[Events] Feedback from training session

[Jessica McKellar]

Hi folks,

[ cc'd are the staff who may not be on events@ already ]

We had our training session tonight. Thank you to everyone who attended.

We had 3 tasks:

1. Make sure everyone is comfortable getting Python installed, running
Python, and running Python scripts, on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
2. Describe the ColorWall, run it, and browse the existing Effects.
3. Describe the web app, get the dependencies installed, and run it.

1 and 2 were very easy, which is great.

For me, trying to think from the perspective of a new programmer with
potentially no command-line experience, 3 was overwhelming. Some of this was
not the fault of the project -- for example, alwaysdata was down for a part
of the session. However, I think signing up for services, git, ssh+Putty,
ssh keys, Django, a new text editor, and using a bash prompt, all in
addition to learning Python, is too much. I worry that this long, involved
setup is going to scare people away from showing up on Saturday -- some
people are already intimidate by Python alone.

Asheesh, I know that you put a lot of work into this, which I appreciate,
but after going through the steps on the wiki, and watching how much effort
and debugging had to go into the Windows setup in particular, I'm not
comfortable with having anyone go through the web app setup as currently
documented tomorrow. I would prefer that they just set up Python and the
ColorWall.

One possibility for retaining the web app as a project would be modifying
the setup so that it is locally hosted and doesn't use git, and have both
the setup and the project work happen on Saturday. That way only people who
want to handle the setup will do it. I don't know if 1.5 days is enough time
to make these modifications. Asheesh, what do you think about this idea?

Other people at the training session, I'd appreciate your thoughts. Given
your experiences tonight, what project structure do you think will result in
the most learning + confidence + satisfaction for our attendees?

-Jessica
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