R Hill posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:28:58 -0600:
> Dan Meltzer wrote: >> >> Tonight, hanging out in #gentoo, I observed a huge amount of incorrect >> information once again.. tonight about profiles, cascading and all >> that jazz, which to be honest is fairly undocumented. I decided to >> give a miniclass on how it worked. ferringb and antarus sat in, and >> it was just an off the cuff information/QA session. >> >> Okay, so that worked, but then I got to thinking, why not do these >> fairly regularly? [] >> >> Developer A decides to speak about a specific aspect of portage, the >> discussion is announced on lists and in gwn a week or so in advance. >> The discussion could take place in a channel such as #gentoo-class, >> and logged. The developer would cover it as he saw fit, and then have >> a Q/A period after. The entire class is logged, and added to the >> website on a publically accessible page. If the docs team thinks its >> a useful subject, they could translate into a more formal page, and >> use the logs for reference, if not, it would still be availible >> information to anyone wishing to read it. >> >> My thoughts are this would be best suited to Gentoo-specific things, >> portage, gentoo's infrastructure, baselayout, [but it could be on >> anything a dev wished]. > > I think quick-basics tutorials like this would be a great addition to > GWN, but if the IRC Q&A format works then I say go for it. What about asking in GWN for classes the users would like? Start a question submission que, then have the GWN editors select the common ones they like and ask appropriate devs if they want to do a presentation. Depending on interest, a few weeks after the original request for class requests, they could start, once a week or once a month. Announce the subject a week ahead, then if a dev wants to have the original class in IRC, do so, or he can just create a presentation to be featured in GWN. If it's originally on IRC, the (cleaned up/edited) log could be featured in GWN that way as well. In either case, the initial class/tutorial would be mostly non-interactive, as presented in the GWN writeup. However, when presented, an announcement would be made as to a date/time for a Q/A session on IRC, a few days later. Questions could be submitted thru a link (email or whatever) for a couple days after the GWN presentation as well, with selected submissions covered in the IRC session as well. Then the IRC session would be posted the following week. (Thus, original tutorial/presentation one week, a couple days for Q submissions b4 the scheduled IRC Q/A session (and a day or two to go over them, if desired, depending on how the scheduling and deadlines are worked out), then a couple days to clean the log from it up and address any other submitted questions if desired, for the GWN followup coverage a week after the initial presentation.) This would cover the timing issue of a scheduled IRC session, plus have the advantage of multi-format, for those who don't do IRC, plus give folks a couple days to come up with questions after the original presentation. The initial presentation probably wouldn't need IRC's interactivity anyway, but it would preserve that element in the QA session. Coverage would be far wider as well, given the GWN coverage in all its forms (LWN coverage, Gentoo site front page billing, the mailing list, in addition to any proposed "class" site). Subject known ahead, original lecture, Q/A and interactive lab session a few days later, review and followup a few days after that at the next lecture period, similar to a Uni class with a weekly lecture and separate lab, except that it would bypass the scheduling difficulties of an global internet-wide "university". -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- [email protected] mailing list
