[SWLUG] Lightning Talks

[Kris Zani]

Hi Telsa

I take it this is aimed pretty much at my comments.

I know this is a general comment about things that have happened in the 
past but let me give some background on myself so you can see where I am 
coming from.

I run a small family based IT training and development company based 
here in Cardiff.  I have extensive training experience teaching the 
basics of word processing through networking, etc and onto programming 
ranging from intro courses to advanced stuff.

I specialise in learning things for other people.  People who don;t have 
the time to learn it themselves.

I am obviously quite busy but am willing to donate some of my free time 
to these kinds of activities.  I was hoping that a few geeky people 
would volunteer the knowledge and that I could assist in the structuring 
of such activities into lessons and small tutorials.  I didn't want to 
put all this in the first post as it was just a suggestion and I wanted 
to get some feedback.  I felt your feedback required a bit of an 
explanation, so here we are.

Cheers

kris

Telsa Gwynne wrote:

>On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 09:54:59AM +0100 or thereabouts, Kris Zani wrote:
>  
>
>>linux programming workshops.
>>
>>starting with the basics in either C or C++.
>>maybe even bash.
>>
>>since linux is really about community driven development the more people 
>>who can program the better!!
>>    
>>
>
>This is a really really large undertaking. Teaching programming
>involves teaching both the concepts underlying programming and 
>the specific language. There's a reason some programming languages
>were specifically designed to be teaching languages. 
>
>It's a lot more ambitious that lightning talks. 
>
>
>[lightning talks]
>  
>
>>what would perhaps be best here is to set up a forum or such where users 
>>can request talks and then other users can say - yep I know about that - 
>>so I'll give the talk.  That way you only get talks on stuff people want 
>>to hear about.
>>    
>>
>
>We have tried this before. We have asked people in person. We have
>asked people on the list. We have passed pieces of paper round at
>meetings. The results are in the archives, and the upshot is that 
>very very few people want to volunteer themselves. 
>
>Lots of people have ideas on what other people should speak on,
>but until more people are more accustomed to speaking and are
>willing to do it, this will have to wait. For now, I think we
>should stick to what people are willing to talk about.
>
>And if you are not used to talking in public, even the idea of
>speaking without interruption and holding people's attention for
>five minutes can be terrifying. Let's start with five minutes
>about a topic close to the heart before we go on to programming 
>tutorials. 
>
>Telsa
>
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>  
>