...sorry, that sent prematurely!
I was saying that, next time, maybe we could use the live Hangouts to bring
remote viewers in on some of the many conversations which took place around the
space.
On the videos, I think that the archive value of recording the presentations
and demos is much more important than streaming live to just a few remote
viewers. We could use a batch of GoPro HD cams and sound recorders which could
be relocated around the space to capture the best footage (like the copter
training done on Saturday night - that was amazing to watch) as well as talks
and presentations.
We could still live stream the presentations, but with a much simpler setup,
just one cam on the speaker and no pressure to capture everything at once.
The many chance conversations I had all through the weekend were, for me, the
best thing of all. The ideas and questions raised, along with the universal
wish to learn and share, led to many mini-breakthroughs in understanding and
imagination of the potential and power of NuPIC.
So, many, many thanks again to Matt, Jeff, Subutai & co, and especially to Teri
and Casey for the Trojan effort in making sure everything just happened. Thanks
to everyone who turned up and made it the great event it was for all.
This sets the bar for the next one, I'm already looking forward to that!
Regards
Fergal Byrne
—
Sent from Mailbox for iPhone
On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Fergal Byrne <[email protected]>
wrote:
> ++1 on that, thanks to Matt and the team for all the very hard work put into
> this, it made it more than worthwhile to travel from Ireland for. I know
> Francisco and the guys from Switzerland were also delighted to attend.
> I think we can compensate for the technical issues if we all collaborate on
> writing up any material we can generate from the weekend. This could include
> slides, text, code snippets, and perhaps audio and video prepared offline in
> the next days and weeks. We can add links to these in the notes for the
> Hangout videos. I know Matt's taking a well-deserved day off today but we'll
> chat about this later.
> It was wonderful to meet with so many great people both from Grok and this
> list, and I think we
> —
> Sent from Mailbox for iPhone
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Jeff Fohl <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Matt -
>> Thank you for putting on a great event. It was easily the best hackathon I
>> have attended this year. I am still learning about NuPIC and the CLA, so I
>> did not end up making a hack, but the event was a huge benefit to me
>> because of all that learned and was exposed to. I hope to attend next year
>> and be familiar enough with the platform to build a hack.
>> Thanks also to Jeff Hawkins and the entire Grok team for being so helpful
>> and inspiring. The event got me really fired up!
>> Regarding the issue of live-streaming vs recording the event: I think
>> recording and then posting video is fine if that allows for higher quality
>> videos - whatever produces the best end result, since the archival value is
>> probably higher than the need for telepresence.
>> A rock-solid VM for NuPIC would be really terrific, even if it lags a bit
>> behind the latest Grok builds. I understand that maintaining that VM can be
>> a resource drain on the Grok staff though. I am wondering if there is a
>> volunteer team dedicated to maintaining such a thing? If not, perhaps some
>> people from the community could help here? I would be happy to help out
>> here if I am able.
>> - Jeff F.
>> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Matthew Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Hello NuPIC team. The hackathon is over, and overall I think it turned
>>> out great. Here are some of my thoughts about it. I welcome any of
>>> your feedback as well. I want to make these events as high-quality as
>>> possible for those attending as well as people watching online.
>>>
>>> Thanks to all of you who managed to come to the event, as well as
>>> everyone who helped with the setup and tear-down.
>>>
>>> What Went Well
>>> =============
>>>
>>> Great turnout, all attendees were courteous and inquisitive. There was
>>> a lot of wonderful discussion and networking. Ideas were definitely
>>> flowing freely between everyone. There was a high level of excitement
>>> and anticipation for the underlying technology and what the future
>>> holds for NuPIC.
>>>
>>> The hacks that were produced from the event were creative and
>>> impressive. Every time we put on a hackathon, it's like a "shot in the
>>> arm" for the whole community. It expresses what is possible with NuPIC
>>> and injects a dose of imagination into the community.
>>>
>>> The Tagged facility, for the most part, worked out really well. It was
>>> more than big enough, and the wifi was quite good. The area of the
>>> city was really nice, too.
>>>
>>> I think the catering was also very good. The food was diverse and
>>> there was more than enough for everyone. Thanks to Teri and Casey for
>>> all their help with that.
>>>
>>> Some Problems
>>> =============
>>>
>>> While I spent a lot of my time before the hackathon buying,
>>> experimenting, and testing A/V equipment with an intention of
>>> live-streaming everything possible, most of the videos of the event on
>>> YouTube are poor quality. The lighting in Tagged at night was very
>>> bad, and I didn't bring any external lights. Our wireless mics failed
>>> during the event, which caused awful audio on several videos, and I
>>> didn't have a backup for them. Because the A/V setup within Tagged was
>>> completely separate from my system, we had to use two mics for
>>> presenters and audience questions (one for speakers within the venue,
>>> one for streaming audio to YouTube).
>>>
>>> The IPCams I bought for the event could not be used in the Tagged
>>> venue because their network prohibited peer-to-peer IP connections.
>>> This also affected some of the hacks. I had to rely on webcams that
>>> where physically tethered to the A/V control laptop for most of the
>>> video.
>>>
>>> Google Hangouts turned out to be really difficult to setup for the
>>> presentations. I had to ensure that the presenter was connected and
>>> sharing their screen appropriately, and several times the presenter
>>> would accidentally disconnect from the Hangout and need to be invited
>>> back in to continue. I also had one video that just didn't stream to
>>> YouTube, so it was lost forever. I still don't know what I did wrong.
>>> There were also times where the video quality was choppy, especially
>>> during some crucial points in the demos. This was unfortunate.
>>>
>>> There were still some issues getting NuPIC installed and running in
>>> different environments. Our VM was not updated and tested properly.
>>> Major feedback included that it should contain a checkout of NuPIC
>>> that is already tested and ready to run out of the box. Some community
>>> members have posted new tools working towards this. We also need to
>>> better document the different ways of installing NuPIC from scratch
>>> (with or without dependencies included). Many people were confused by
>>> this.
>>>
>>> Options to Correct the Problems
>>> =========================
>>>
>>> I'm considering NOT live-streaming for the next event in order to
>>> provide better A/V without the complications of using Google Hangout
>>> (which enables a live YouTube stream). We didn't have an overwhelming
>>> number of people actually viewing the videos live, anyway. I thought
>>> it would be better for archival purposes to provide better quality
>>> videos by sacrificing live-streaming. I'm looking for feedback on this
>>> option. This would also prevent remote participation in the hackathon
>>> by online attendees, but we didn't have any remote hacks at this event
>>> anyway.
>>>
>>> I'm also going to be purchasing more professional A/V equipment now
>>> that I've learned some important lessons after this event. The next
>>> event will no-doubt be better just from a few simple provisions
>>> planned ahead of time. This includes an audio recorder to preserve
>>> interesting conversations that happen ad-hoc, and a more professional
>>> video camera with a decent onboard microphone. After the event, I can
>>> splice together much higher quality videos using these tools.
>>>
>>> We also need to update the official VM for NuPIC consistently.
>>> Unfortunately with all the Grok product work in the weeks leading up
>>> to the hackathon, we weren't able to dedicate proper resources to this
>>> endeavor. I hope we can remedy this, and perhaps create some form of
>>> automation that builds a VM with NuPIC and runs tests against it as a
>>> part of our integration pipeline (which doesn't actually exist yet).
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm still very excited about this community and our project. The next
>>> hackathon will be planned soon, and we're going to continue to make
>>> them better and bigger as the NuPIC community evolves and expands.
>>> Thanks again to everyone who participated and helped make this happen!
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> ---------
>>> Matt Taylor
>>> OS Community Flag-Bearer
>>> Numenta
>>>
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>>> [email protected]
>>> http://lists.numenta.org/mailman/listinfo/nupic_lists.numenta.org
>>>
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