Re: Guix Days and FOSDEM 2021?

[Julien Lepiller]

Le 13 septembre 2020 07:59:06 GMT-04:00, Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> a écrit 
:
>Hello,
>
>thanks for launching the initiative, I think it is a very good idea,
>and
>put the date down in my schedule.
>
>On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 12:12:14PM +0200, zimoun wrote:
>> Well, I am proposing to do that on the week-end November, 21th,
>> 9:00am-6:00pm CEST.
>
>Summer will be over in November (even in Southern France), so I would
>suggest CET :)
>
>> The schedule of the day could be:
>>  - introduction
>>  - 2-3 short presentations
>>  - smaller discussions and working groups on specific topics
>>  - break
>>  - short live demo: how to submit or test a patch, how to configure
>> Emacs (or others), how to use Data Service, etc.
>>  - 2-3 short presentations
>>  - smaller discussions and working groups on specific topics
>>  - end
>
>I agree that a mix of presentations and break-out rooms is a good idea.
>The latter are supported by BigBlueButton. As for prerecorded talks, I
>am
>not even sure whether it is easier to stream prerecorded videos, or
>simply
>let people talk over BBB. Personally, I think that live talks could be
>more
>engaging, and would suggest to give it a try (since this is sort of a
>"test
>event", it matters less if there are failures).
>
>Julien has been chairing Linux from Scratch sessions online, maybe his
>experience could be helpful.

Oh no, I stream to twitch (because I want to be popular :p), but the platform 
requires proprietary javascript, and probably spies on its users. Also, my 
"sessions" are completely free-style, no preparation except for the creation of 
the VM I build on. Finally, the sessions are streamed, so interaction is 
actually me speaking, and my audience writing on a chat.

I think doing a presentation live is nice, but not ideal (there could be 
technical issues, is usually less prepared, …). With a pre-recorded talk, you 
can easily do things you wouldn't be able to do with a presentation, because 
you can use a video editing software. For instance, I was able to fix my crapy 
audio with audacity, you can easily include a screen capture, animation, …

I have tested both solutions, and to me, the pre-recorded video is more work to 
create, but is also more "professional-looking" and safer in case of issues.

>> Well, what is missing is a kind of social event but I have no idea.
>> Maybe, something real life by city: the Parisian Guix could meet
>> and/or diner together, idem for the Londonians, Berliners, etc.
>> However, I do not know if enough Guixers are clustered in the same
>> place or if they are too scattered.
>
>I do not think we are enough people in any given place; and indeed,
>social
>events online are a bit strained. At work, we moved our weekly tea
>break
>online during lockdown. It was already nice to see people at a time
>where
>otherwise everybody was more or less locked in at home. But it lacks
>the
>possibility of having informal discussions in groups, of moving to
>someone
>and asking them the silly question about X one has always wondered
>about,
>and so on. On the other hand, seeing people one only knows online could
>also be nice, I enjoyed it for our yearly Guix Europe assembly.

I think I enjoyed in libreplanet the fact that there were only a few people 
talking, and that they were streaming that, with a different channel for the 
audience. We won't have as many people I guess, but with more than a handful 
people, n to n voice communication online just breaks.

I use this model for my LFS sessions, I speak, others can interact through the 
chat. This is also what happens with presentations online at my university: a 
chair presents the speaker, others are muted and ask questions on the chat. The 
chair keeps an eye on the chat and interrupts the speaker to ask the questions, 
at the end of a slide, or other appropriate time.

For group meetings, everyone is muted except for the group leader, then 
everyone can speak turn by turn, as if we were speakers in the previous model.

With delays and varying audio quality, it can be hard to follow what's going 
on, so we should make sure we're not going to all talk at the same time. Making 
separate rooms could be nice to reduce the number of participants in the same 
chat.

For other kinds of events (workshop, working together on a project), I have no 
experience.

>
>Andreas