[Ccsf-campus-staff] Building something larger than a single day OSS workshop...

[Asheesh Laroia]

Quoting Katherine Moloney (2013-06-13 20:11:14)
> Does OpenHatch have a Google Summer of Code volunteer working on the training
> missions?
> 
> In thinking about future events, I was thinking about the possibility of
> organizing a or a few hack sessions to help expand the Training Missions. 
> We're happy to take direction, so your GSoC volunteer or other volunteer can
> give us the list of what you'd like to flesh out in the training missions.
> 
> We have a standing meeting on Thursday nights, and so I give everyone the
> option to come the week or two after the workshop and continue working.
> 
> Your thoughts?
> 
> Katherine
> 
> p.s. Also, looking at how to teach in the fall what you'll be teaching us on 6/
> 29.  My new favorite thing is the default QuickTime Player installed on Macs
> with a USB headset mic:  http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/
> how_record_your_screen_quicktime_player
> 
> ...it immediately creates a .MOV file, no editing necessary.  Super great for
> seeing all sorts of command line trickery with the accompanying voice-over. 
> Dead easy.  Fairly small.  Can immediately be posted to YouTube.
> 
> If presenters have Macs (or would be willing to demo on Macs), we could make
> these recordings & create a playlist on our YouTube account.

Hi Katherine! Great question, and quick thoughts:

We do have a GSoC student working on the training missions! But mostly 
the backend.

I like the idea of adding more training missions a *great* deal! I would love 
to help out where I can, and to be hands-off and see what you folks create and 
give feedback if that is better! The backend work is supposed to make it way 
easier to make a training mission -- in particular, right now it requires 
writing code, but after the summer we'll hopefully improve things so that it 
can be done purely by a web interface.

I love the idea of encouraging attendees to come to your Thursday meetings. 
I'd love to come myself to check them out!

I'm also pretty excited about your QuickTime-based instructions for recording 
a screencast. Some thoughts tha cross my mind are that it would be even cooler 
(though not required) to find cross-platform instructions, just so that the 
ones not running Mac OS aren't totally excluded. Another issue that I ran 
into while making screencasts in the past is that random stutters in my own 
voice (things like "um" and when I correct a thought mid-sentence) would make 
the result less clean than I'd like, so I had to edit the audio afterward 
anyway.

Cheerio!

-- Asheesh.