Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
A. 'Dumbing down' the lectures. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But I'm talking about encouraging additional entry-level lectures. I can put my money (=time) where my mouth is, and give those myself, and I have some more people in mind which I'll be talking to about them giving lectures. Terrible idea indeed, dumbing down the lectures. How about working more closely with the audience instead? Take a volunteer(s) that does not have a clue what are you going to talk about to do the preface to the lecture, not more than A4 with all the basic information summary, wikipedia articles for concepts, links to fill you in if you're unfamiliar with terms, etc. I bet most of the people that come to the lecture are doing that independently (I do, for the interesting ones I come to), so why not make it a collaborate effort? The lecturer will not have to deal with a fairly impossible task of trying to bring everyone to the same starting level in 5-10 minutes, and most people skim a printed page much more efficiently than listening for 10 minutes anyway. I am aware of the fact that a vast majority of our lecturers write the slides the night before the lecture itself, but all the research can be done weeks in advance only with a plan draft of the lecture. Pardon my french, but, we're seeing a decline in the number of people coming to the lectures, and you say I know, let's give them homework!? A big part of the issue is prerequisite knowledge. And for the advanced lectures, for the high-level users, that's a good idea, which is already implemented by means of putting the lecture slides online, often with links to more material. But I'm speaking of having the club reach out to more people - by lowering the entry bar. Making the club less exclusive. More lectures which have less prerequisite knowledge, that one could just pop in and listen. I'm not saying to lower the level of all lectures - it's just that we have enough advanced lectures, and we need more for beginners. RECORDINGS! I would like to bring it up again. Ok, so video is to bulky to manage and too expensive to produce. But audio can be easily produced (who doesn't own an mp3 player nowadays?) and can be very distributed fairly easily for these who can't attend the lecture, and these who like to replay it again after two weeks to refresh the memory. Actually, I was thinking of this for the discussions... an extremity would be to make them into a podcast, but I doubt many people would want to do that. But recordings of what's going on, well, that could work. Round-table discussions, anyone? :) B. Working with the CS undergrad courses. This semester I mentioned my VIM lecture to a Matam TA, who mentioned it to Kimchi, who mentioned it to his class... and Taub 3 instantly became packed. Unfortunately, I didn't know that was going to happen, so the lecture was quite a bit too-high level. Still, almost everybody stayed for the full two hours, and several came for more lectures. There is no university other than Technion, and no other building than Taub Based on statistically incorrect representation of people I know personally, if you heard about Haifux, it was hearsay (=me), not an announcement of some kind. I can safely say that 95% of computer users have no connection to or idea about computer science whatsoever. Out of remaining 5%, how many are studying at the Technion and live at Taub? You do the math. Things is, new recruits to Haifux are almost exclusively Technion students, and of those - usually CS. Why? Proximity. We're speaking of adding youngsters to the club, and looking at that age-range, most people don't have neither the means nor the time to get involved with something at the Technion that they aren't passionate about to begin with. I remind you, getting to the Technion in the evening is rather difficult for anyone who isn't already a student there. So while we can and should arrange special events like W2L, and advertise for people, and cross our fingers really hard that someone will come - it is evident, by my example, that it's far easier to get CS students. Another good point is that CS students have an interest in Linux. Matam students, obviously, but also ones that are starting to work at popular CS workplaces such as IBM and Intel - I get many people asking me about Haifux, telling me that they need to use Linux at work, and would like to learn more about it - but the lectures that show up are usually way too high-level for them. Not only a chef can use a set of Mr.Faceless' famous chef's knives, that's why they are advertised where everyone see it, not on your local chefs' conventions. So, while it might be better for Humanity and FOSS as a whole to cater to everyone in the universe, right now what we're trying to do is revive the club. The fact of the matter is that meetings are held in Taub 3, and with the changes I proposed, if we build the proverbial it - the proverbial they will come. -- Protect your digital
Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
On 11/1/06, guy keren [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ok. can you take it upon yourself to write a short list of topics for a coherent set of SiL meetings? i can participate by directing (ha. i'm avoiding the 'l' word) one of those meetings. please write, along each meeting's topic, what it'll cover. note that it is far easier to plan a 2-hours meeting then a 1-hour meeting - so you'll have to be carefull to make sure the material is short enough for a 1-hour meeting. the detail level must be high enough (at least in the first few meetings), and come with live demonstrations. Can do this, but next week. -- Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM, learn more at http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm Ohad Lutzky - Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
On 10/31/06, Shlomo Touboul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do I get out of this list? How parade-rainy of you :) (Alon? Answer?) From: Eli Billauer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] If I want to be optimistic, I would hope that Haifux is being reborn. Let's hope that the club is starting over, with infancy problems, as generation II, with hopefully a new, fresh and enthusiastic group of people. Those I can arrange for - infancy problems are quite easy to generate, no doubt, but I'm also talking about the people. Many CS undergrads had some interest in Haifux for a long time, but felt alienated by the high level of the lectures, and the low undergrad attendance. I believe those two can be fixed by A. 'Dumbing down' the lectures. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But I'm talking about encouraging additional entry-level lectures. I can put my money (=time) where my mouth is, and give those myself, and I have some more people in mind which I'll be talking to about them giving lectures. B. Working with the CS undergrad courses. This semester I mentioned my VIM lecture to a Matam TA, who mentioned it to Kimchi, who mentioned it to his class... and Taub 3 instantly became packed. Unfortunately, I didn't know that was going to happen, so the lecture was quite a bit too-high level. Still, almost everybody stayed for the full two hours, and several came for more lectures. I'm not saying that we oldies should quit. Please don't! None of us youngsters have the experience and knowledge required to give the interesting high-level lectures, which we (and I'm speaking for the more advanced users) really enjoy. BTW, I'm fine with tuesday. \m/ -- Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM, learn more at http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm Ohad Lutzky - Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
(first - i've no problem with tuesdays as well). On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Alon Altman wrote: I think the format we had - alternating between advanced and entry-level lectures (standard and SiL lectures) is the best. there are two issues we didn't solve with this: 1. preparing W2L is tedious. it always was - and it became worse every year. we over-engineer it, and eventually get relatively poor results. i sent an email about this (that seem to have got lost) - that after talking with eli, we think a 2-meetings session is enough - one for telling people why they should want to try linux, and in the end giving them ubuntu CDs. 2 weeks after - a QA meeting to answer questions people stumbled upon. eli was prepared to handle the first meeting. the rest of us will then handle the QA meeting (mostly by showing up). 2. we have no mechanism for propagation between SiL and the non-SiL lectures. moving frmo W2L to SiL is trivial, since SiL only requires W2L knowledge. however, there's no clear point of when people can feel safe to move from SiL to non-SiL. there's no need to add more categories. what you call basic should be marked as SiL. if a certain meeting requires prior knowlege - it should be stated on a per-meeting bases. if we have too many categories, people will likely get confused. --guy As long as people know the lectures are bi-weekly and come in the appropriate weeks, we both have a weekly meeting for keeping the club alive, while each group has a chance to hear lectures in their own level. Recall, that haifux was bi-weekly until we started W2L and SiL. Maybe we should have more diffrentiation between levels: - W2L - a fixed-length lecture series for those totally new to Linux, given once per year, maybe coordinated nationally and with a linux day. - SiL - standard lectures that bring a linux newbie to become a linux hacker. Things like shells and editors, installing from source, compiling the kernel, users and permissions, filesystems and mounts, etc. Probably to be given in alternating weeks after W2L. - Basic lectures - lectures which require only knowledge from W2L and maybe a bit of SiL to be understood. Mostly focus on how do I ... in Linux, where ... is something an average user might want to do, or at least consider. - Social/Planning meetings - preperation/feedback for W2L/SiL/Linuxday, promoting linux, etc. - Advanced lectures - All the rest we know and love: programming, internals, security protocols, lambda calculus, ... It seems like the queue we have now is mostly advanced lectures, though my lecture can be considered basic. Alon On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Ohad Lutzky wrote: Those I can arrange for - infancy problems are quite easy to generate, no doubt, but I'm also talking about the people. Many CS undergrads had some interest in Haifux for a long time, but felt alienated by the high level of the lectures, and the low undergrad attendance. I believe those two can be fixed by A. 'Dumbing down' the lectures. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But I'm talking about encouraging additional entry-level lectures. I can put my money (=time) where my mouth is, and give those myself, and I have some more people in mind which I'll be talking to about them giving lectures. B. Working with the CS undergrad courses. This semester I mentioned my VIM lecture to a Matam TA, who mentioned it to Kimchi, who mentioned it to his class... and Taub 3 instantly became packed. Unfortunately, I didn't know that was going to happen, so the lecture was quite a bit too-high level. Still, almost everybody stayed for the full two hours, and several came for more lectures. I'm not saying that we oldies should quit. Please don't! None of us youngsters have the experience and knowledge required to give the interesting high-level lectures, which we (and I'm speaking for the more advanced users) really enjoy. BTW, I'm fine with tuesday. \m/ -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://8ln.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them over the horizon. -- K. A. Arsdall - Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- guy For world domination - press 1, or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator. -- nob o. dy - Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
I think the format we had - alternating between advanced and entry-level lectures (standard and SiL lectures) is the best. As long as people know the lectures are bi-weekly and come in the appropriate weeks, we both have a weekly meeting for keeping the club alive, while each group has a chance to hear lectures in their own level. Recall, that haifux was bi-weekly until we started W2L and SiL. Maybe we should have more diffrentiation between levels: - W2L - a fixed-length lecture series for those totally new to Linux, given once per year, maybe coordinated nationally and with a linux day. - SiL - standard lectures that bring a linux newbie to become a linux hacker. Things like shells and editors, installing from source, compiling the kernel, users and permissions, filesystems and mounts, etc. Probably to be given in alternating weeks after W2L. - Basic lectures - lectures which require only knowledge from W2L and maybe a bit of SiL to be understood. Mostly focus on how do I ... in Linux, where ... is something an average user might want to do, or at least consider. - Social/Planning meetings - preperation/feedback for W2L/SiL/Linuxday, promoting linux, etc. - Advanced lectures - All the rest we know and love: programming, internals, security protocols, lambda calculus, ... It seems like the queue we have now is mostly advanced lectures, though my lecture can be considered basic. Alon On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Ohad Lutzky wrote: Those I can arrange for - infancy problems are quite easy to generate, no doubt, but I'm also talking about the people. Many CS undergrads had some interest in Haifux for a long time, but felt alienated by the high level of the lectures, and the low undergrad attendance. I believe those two can be fixed by A. 'Dumbing down' the lectures. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But I'm talking about encouraging additional entry-level lectures. I can put my money (=time) where my mouth is, and give those myself, and I have some more people in mind which I'll be talking to about them giving lectures. B. Working with the CS undergrad courses. This semester I mentioned my VIM lecture to a Matam TA, who mentioned it to Kimchi, who mentioned it to his class... and Taub 3 instantly became packed. Unfortunately, I didn't know that was going to happen, so the lecture was quite a bit too-high level. Still, almost everybody stayed for the full two hours, and several came for more lectures. I'm not saying that we oldies should quit. Please don't! None of us youngsters have the experience and knowledge required to give the interesting high-level lectures, which we (and I'm speaking for the more advanced users) really enjoy. BTW, I'm fine with tuesday. \m/ -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://8ln.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them over the horizon. -- K. A. Arsdall - Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
Actually, my problem with the 'SiL' term is that it's rather vague. A better explanation of it on the site might be all that's required. My primary point, I guess, was more SiL. While we're at it, some more suggestions that popped up: One suggestion - shorter lectures. 2-hour lectures are, well, long. This makes them difficult to prepare, and tends to swing the subjects towards the more complicated side. For example, a lecture I want to give is about package management in Debian-based distros - that is, the very basics - what a package manager is, how to use it, how and why apt-get, aptitude and synaptic are the same (with a short explanation on the unix tradition of having text-based applications with GUI frontends), things like that. I would find it difficult to fill two hours with this. Furthermore - a two-hour lecture is a big chunk of time that many people simply can't afford (speaking from an undergrad point of view). Two hours? But I got homework in some course to do... maybe I'll come for an hour. They don't show up either, because they figure - what's the point? If they show up for the first hour, they'll only get the introduction, and nothing interesting - and if they show up for the second - they won't know what's going on. Of course, everybody remembers what a success the lightning talks were... So I guess this means that for some topics (and in my opinion - most topics), shorter is better. Perhaps not 7-minutes short, but short. And a final reason for shortening the lectures leads me to my next point - discussion. Mailing lists are nice, and I don't know about you guys - but I personally really enjoy just sitting with people, discussing Linux and FOSS stuff. Be the subject some sort of cool software I found, or stuff that's happening on Slashdot, or whatnot. It's a rich community with much to discuss, and it's often more enjoyable in person. Now, for the last four semesters I could often get hold of Boaz or Haggai, but not always, and never any of the older guys. Also, very often I have people come up to me and tell me that they have some kind of hardware issue on their laptop, or they need someone to explain something to them about Linux - and I would tell them to come to Haifux. And after the lecture, people would stay and help out - but it was late by then, and things would be rushed. I know I'm not making too much of a coherent point... and I'm certainly not going for an Is there any new business? Any old business? Minutes of our last meeting kind of thing, but I do think some of the focus should be taken off lectures. On 10/31/06, guy keren [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (first - i've no problem with tuesdays as well). On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Alon Altman wrote: I think the format we had - alternating between advanced and entry-level lectures (standard and SiL lectures) is the best. there are two issues we didn't solve with this: 1. preparing W2L is tedious. it always was - and it became worse every year. we over-engineer it, and eventually get relatively poor results. i sent an email about this (that seem to have got lost) - that after talking with eli, we think a 2-meetings session is enough - one for telling people why they should want to try linux, and in the end giving them ubuntu CDs. 2 weeks after - a QA meeting to answer questions people stumbled upon. eli was prepared to handle the first meeting. the rest of us will then handle the QA meeting (mostly by showing up). 2. we have no mechanism for propagation between SiL and the non-SiL lectures. moving frmo W2L to SiL is trivial, since SiL only requires W2L knowledge. however, there's no clear point of when people can feel safe to move from SiL to non-SiL. there's no need to add more categories. what you call basic should be marked as SiL. if a certain meeting requires prior knowlege - it should be stated on a per-meeting bases. if we have too many categories, people will likely get confused. --guy As long as people know the lectures are bi-weekly and come in the appropriate weeks, we both have a weekly meeting for keeping the club alive, while each group has a chance to hear lectures in their own level. Recall, that haifux was bi-weekly until we started W2L and SiL. Maybe we should have more diffrentiation between levels: - W2L - a fixed-length lecture series for those totally new to Linux, given once per year, maybe coordinated nationally and with a linux day. - SiL - standard lectures that bring a linux newbie to become a linux hacker. Things like shells and editors, installing from source, compiling the kernel, users and permissions, filesystems and mounts, etc. Probably to be given in alternating weeks after W2L. - Basic lectures - lectures which require only knowledge from W2L and maybe a bit of SiL to be understood. Mostly focus on how do I ... in Linux, where ... is something an average user might want to do, or at least consider. - Social/Planning
Re: [Haifux] Haifux 2.0 (was: Moving to Tuesday)
Hi all,I agree that meeting together for socializing and discussing things would be nice to do.I had a nice time that time we went to the Japanese restaurant in the center. I've also been a couple of times in the Jerusalem club, and they meet once in a while on a Saturday's night and just hang out in their regular coffee shop. (I don't get a chance to go their lectures, so that's almost the only context where I met these guys). HaggaiOn 10/31/06, Ohad Lutzky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, my problem with the 'SiL' term is that it's rather vague. Abetter explanation of it on the site might be all that's required. Myprimary point, I guess, was more SiL. While we're at it, some moresuggestions that popped up: One suggestion - shorter lectures. 2-hour lectures are, well, long.This makes them difficult to prepare, and tends to swing the subjectstowards the more complicated side. For example, a lecture I want to give is about package management in Debian-based distros - that is,the very basics - what a package manager is, how to use it, how andwhy apt-get, aptitude and synaptic are the same (with a shortexplanation on the unix tradition of having text-based applications with GUI frontends), things like that. I would find it difficult tofill two hours with this.Furthermore - a two-hour lecture is a big chunk of time that manypeople simply can't afford (speaking from an undergrad point of view). Two hours? But I got homework in some course to do... maybe I'll comefor an hour. They don't show up either, because they figure - what'sthe point? If they show up for the first hour, they'll only get the introduction, and nothing interesting - and if they show up for thesecond - they won't know what's going on.Of course, everybody remembers what a success the lightning talkswere... So I guess this means that for some topics (and in my opinion - most topics), shorter is better. Perhaps not 7-minutes short, butshort.And a final reason for shortening the lectures leads me to my nextpoint - discussion. Mailing lists are nice, and I don't know about you guys - but I personally really enjoy just sitting with people,discussing Linux and FOSS stuff. Be the subject some sort of coolsoftware I found, or stuff that's happening on Slashdot, or whatnot.It's a rich community with much to discuss, and it's often more enjoyable in person. Now, for the last four semesters I could oftenget hold of Boaz or Haggai, but not always, and never any of the olderguys. Also, very often I have people come up to me and tell me thatthey have some kind of hardware issue on their laptop, or they need someone to explain something to them about Linux - and I would tellthem to come to Haifux. And after the lecture, people would stay andhelp out - but it was late by then, and things would be rushed.I know I'm not making too much of a coherent point... and I'm certainly not going for an Is there any new business? Any oldbusiness? Minutes of our last meeting kind of thing, but I do thinksome of the focus should be taken off lectures.On 10/31/06, guy keren [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (first - i've no problem with tuesdays as well). On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Alon Altman wrote: I think the format we had - alternating between advanced and entry-level lectures (standard and SiL lectures) is the best. there are two issues we didn't solve with this: 1. preparing W2L is tedious. it always was - and it became worse everyyear. we over-engineer it, and eventually get relatively poor results. i sent an email about this (that seem to have got lost) - that aftertalking with eli, we think a 2-meetings session is enough - one fortelling people why they should want to try linux, and in the end giving them ubuntu CDs. 2 weeks after - a QA meeting to answer questionspeople stumbled upon. eli was prepared to handle the first meeting. therest of us will then handle the QA meeting (mostly by showing up). 2. we have no mechanism for propagation between SiL and the non-SiLlectures. moving frmo W2L to SiL is trivial, since SiL only requiresW2L knowledge. however, there's no clear point of when people can feel safe to move from SiL to non-SiL. there's no need to add more categories. what you call basic should be marked as SiL. if a certain meeting requires prior knowlege - it should be stated on a per-meeting bases. if we have too many categories, people will likely get confused. --guy As long as people know the lectures are bi-weekly and come in the appropriate weeks, we both have a weekly meeting for keeping the club alive, while each group has a chance to hear lectures in their own level. Recall, that haifux was bi-weekly until we started W2L and SiL. Maybe we should have more diffrentiation between levels: - W2L - a fixed-length lecture series for those totally new to Linux, given once per year, maybe coordinated nationally and with a linux day. - SiL - standard lectures that bring a linux newbie to become a linux hacker. Things like shells and editors, installing
