Hi Jim/Tony/Aahz/Folks,
You all have raised valid points ... points that I discussed
with Jim in the background as he alluded to.
Thanks to input from Jim, I have gone out of my way
to give presentations with two goals in mind:
+) introduce what I believe are very powerful concepts on
how to think about issues in this field of parallel software,
and
+) show how a specific capability goes about solving various
aspects so that the whole presentation is grounded in
the reality that all of us as software engineers face on a
day to day bases;
That this presentation is not some pie in the sky approach
no what is, at the end of the day, a very sexy topic.
Again, thanks for raising valid points. I hope you see what
motivated my approach.
Cheers!
Minesh
On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 11:00 -0700, jim wrote:
>
> great thanks to aahz for raising the topic. tony's
> response seems dead on right.
>
> the following is my attempt briefly to explain how i
> approach the job of getting and coordinating speakers
> for baypiggies, respond to aahz comment re Minesh's two
> talks, and present a plea for help.
>
> i worry about the direction of the baypiggies group
> in that i want it to persist. technical groups seem to
> have "seasons" in which attendance and character of
> focus changes. Our change of venue from Google to
> Symantec (thanks to tony and symantec) preceded a drop
> in attendance. The recent appearance of other groups
> that focus on Python (mainly in San Francisco) seems to
> coincide with a drop in attendance (with respect to
> average attendance at the google campus meetings).
> the point: i've stepped up my efforts a little bit
> to excite baypiggies activities.
>
> myself, i'm close to virulent in my support of free,
> libre, open source stuff. as baypiggies'
> speaker-getter/coordinator i lean strongly toward floss
> topics.
> i am not opposed to commercial efforts.
> getting speakers for main topics as well as newbie
> nuggets is a struggle.
> i make an effort to get speakers.
> a few members, notably tony and jj, have recruited
> speakers. i exercise no filtering on their efforts; my
> job is to let everyone know of dates open and help out
> by making sure no one books a conflicting date.
> as to my own efforts to get speakers, my criteria
> include
> * free, libre (liberty vs no-cost), open source
> * interesting and timely technical issues
> * inclusion of python code examples in the presentation
> * speaker has reasonable presentation abilities (low bar)
> * reasonable expectation that the topic and/or speaker
> will positively affect baypiggies.
> re my efforts, i offer to help speakers tune their
> presentations; i'm open to supporting speakers other
> baypiggies members recruit, but i don't usually offer
> ("stick my nose in").
>
> probably worth noting: i've learned that i am the
> default meeting moderator. my policy is that the person
> who recruits the speaker should be the meeting moderator.
> i believe the meeting moderator should be low-key:
> someone to move the meeting through its phases--it's
> the speakers who should be the focus of attention.
>
> i'm open to any discussion, suggestions, changes,
> opposition... to the above general approach.
>
> as to the specifics of Minesh's two presentations:
> * the topic seems large in scope and important: that
> the difficulty of getting speakers led me to suggest
> to Minesh that he make two talks, one general to the
> topic and the other specific to his efforts.
> * i encouraged him to participate in the BayPIGgies
> mailing list discussion, to provide access to his
> product, and to promote the free class he's recently
> advertised.
> * i believed that the topic and Minesh's efforts met
> the criteria i use (above) and would have a positive
> effect on baypiggies mailing list and attendance. note
> that i view aahz' comment as a positive result (any
> discussion is good discussion).
> looking back, the two talks look successful.
>
> if you've read this far, you're likely interested
> in the baypiggies group. please help get speakers for
> newbie nuggets and primary topics, please talk up
> baypiggies to the greater technical community, and
> please contribute to the baypiggies mailing list. (and
> remember, the focus is python and related technologies
> with as little as possible focus on administrative
> meta-issues.)
> helping to get speakers can be as simple as noting
> topics for which you'd like a presentation: what
> recent developments in Python pique your interest?
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 06:40 -0700, Tony Cappellini wrote:
> > > Part of the reason I haven't offered to repeat my OSCON talk about the
> > > work I'm doing at egnyte.com is because I think that BayPIGgies should
> > > have a strong bias in favor of Open Source because Python itself is Open
> > > Source.
> >
> > -1
> >
> > > What do other people think? Did people who attended the meetings about
> > > SPM feel that they got enough technical value even if they never use SPM?
> >
> > The presentation on SPM was interesting enough for me, even though I
> > don't see an immediate need for it in my day-day work.
> >
> > Whether the topic is Open Source or not should not have any bearing on
> > presentations at BayPiggies.
> > This has never been a requirement in the past, and should not be one now.
> >
> > We are always struggling to get people to do presentations,
> >
> > Any topic with some Python-relevance is just fine with me, adding
> > additional criteria on top of that
> > would make it even more difficult.
> >
> > On that note- I recently became aware of yet another commercial Python
> > Debugger, and have invited this company to do
> > a presentation on this product. Unfortunately, their office in the Bay
> > Area does not have a technical person.
> >
> > Because we were struggling to find presenters recently, I told Jim I
> > would do a presentation on Wing IDE,
> > yet another commercial product.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Baypiggies mailing list
> > Baypiggies at python.org
> > To change your subscription options or unsubscribe:
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/baypiggies
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> To change your subscription options or unsubscribe:
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