Thank you Sönke, Your blue sky is definitely more blue than anything I was imagining. I do remember one of the publishers trying to do similar thing for educational books (O'Reilly?), where one could pick individual chapters from their full catalogue and then remix it into custom print-on-demand book. But I could not find it again right now to see what happened to that idea. I suspect the challenge for presentations with that would be that most of them are custom-sequence rather than lego-blocks assembly. This may be due to audience knowledge level, speed of product change, presentation length, specific points to cover, etc.
However, it did spark a thought on something that could be a very practical version of that. I am guessing the primary target audience for the project are those that teach about Apache project and secondary audience those who just want to discover the material. In that case, something like the following may be a significant step towards your idea: 1) A very easy way to discover existing training (again, yahoo-style directory, custom-search-backed, highly Google/Bing visible, etc). This would be sufficient for learners and would be the first step for the trainers 2) A strong encouragement for every directory entry to not just link to the training, but to also have source materials. So, the video and PDF, but also PPT or AsciiDoc source. Obviously, with the reuse-oriented license. This implies that whoever uploads the sources has the right to release them, which, in its own turn, may imply having some workflows and incentives to push for that. I would say linking to documents rather than hosting, at least as the first step. Though perhaps Apache Committers could have a hosted space to contribute their source versions. 3) A set of open-license common resources (logos, templates, build systems, documentation) on creating presentations that would be easy to present AND to remix. I think this already exists (for logos, etc), so again linking rather than reinventing as much as possible would be the goal. 4) Perhaps some sort of discovery system to identify the material out there in the wild (e.g. conference videos) or a way to work directly with conference organizers to be kept in the loop for when such material becomes available. If this sounds good, there are implications on resources/skills/approaches though. For the 1 above, a basic hand-crafted website is not sufficient, it needs to be something built from CMS (though not necessarily CMS served, could be something like https://www.gatsbyjs.org/). Similarly, for the 4 above, that's quite a technical project. So I am not sure whether it would be in the scope here, however useful. Regards, Alex. P.s. For me specifically, I would be very happy to contribute all my Solr presentation sources under whatever remix license is chosen. I also have some more detailed thoughts on (1) and (4) above, though I don't want to be the loudest voice in the room on this issue (due to personal time issues, etc). On Wed, 24 Apr 2019 at 10:19, Sönke Liebau <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Alex, > > welcome to the list and thank you very much for your questions and input! > We are still in the process of starting everything up and especially our > website is not entirely up to speed yet, so let me try to answer your > questions on here for now. > > Very short answer: a bit of 2, very much 3 & 4 > > Basically, the idea is to create a central repository for all sorts of > training components, make this material searchable and provide tooling to > compose material for training sessions out of the individual components. > This will probably include but is in no way limited to "The Apache Way", > Apache products, other open source products, ... > > So to give a concrete example of how I imagine/hope this will work is if I > am asked to give an introduction to full-text search and overview of open > source components out there, then I can check our index (whatever form > that'll have in the end), find stuff on "what is an inverted index", > "introduction to Solr" and "Elasticsearch fundamentals", create a metadata > file referencing these materials from our repository and "compile" a > finished presentation from these. With the added benefit of just > recompiling this with updated content 2 years later, when I'm asked to give > the same talk again. > > I do realize that there are numerous issues still to solve around this and > that it will probably not work quite as nicely as I've made it sound, but > one can dream.. > > I hope that answers your question, if not, please feel free to reach out > and I will try again :) > > Best regards, > Sönke > > On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 4:05 PM Alexandre Rafalovitch <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > My name is Alex and I am a committer to the Apache Lucene/Solr > > project. My - self-selected - focus within the community is onboarding > > of the new (Solr) users. This includes introductory training, improved > > examples, compilation of non-obvious resources (I run > > http://www.solr-start.com/), etc. I also try to point people at Solr > > training/presentation/projects by other people as appropriate. > > > > So I was quite excited when I stumbled on this project. Anything that > > simplifies the onboarding for those who train others is awesome. > > > > Yet, I am a little confused on the specific initial focus even after > > reviewing the website and some of the threads. So, I thought I would > > throw it here and see if the tree I am barking up is the right one. > > > > Is this project primarily about: > > 1) Having the best "Introduce to the Apache Way" material - the > > presentations/etc about the Apache itself? > > 2) Having common templates for people teaching/presenting about > > individual Apache Projects (e.g. Solr) to make it easier for them to > > produce the material. So, similar to what ApacheCon gives to its > > presenters but even better? > > 3) Having a way to discover all the various trainings done by > > different people about Apache projects? > > 4) Allowing people to contribute their material to some central > > repository under the license that allows reuse/remix? > > 5) Something completely else? > > > > For (3) specifically, my blue sky idea was that it would be absolutely > > fantastic to have an old-yahoo-style directory of all resources. At > > least for Solr, Google has real trouble finding good content, even if > > it is out there. Especially, if it is a video. I actually had a > > preliminary go on this idea, but could not find any software to make > > it easy and did not want to bikeshed to that level of depth (though > > perhaps one day...). > > > > Regards, > > Alex. > > > > > -- > Sönke Liebau > Partner > Tel. +49 179 7940878 > OpenCore GmbH & Co. KG - Thomas-Mann-Straße 8 - 22880 Wedel - Germany
