[Numpy-discussion] NumPy video content: creating a YouTube channel

[Joe Harrington]

On 1/25/21, 12:44 PM, Melissa Mendonça <melissawm at gmail.com> wrote:
> The NumPy Documentation Team has been discussing video content as part 
> of our outreach and documentation efforts, in part inspired by the 
> excellent Spyder IDE channel [1]. At our last meeting, we realized 
> there is already a good amount of content about NumPy on YouTube (a 
> few examples [2, 3, 4]). We thought about creating a YouTube account 
> for NumPy and listing those videos in a playlist, initially. 
> Eventually, we can also add our own videos about how to contribute - 
> we're still brainstorming on those.
>
> I'm writing to the mailing list to ask the community for input on 
> creating this as an official channel for NumPy. If you have any 
> thoughts or questions regarding this, please let us know.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Melissa
>
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOyvaOj7dMnavvGUkz9Djg
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTJD_FDVjU
> [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHJqOE5j6xE
> [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB7BZMhfPgk

I like the idea of there being such a channel very much! However, 
whether it's formally a project of NumPy or just run by community 
members makes a difference.  If it's formally part of the project, you'd 
expect those to be 100% current and the best content on the topic, or at 
least highly competitive with the best.  They should get updates with 
each significant release.

For example, I think it's safe to say that nobody else has produced a 
reference manual that competes with the reference pages.  They're kept 
up to date and are pretty readable.

It's harder to spot-edit video, though, to keep up with changes.  Unless 
you have a lot of volunteers and are ready to coordinate them all, a 
video project might best be done as a side venture or with a beta label 
until it demonstrates that it can keep its content fresh.  An indexing 
effort for existing, high-quality video might be more valuable in the 
short term than shooting all-new video, too.

--jh--