[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo Classes, a possible new method of spreading information

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

R Hill posted <di7edr$otf$1@sea.gmane.org>, 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


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