This weekend I was privileged to join a former student's graduation festivities. His family sought me out through Saturday Academy, the word of mouth school we use to recruit for various walks of life, by inspiring a love of the field. We do have a Google Video ad, but that maybe counts as part of word of mouth I'm not sure.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3331684038533449838&hl=en Anyway, back when still in 8th grade, Tim built a Linux server for his basement, registered dynamic ip that way people do, and customized pybloxsom for Father Bob, the headmaster at his school. The liturgical calendar as well as USA secular "holy days" were built in such that different CSS would load depending on the season and/or day, changing the look, plus he went to all the work to find out about mod_python and have stuff run from in there (through Apache). On the day he was to give his presentation, I was there, and noticed that although his teachers were awed and appreciative, they had little idea what he was talking about when all this got mentioned. Tim was lonely in his knowledge, but for geeks like me, and like ya'll out in edu-sig world, who really know about this stuff and provide community for those eager learners who push on ahead before most kids are very far at all down this read. My hypothetical question for Vern would be: assuming a parallel Universe in which Tim's project was accepted by Pycon for showcasing, what would that look like? Having seen all the Blip TV out of Pycon 2009, part of my thinking is "poster session" should mean an official part of the post-Pycon video feed, i.e. browsers might surf to Tim's exhibit online, watch the presentation, including screen shots, live action. Five minutes or less would be an appropriate format (lightning talk). Here he'd have a link for college admissions officers, others charged with background checking a portfolio. As soon as I think this, I'm thinking why just post Python? Why couldn't Pycon have this branding control over a YouTube channel devoted to showcasing winners and runners up? The older exhibits wouldn't go away, even as new ones were added. My final piece of the puzzle: user groups. In terms of seeking out talent like Tim, or giving them a local contact, not every town has either a Saturday Academy or a Python User Group, but the latter is what's easiest to set up, even within a school. Every year, Princeton University asks its alums to actually meet with candidates and write up their impressions in response to set questions. I could see Vern getting feedback from the field in that way e.g.: "Dear Vern, as member of user group X, I was asked to check in on Tim and assess that state of his Python project, and here are my findings..." This way you have someone on the ground authenticating a project, not just getting a Youtube submission from out of the blue claiming to show Pythonic animation of inside-outing sphere. On the other hand, if there's working source code and results might be duplicated... on the other hand, we don't want to deluge Vern (or anyone else) with projects needing to be "installed and run" unless that part of a paid day job, with room to add staff. As a beleaguered volunteer, that'd be thankless, plus doesn't even address the whole need for judging beyond simply ascertaining that so-and-so really is doing what they say they're doing. That's why I'm suggesting enlisting the support of user groups and giving young talent the fun experience of a Pythonista coming to their school, say, meeting the student, getting an introduction to the project, taking away some pictures, maybe a DVD. The beginning of the process... fame and glory on the Pycon channel a possible end result. Kirby PS: Tim is going to Princeton, my alma mater (and his mom's), isn't planning to major in computer science though, was talking about a year abroad in Varanasi maybe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8_Fc7_zn8w http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-wings.html http://www.saturdayacademy.org/ _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
