Also, what, you guys have defected from the IRC channel to g+? Is that
why we never see you in IRC anymore, Roy? We miss you!
Many of us have been using the IRC channel for just this purpose for
years, and anyone is welcome to. Personally, I still haven't used g+,
and don't know when/if I will, I'm overwhelmed with internet already!
On 10/16/2011 11:38 PM, Roy Tennant wrote:
I just want to chime in and say that it was a positive experience for
me as well -- I got more pairs of eyes on what I was doing, and an
opportunity to get some feedback on something that wasn't ready for
publication or more formal feedback methods. Kind of like "Am I on the
right track?" or "Can you see any downsides I'm not seeing?" kinds of
feedback which can be invaluable as you're in the middle of a project.
I would encourage more of this kind of mid-project and/or simply
informal sharing. It plays well with the open source meme that "given
enough eyes, all bugs are shallow".
Roy
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Birkin James Diana
<birkin_di...@brown.edu> wrote:
(I posted this recently on g+, and a few folk pointed out that it'd make sense
to post it here.)
The other day Ted Lawless, a fellow programmer, called me over to show me some
cool features he had added to the terrific new library search interface he's
been working on. I wanted the code4lib community to see some of this great
work, and remembered something Roy Tennant did a while ago.
Roy had posted to g+ that he was working on something, and that he was going to set
up a g+ hangout at a specified day& time to discuss that work with anyone
interested. I and a co-worker working on similar stuff joined that hangout with a
few other people, and it was a good experience.
I think the growth of code4libcon, and of regional code4lib unconferences, is
in part an indication that our community is loaded with passionate programmers
who love learning how others create interesting useful things.
With that in mind, it's made me think more of us should follow in Roy's footsteps:
post a message to the c4l list about a success or investigation, and give a
date&time of a g+ hangout to talk about it and show some under-the-hood code.
This is sort of along the lines of Peter Murray's experimental webinar-based
code4lib gathering some months ago, but more spontaneous and decentralized. Some of
the 'showing' part might require a coworker to join the hangout to aim a phone or
laptop camera at a screen, but it'd be an interesting experiment.
---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu
