> 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.
Terrible idea indeed, dumbing down the lectures. How about working more
closely with the audience instead? Take a volunteer(s) that does not have a
clue what are you going to talk about to do the preface to the lecture, not
more than A4 with all the basic information summary, wikipedia articles for
concepts, links to fill you in if you're unfamiliar with terms, etc.
I bet most of the people that come to the lecture are doing that independently
(I do, for the interesting ones I come to), so why not make it a collaborate
effort? The lecturer will not have to deal with a fairly impossible task of
trying to bring everyone to the same starting level in 5-10 minutes, and most
people skim a printed page much more efficiently than listening for 10
minutes anyway.
I am aware of the fact that a vast majority of our lecturers write the slides
the night before the lecture itself, but all the research can be done weeks
in advance only with a plan draft of the lecture.
Pardon my french, but, we're seeing a decline in the number of people
coming to the lectures, and you say "I know, let's give them
homework!"? A big part of the issue is prerequisite knowledge. And for
the advanced lectures, for the high-level users, that's a good idea,
which is already implemented by means of putting the lecture slides
online, often with links to more material. But I'm speaking of having
the club reach out to more people - by lowering the entry bar. Making
the club less exclusive. More lectures which have less prerequisite
knowledge, that one could just pop in and listen.
I'm not saying to lower the level of all lectures - it's just that we
have enough advanced lectures, and we need more for beginners.
RECORDINGS! I would like to bring it up again. Ok, so video is to bulky to
manage and too expensive to produce. But audio can be easily produced (who
doesn't own an "mp3 player" nowadays?) and can be very distributed fairly
easily for these who can't attend the lecture, and these who like to replay
it again after two weeks to refresh the memory.
Actually, I was thinking of this for the discussions... an extremity
would be to make them into a podcast, but I doubt many people would
want to do that. But recordings of what's going on, well, that could
work. Round-table discussions, anyone? :)
> 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.
"There is no university other than Technion, and no other building than Taub"
Based on statistically incorrect representation of people I know personally,
if you heard about Haifux, it was hearsay (=me), not an announcement of some
kind. I can safely say that 95% of computer users have no connection to or
idea about computer science whatsoever. Out of remaining 5%, how many are
studying at the Technion and "live" at Taub? You do the math.
Things is, new recruits to Haifux are almost exclusively Technion
students, and of those - usually CS. Why? Proximity. We're speaking of
adding youngsters to the club, and looking at that age-range, most
people don't have neither the means nor the time to get involved with
something at the Technion that they aren't passionate about to begin
with. I remind you, getting to the Technion in the evening is rather
difficult for anyone who isn't already a student there. So while we
can and should arrange special events like W2L, and advertise for
people, and cross our fingers really hard that someone will come - it
is evident, by my example, that it's far easier to get CS students.
Another good point is that CS students have an interest in Linux.
Matam students, obviously, but also ones that are starting to work at
popular CS workplaces such as IBM and Intel - I get many people asking
me about Haifux, telling me that they need to use Linux at work, and
would like to learn more about it - but the lectures that show up are
usually way too high-level for them.
Not only a chef can use a set of Mr.Faceless' "famous" chef's knives, that's
why they are advertised where everyone see it, not on your local chefs'
conventions.
So, while it might be better for Humanity and FOSS as a whole to cater
to everyone in the universe, right now what we're trying to do is
revive the club. The fact of the matter is that meetings are held in
Taub 3, and with the changes I proposed, if we build the proverbial it
- the proverbial they will come.
--
Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM, learn more at
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
Ohad Lutzky
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org)
To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
