[OSDC Israel] OSDC::Israel::2007 Milestones

[guy keren]

well, hearing a lecture is much easier for all of us then having a
workshop (where we need to actually write something). and expecting
people to "follow up" is too much. just take it that the ratio of
developers-to-users in a project such as PHP is so low, that you'll have
to give the workshop to several hundreads of people in order for two of
them to actually join the development.

but what you are ignoring, in my opinion, are two facts:

1. people who saw something one day might come back around to it a year
or 3 later. the knowledge was lost - but not the getting over some
psychological barrier.

2. some of those people perhaps got a better understanding of the
technology as users (that is, as people writing PHP code, not writing
the PHP engine or PHP modules).

so sometimes the benefits are indirect (sometimes very indirect). it is
harder to measure those effects - so i think you should instead just ask
people how they felt after the workshop (well, next time around). if it
was interesting, or they had fun, or both, or it was though-provoking,
or it helped them understanding something about how their car works (by
association) - then you did a good job.

--guy

p.s. where's andi? back to the german-speaking motherland? ;)

On Wed, 2006-07-12 at 17:44 +0200, Steph Fox wrote:
> This is a good idea, but not a crowd-puller.
> 
> I did something similar - less involved, more of a 'come and join us' 
> thing - at the PHP International conference a few years back. Admittedly I 
> was 'rasmussed' (a PHP community verb meaning 'someone higher up in the 
> pecking order was speaking in the next room at the time so nobody came to my 
> talk') but even so I ended up with a grand total of 7 people. I dropped the 
> idea of using a whiteboard and took them all to the bar area where we drank 
> coffee around a big table instead. A couple of the core developers came and 
> joined in the resulting round-table Q and A session, ie there were three of 
> us prepared to mentor anyone interesting in coming into our own area of 
> development. At the end of the session we had five people saying they would 
> take it further - mostly in the context of the PHP manual - but as far as 
> I'm aware none of them actually did.
> 
> I don't know how much interest there would be in a session about learning 
> your way around the tools of the trade, although a couple of the guys have 
> given quite successful talks about extension writing more recently. PHP both 
> glories in and suffers from a low entry level; 'my' attendees were 
> intimidated by words like 'XML', 'CVS', 'autoconf'... and the fact that 
> doing anything useful, for php.net at least, means learning C.
> 
> BTW if you're looking for any PHP 'big names' you still have Zeev Suraski in 
> Israel most of the time (he'll probably kill me for mentioning though!) 
> Rasmus made Personal Home Pages; Zeev and Andi Gutmans were responsible for 
> writing the scripting engine that drove (and continues to drive) PHP: 
> Hypertext Processor.
> 
> - Steph
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni at gmail.com>
> To: "Open Source Developers' Conference - Israel - Discussion list" 
> <osdc-discuss at osdc.org.il>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 1:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [OSDC Israel] OSDC::Israel::2007 Milestones
> 
> 
> >> I ask because nearly every programming language today is available in
> >> an open-source version (for example GNU's C++ and Java), but we
> >> wouldn't generally expect those languages at an open source
> >> conference.
> >
> > This is not really a reply, but a thought:
> >
> > A lot of people talk about using free software, but how many are
> > actually coding it?
> >
> > Obviously, *joining* a free software project as a coder is the
> > greatest contribution to the community, but the act of joining seems
> > quite steep for many who want to help (me, for example).
> >
> > My proposal: Organize workshops that show people how they can set up
> > on their computers a development environment for an open source
> > project. For example:
> >
> > * How to start writing a Firefox extension - what tools to install,
> > how to debug, how to test on different platforms, how to publish it,
> > etc.
> > * How to set up an environment to build Firefox if i want to fix bugs
> > in the main application (Gecko, Fx GUI, XPCOM, etc.... i know the
> > buzzwords, but not much more than that)
> > * How to write an Eclipse plugin
> > * How to write a Perl module that will be good enough for CPAN
> >
> > I'm talking about a detailed workshop, that shows everything:
> > * Checking that you have the right compiler and installing one, if you 
> > don't
> > * The same for debugger, profiler, etc.
> > * Setting up version control system - every major project has its own
> > conventions for those
> > ______________________________________________
> > OSDC-discuss mailing list
> > OSDC-discuss at osdc.org.il
> > http://osdc.org.il/mailman/listinfo/osdc-discuss
> >
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> > 
> 
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