
> safe to move from SiL to non-SiL.
>
> there's no need to add more categories. what you call "basic" should be
> marked as "SiL". if a certain meeting requires prior knowlege - it should
> be stated on a per-meeting bases. if we have too many categories, people
> will likely get confused.
>
> --guy
>
> > As long as people know the
> > lectures are bi-weekly and come in the appropriate weeks, we both have a
> > weekly meeting for keeping the club alive, while each group has a chance to
> > hear lectures in their own level. Recall, that haifux was bi-weekly until we
> > started W2L and SiL.
> >
> > Maybe we should have more diffrentiation between levels:
> > - W2L - a fixed-length lecture series for those totally new to Linux, given
> > once per year, maybe coordinated nationally and with a linux day.
> > - SiL - standard lectures that bring a linux newbie to become a linux
> > hacker. Things like shells and editors, installing from source, compiling
> > the kernel, users and permissions, filesystems and mounts, etc. Probably
> > to be given in alternating weeks after W2L.
> > - Basic lectures - lectures which require only knowledge from W2L and maybe
> > a bit of SiL to be understood. Mostly focus on "how do I ... in Linux",
> > where "..." is something an average user might want to do, or at least
> > consider.
> > - Social/Planning meetings - preperation/feedback for W2L/SiL/Linuxday,
> > promoting linux, etc.
> > - Advanced lectures - All the rest we know and love: programming,
> > internals, security protocols, lambda calculus, ...
> >
> > It seems like the queue we have now is mostly advanced lectures, though my
> > lecture can be considered "basic".
> >
> > Alon
> >
> > On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Ohad Lutzky wrote:
> > > Those I can arrange for - infancy problems are quite easy to generate,
> > > no doubt, but I'm also talking about the people. Many CS undergrads
> > > had some interest in Haifux for a long time, but felt alienated by the
> > > high level of the lectures, and the low undergrad attendance. I
> > > believe those two can be fixed by
> > >
> > > A. 'Dumbing down' the lectures. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But I'm
> > > talking about encouraging additional entry-level lectures. I can put
> > > my money (=time) where my mouth is, and give those myself, and I have
> > > some more people in mind which I'll be talking to about them giving
> > > lectures.
> > >
> > > B. Working with the CS undergrad courses. This semester I mentioned my
> > > VIM lecture to a Matam TA, who mentioned it to Kimchi, who mentioned
> > > it to his class... and Taub 3 instantly became packed. Unfortunately,
> > > I didn't know that was going to happen, so the lecture was quite a bit
> > > too-high level. Still, almost everybody stayed for the full two hours,
> > > and several came for more lectures.
> > >
> > >> I'm not saying that we oldies should quit.
> > >
> > > Please don't! None of us youngsters have the experience and knowledge
> > > required to give the interesting high-level lectures, which we (and
> > > I'm speaking for the more advanced users) really enjoy.
> > >
> > >> BTW, I'm fine with tuesday.
> > >
> > > \m/
> > >
> > >
> >
> > --
> > This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540
> > GPG public key at http://8ln.org/pubkey.txt
> > Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > -=[ Random Fortune ]=-
> > Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them
> > over the horizon.
> > -- K. A. Arsdall
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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> --
> guy
>
> "For world domination - press 1,
> or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy
>
>
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