[Events] Intro To Open Source: Now with a date.

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2011, Eitan Adler wrote:

> I had previously sent mail to these lists about an intro to open source 
> event taking place at Binghamton university. The final date and time is 
> February 20th from about 1:00 to 4:00. Rooms TBA.
>
> To STNYLUG: you had expressed interest in running a *nix installfest 
> during the same time (as a part of the event) are you still interested 
> To events at openhatch: Is there some calendar of events you keep that I 
> should be adding this event to.

That's thrilling. Take pictures!

Sadly I will be in NYC at the Students for Free Culture conference: 
http://conf11.freeculture.org/ -- or else I would totally come out for it.

Now that you're planning it, I consider the fire under my feet for 
answering y'all's questions promptly, in case you have any. Email them to 
the Events list, and I'll answer (t)here.

Some tips:

Require people to sign up and *apply* to get in.

Just simply asking people, "What is your experience level? What do you 
hope to learn?" helps a huge amount. Then pick the top N people, sorted by 
how enthusiastic they are. It's okay to exclude people if you need to keep 
it small to maintain high-quality teaching.

An event website that's clear helps a lot. 
http://penn.openhatch.org/old-index/ worked out pretty well.

In terms of gender balance and other diversity metrics, at Penn we had no 
problem getting the same degree of mixture as the CS department we were 
in, which (for reference and as an example) is about 1/3 women. It's 
important to me that events that follow our example do a good job at 
reaching all kinds of people who might be interested, so if you have 
questions about that I would love to hear and answer them.

And the last BIG one: practice your teaching modules. This "goes without 
saying," except that we didn't, and we (in the Penn one) really hurt for 
it.

That's all I have for now!

-- Asheesh.

-- 
This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
 		-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"