[H-GEN] re the earlier discussion on assisting beginners/migrants

Matthew Franklin matheist76 at westnet.com.au
Mon Feb 9 03:46:29 EST 2009


Russell Stuart wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>
> On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 14:07 +1000, Clinton Roy wrote:
>   
>> So, thing is, I'm never happy doing something unofficially, and there
>> is already an official talks liaison person selected. Perhaps we
>> should give that person a bit of a go first.
>>     
>
> Yes, well that is fair enough.  But I wasn't trying to bypass the
> process.  My message was aimed at three parties:
>
> 1.  The Humbug exec, who must make the decision about whether we
>     will have a Talks Maintainer and if so who it will be.  This 
>     is attempt to prod them into action.
>
> 2.  Yourself, obviously, as you have to accept the position.
>
> 3.  The club at large, to see if they will support it.
>
> And you are right, the existing Talks Maintainer isn't on that
> list.  That was because I didn't realise we had an active one.  
> This is possibly because I have not heard from them, or if we
> do they are inactive.  This is evidenced by everybody who has 
> given a talk recently completely by-passing them and just 
> announcing it to the list.
>
> Not that is a necessarily a bad thing, mind you.  I don't see
> the Talks Maintainer job as granting permission to give a talk.
> The only real role he/she might perform in that area is 
> maintaining a schedule on the web so there aren't clashes.  
> Their _real_ job is much harder: to actively encourage talks.
>
> Unlike being some "talk permission god", this requires real 
> work.  Worse, it means you must dream up ways of cajoling 
> people into giving talks.  Some things you might try are:
>
> 1.  Having a "speaker" fest, where potential talks are thrashed
>     around, people volunteer to give a talk, and other attendees
>     help them prepare it: ie find material and create slides.
>     In other words make preparing talks a group / club project.
>
> 2.  Giving a talk on how to prepare a talk.  Ideally given by
>     someone who has recently read a book on the subject and
>     then put it into action.  I believe you are positioned in
>     this respect.
>
> 3.  Approaching people directly.  Peter Robinson list of talk 
>     topics was an excellent starting point, mostly because they
>     are at the newbie level and thus require no great expertise.
>     Just about any Humbug could give at least one of those talks,
>     if given a little bit of help to get started.
>
> I haven't given a lot of talks myself, but I would be happy to
> sit with someone who has given one or two, perhaps next weekend, 
> or possibly one night this week and prepare a "How to give a 
> talk" talk.  I imagine it might describe a recipe for preparing
> tutorials like the ones above.  Something like:
>   Step 1 - finding material.
>   Step 2 - preparing a story like / tutorial sequence,
>   Step 3 - preparing the slides
> Any volunteers?
>
> Unfortunately, I can't attend the next Humbug meeting, as I will
> be at a compulsory work conference.
>
>
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>   

Mark and myself are competing against one another to bring Clinton's talk
to the internet. At the current moment the original dv is 16.6G in size.
When done we will post the information.

Next. I do, most nights bring in both a collection of distro disks for
copying and
use to meetings. These include Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse, FreeBSD and much more.
I keep also an updated harddrive with a more extensive collection of iso
images.
We also have blanks available and will copy onto your on blanks if you
want me to.

Many thanks Matt.





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