[vox-tech] Talks, mentoring, etc...

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin msimons@moria.simons-clan.com <msimons@moria.simons-clan.com> 
> begin Stephen M. Helms <Mytho_X@pacbell.net>
> > Maybe we could even have a group mentoring project?
> 
>   Sounds good.  What format were you thinking of?
> 
>   As Pete said it's always a problem finding people who
> who have time and interest in doing the organization or prep work.  
> Finding bodies to come to things is easy.  If no one from lugod wants 
> to show there is always the CS Club... ;)
> 
>   I've been thinking about trying to put together a hacking party,
> or some sort of local hacking group.  Basically people meet and 
> work on some coding/debugging project for a few hours...  but I don't
> think I'd be able to interest enough skilled people to put in effort 
> in organizing.  Some of the formats I was thinking about would support 
> little mentor sessions before and during.
 
judging by the response, i would prolly say you're right.  it looks like
the interest isn't here, which is really sad.  we have unbelievable
talent on this list.

but perhaps i can entice people with a long range project.

rhonda and i watched "micro mouse" at picnic day.  basically, people
build a small robotic mouse.  you put the mouse in a maze.  somewhere in
the maze you also put a piece of "cheese".  the mouse traverses the
maze, remembering the maze layout, finds the cheese and then goes back
to the starting point.   it uses sensors to determine where the walls
are and builds a map of the maze in order to 1) help it find the cheese
and 2) get back the starting point in the fastest possible time.

it strikes me as one of the coolest examples of interplay between
hardware and software hackers.  it also involves embedded programming
and robotics.  we have people on the list who are interested in all of
this.

if there's interest, we can build the "lugod mouse" as a joint
collaborative effort.  we're all busy, so it would be a long range
project, but it would be an excellent challange and an excellent way to
learn new things.  if we get a working mouse, we can even compete in the
next picnic day event.

 
> On Friday 12 April 2002 10:29 am, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > i think this was the point of the 10-20 minute talk thing i wanted to do
> > at lugod meetings.  we had a few of them.
> 
>   I agree the mini-talks are good... easy to find something to talk about
> for 10 minutes, easy to prepare, doesn't bore people to death if they are
> not interested but it only lasts a short while.
> 
> Other mini-talks subjects I'd be interested in covering that come
> to mind right now are:
>   - mmap IPC, realtime monitoring, and freeze/thaw of running program.
>   - Debian packaging system short tricks (dpkg -L/-S, ac search/show, 
>     ag -yu/update/upgrade, zgrep Contents, debsums)
>   - netselect (and netselect-apt).
>   - Debian reportbug
>   - how to locally mirror Debian...
>   - Fun With Poll (how to have a single process serve thousands).
 
that all sounds groovy.  i would be more than happy to give a few 10
minute talks here and there about advanced vim or "better living through
strace".
 
i agree that the 10 minute talk forum would be ideal on a number of
different levels.   it can be technical yet short enough not to bore
other people too much.  plus, i can do a 10 minute talk standing on my
head with little or no preparation.  you don't really have time for the
nitty gritty details.

i think getting 10 minute talkers would be easy.  we have enough
collective knowledge to have many, many such talks.

btw, this would be different from a mentoring program.  i'm not sure how
such a thing would work though.  that would involve considerable effort
on the mentor, and i don't know many people who have the time for such
an undertaking.

pete