[pm-h] July Houston.pm: Call for presentation

G. Wade Johnson gwadej at anomaly.org
Sat Jun 28 09:12:02 PDT 2014 

On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:22:41 -0500
"B. Estrade via Houston" <houston at pm.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 7:28 AM, G. Wade Johnson via Houston
> <houston at pm.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, 22 Jun 2014 13:39:39 -0400
> > Todd Rinaldo via Houston <houston at pm.org> wrote:
> >
> >> I have a partially formed idea I've been tossing around. There is a
> >> ton of content online from past and present YAPCs now. Not to
> >> mention other conferences. Often this content is coming from the
> >> author of the feature / method being discussed. I was wondering if
> >> we could somehow integrate that into a meeting with discussion.
> >>
> >> The format might be:
> >> 1. We vote up and watch a list of videos people like (possibly
> >> clipped to the good parts)
> >> 2. Discussion / Q&A of content.
> >>
> >> I get that I and others could do this on our own. So I'm hesitant
> >> to say there's value. I thought I'd throw it out to the list and
> >> see if anyone's had any thoughts based on the idea.
> >
> > [Drat, I didn't reply all on this one.]
> >
> > I can see this as a start to a discussion in the group. On the other
> > hand, would everyone really want to sit as a group to watch a video
> > of someone presenting somewhere else?
> >
> > Any real opinions?
> 
> I think there is something to Todd's idea that could work and not just
> be a bunch of geeks watching Youtube videos while sitting idle.
> 
> Perhaps we could dedicate some time (5-10 min, max) to providing some
> "recommended videos" list.  I know that inevitably there are talks
> that are and are not worth your time.  Some of us could help compile
> this offline.
> 
> Likewise, coming off the heels of YAPC, would it be worth
> brainstorming with the group to get a list of interesting topics that
> attendees might wish to hear or talk about?  I have this half-brained
> idea that if we cultivate a list of "interesting topics," it might
> dawn on someone that their specialty/interest is also an interest of
> others. Once we get an initial list, I am happy to feed and water that
> list. I am interested in such a list, not just for Houston.pm, but as
> a general list that anyone looking for Perl talks could turn to to see
> what might be some interesting topics.

The mailing list has a kind of informal, impermanent version of this
list. I trawl through it once in a while looking for things. An
official list is a good idea.

> Looking ahead .. Another approach that we might want to consider is
> that instead of collecting ideas or topics to present, is to
> proactively seek out a stable of individuals who want to present and
> who like to present. It seems like it'd be a lot easier to grow a core

We've done that before. The result was a small number of us who
presented until we burned out on the whole notion of presenting for a
while.

One downside of the "stable of presenters" is that they get better and
better at presenting, which adds a barrier of entry for any new
presenters. When we had the same people always presenting, I had people
propose cool ideas, but say they couldn't present because they would
never be as good as the "official" presenters.

> group of presenters rather than each time trying to convince someone
> new to step up.  The reason I say this is because we have a group of
> people who would certainly talk about (whatever) if asked. I would, I
> know a few others who would (and do) regularly.
> 
> We should absolutely seek out new speakers and highly encourage it,
> but in my opinion it's a whole lot easier to generate talks if we have
> a maintained list of topics and a group of people who we know are

I think the list of talks is a good idea. And, to some extent, we will
always have a group of people who are willing to present on almost any
topic.

As a group, we have a lot more to say than _any_ small group of
presenters. Personally, I would love to learn from the people who feel
like they don't have much to say. They are often the ones who do
presentations on topics no one else would have thought of.

> willing to talk (about anything.)  This would also work well for
> "lightning talk" meetings if we make sure the people who we know will
> talk (about something) will show up.  I think that focusing on having
> a regular rotation of @speakers willing to talk about @things (as
> determined by work we do to survey the group) is a good recipe for
> building up regular attendance.
> 
> (beware, blue sky tangent)
> 
> At some point if we have some "go to" people and have built up
> attendance (bc we're serving real needs), I think it'd be super cool
> to take that leap and organize a bona fide 1 or 2 day Houston Perl
> Workshop - especially considering that 2/4 of the YAPC::NA sponsors
> that had tables are also sponsors of Houston.pm, I imagine that we
> have that part covered pretty well.  I say all of this fully
> recognizing the fact that I am also volunteering to play a large part
> in any effort to organize this.

This sounds like a great idea. It is a lot of work, but it would be
worth it to get more of the Perl people in Houston engaged with the
group.

> Thank you,
> Brett

Good thoughts,
G. Wade

> > G. Wade
> >
> >> On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 5:46 PM, G. Wade Johnson via Houston
> >> <houston at pm.org> wrote:
> >> > Hi everyone,
> >> >
> >> > It's about 3 weeks to the next Houston.pm meeting on July 10 at
> >> > cPanel.
> >> >
> >> > Does anyone have a topic they would like to present?
> >> >
> >> > Is there any kind of topic you guys would like to hear about?
> >> >
> >> >  * Perl beginner
> >> >    - we've had a couple of these lately
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * Perl advanced
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * General programming
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * Open Source projects we should know about
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * Tools/environment
> >> >    - we haven't had editor presentations in a while
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * Security
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * Hardware
> >> >    - doing anything cool with hardware and Perl?
> >> >    - ?
> >> >  * Something unrelated to Perl, but still of interest to the
> >> > group
> >> >    - Mind hacks
> >> >    - Making
> >> >    - ?
> >> >
> >> > Remember the quality of meetings is under your control.
> >> > G. Wade
> >> > --
> >> > It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter
> >> > how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's
> >> > wrong. -- Richard Feynman
> >> > _______________________________________________
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> >> > Houston at pm.org
> >> > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston
> >> > Website: http://houston.pm.org/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Be a good ancestor.                                   -- Jonas Salk
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston
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