15:03:11 #startmeeting 15:03:13 Meeting started Fri Apr 30 15:03:11 2010 UTC. The chair is mchua. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 15:03:14 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 15:03:35 hi mel! good morning 15:03:36 #meetingname mini professor workshop 15:03:37 The meeting name has been set to 'mini_professor_workshop' 15:03:44 howdy, alolita! quaid, le ping? 15:04:16 howdy 15:04:30 quaid: hi! 15:04:57 Okay - so, this meeting is to figure out whether/what we'd like to do for a mini workshop for professors, separate from POSSE, in Portland right before OSCON. 15:05:17 mchua: as we had discussed earlier - we should consider a mini workshop for profs 15:05:19 * mchua would like to take a few minutes at the end to touch base really quickly about POSSE CA recruiting, but that's a quickie for later. 15:05:22 * mchua nods. 15:05:33 mchua: go ahead 15:06:14 mchua: the thing to do over this weekend is to finalize the letter / email we will send to invite various profs for posse ca 15:06:16 alolita: nah, we can check in on that at the end (or over email) - quaid and I both wanted to hear your thoughts about the mini-workshop, and what you're hoping for it to look like, what you think participants should be able to get out of it. 15:06:21 * mchua nods 15:06:32 oh, though if you'd rather do recruitment first, we can do that too. :) 15:06:50 * mchua is looking forward to actually meeting in person in July - so much faster than IRC... 15:07:04 actually, if we could touch upon recruiting first ... 15:07:10 #topic POSSE CA recruiting 15:07:16 mchua, quaid: so i would like to suggest that we do a one-day or two-day camp around or at oscon first 15:07:28 switching gears then :-) 15:07:33 let's talk recruiting 15:07:47 * mchua swaps gears back and forth, settles on recruiting first 15:07:48 whee! 15:07:57 :-) 15:08:15 #info email invite template for professors needed by end of weekend 15:08:25 quaid: I think you had one written up already, based on the generic invite template? 15:08:38 #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/HOWTO_plan_a_POSSE#POSSE_announcement_email 15:08:41 (that's the generic one) 15:08:45 http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/User:Quaid/POSSE_Cali_2010_CS_recruiting_email 15:08:47 i have been looking at the various science talent schools in the bay area (sf, south bay) and have a list of about 10 profs to invite from there 15:08:51 well, I have two and am mergin 15:08:57 *merging* 15:09:03 alolita, quaid: I have one application for POSSE CA from a professor from New York, so we may only need 4 more 15:09:05 #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/User:Quaid/POSSE_Cali_2010_CS_recruiting_email 15:09:06 alolita: awesome! 15:09:20 we should email these profs to get some of them enlisted 15:09:29 at least 2 per school 15:09:47 * mchua nods 15:09:54 then we have at least 5 community colleges in the area 15:10:06 #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_California_CS_Planning#Recruiting 15:10:17 so we should try to get one prof from each of their information technology/computer science departments 15:10:23 #info Mel has emailed Sameer Verma from SFSU for help spreading the word 15:10:33 ...and that just about taps out my Bay Area prof contacts, but I'll keep looking. 15:10:36 do we want to fill out this page? 15:10:37 alolita: +1 15:10:38 #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_California_CS_Planning#School_contact_information 15:10:53 mchua: yes - i saw that note - good note :-) i had spoken with sameer whom i know well 15:11:04 Nice! Mm, small world. 15:11:12 with a very few exceptions, I don't yet have any specific target professors 15:11:19 and i am sure he will enlist once we get him to do a sugar lab 15:11:50 my phase 1 is to reach out to all the open technical communities I know/am in, looking for a direct contact or a pass-on within a personal network 15:12:00 sameer can help with some of the other profs in the area who engage in the sugar community with him 15:12:18 so I think I have a wide shooting approach which may complement alolita's targeted approach. 15:12:31 quaid: that's a good approach too 15:12:50 * quaid only has the one approach, so it's good that it's good :) 15:12:53 quaid: have your personal contacts referred back to any of the other profs 15:13:12 not yet, hoping I'll have something to report next week 15:13:28 * mchua is happy to take questions about the POSSE experience, etc. if any professors want to hear how the first few went. 15:13:54 quaid: can you please connect into the community colleges (i think there are 1 or 2) in the santa cruz area who could participate 15:13:59 one question I have is how we're "pitching" POSSE to these profs - open source community participation opportunities for their students first, and *then* the tools needed to support that experience? 15:14:25 * mchua doesn't want to give people the impression that it's only a tech bootcamp, because if they all come in already knowing IRC and packaging, I will be *thrilled* 15:14:29 mchua: yes, that's the order i have been following 15:14:46 that means we can spend more time introducing them to things like the review process, the release cycle, how to get their student projects in as features, etc 15:14:49 alolita: definitely, I'll take Cabrillo College, not sure if there is another I should think about 15:15:11 alolita: awesome. quaid, does that order sound about right to you as well? 15:15:13 I'm looking for a UCSC contact 15:15:16 * mchua will ask spevack to ping stanford 15:15:17 quaid: cabrillo college is a good one to target 15:15:47 mchua: i would suggest speaking with the stanford lug folks - since the profs will be unlikely to participate 15:15:55 we know people through the LUG there, yes 15:16:02 * quaid means at Cabrillo LUG 15:16:12 alolita: I'll ask Max to check out the LUG as well as talking with his old profs - I think hitting as many fronts as we can is a good idea. 15:16:13 quaid: great - good place to start :-) 15:16:50 Should I accept the applicant we have? The application looks great - very openminded CS prof with a little Linux usage experience, but not contributor yet. 15:16:57 mchua: i know a couple of folks at the stanford lug and they would be the most likely to provide some references at stanford 15:17:05 good 15:17:12 so we need a letter that can be passed along 15:17:18 The caveat is that since this prof would be coming from NYC I'd want to have confidence that we *are* on before saying "yes, book your flight" 15:17:26 s/NYC/NY 15:17:29 the senior profs that i have spoken to weren't very keen 15:17:52 I found myself wanting to rewrite the letter for myself, and above is my working bits 15:17:57 I'll likely update it as I go :) 15:18:00 * mchua nods 15:18:02 mchua: but do ask max for refs also :-) 15:18:11 * mchua would like to switch gears in ~2m so we can talk about the mini-workshop, too 15:18:28 alolita: Ayup. I think junior faculty will likely be more keen to participate. 15:18:31 alolita: I also heard you say that these senior profs wanted to bring their students in to working on FOSS virt, storage, etc. 15:18:34 cloud, etc. 15:18:56 alolita: did you discuss their plans for how they are going to do the "become an open source contributor" part for their students? 15:19:02 mchua: i would recommend that we let the nyc prof know that we're recruiting right now so he can book whenever he can 15:19:03 or are they thinking about grad students for that? 15:20:02 quaid: yes the senior profs are more focused on research areas in open source - so virtualization, cloud computing, storage, security are all areas of their interest 15:20:05 * quaid fully understands POSSE covering ground that some (or even many in the Valley) professors may already know 15:20:33 but as we discussed those are topics for another kind of posse 15:20:48 or another kind of event... is this a good place to context-switch to the mini-workshop? 15:20:53 alolita: did they share with you their plans for ... 15:20:58 (do we know what we're all doing for recruitment in the next few days?) 15:21:04 how to get students as actual contributors in open source projects? 15:21:23 I'm curious because it directly affects how I think about recruiting. 15:21:29 mchua: yes 15:22:22 alolita: sorry about my continued confusion! In my mind, POSSE in July could cover virtualization and cloud computer just fine, and how to get involved in those communities 15:22:37 Dr. David Lutterkort lives in Berkeley and works extensively on virt for RHT 15:22:48 quaid: the senior profs (at least in these schools) don't seem to emphasize contributing to open source projects - they're more comfortable with having specific research areas in specific technologies and having their students participate in working for them to be able to publish papers on these :-) 15:22:49 we could get him down to instruct 15:23:26 alolita: are those students who publish expected to work _within_ the open source technology communities? 15:23:30 quaid: that's the idea - we select a particular area like virt - and we do a specific 2 day camp in that area - contributing in virt 15:23:31 or is this research from without? 15:23:57 alolita: so the expectation is that these profs and their students already know the basics of working an open source project? 15:24:03 is that the part perceived as being too basic? 15:24:23 quaid: i would think that some of these students would get involved in the open source projects but not immediately 15:24:33 quaid: that part is being perceived as too basic - yes 15:24:35 working on/with the technologies is different from knowing how to be an active participant in the communities that build those technologies, and the latter is what POSSE aims for. 15:24:44 mchua: i know 15:24:55 huh, interesting 15:25:19 ok, thanks, that helps 15:25:31 Ok, I think it's time to switch gears now, then, and see what we can do for those people with a mini-workshop pre-OSCON 15:25:39 mchua: remember - these profs are interested in our not so favorite area - getting patents and recognition around technology areas that they publish in 15:25:56 so their goals are different and we have to find points of convergence 15:26:04 good seque 15:26:16 alolita: Ayup. So lemme do a topic switch for the logging bot here... 15:26:20 #topic mini-workshop 15:26:27 so a short workshop introduces them to the idea that actual participation makes their other stuff better 15:26:36 quaid: yes 15:26:40 although patents and FOSS don't mix :) 15:26:41 alolita: ok, go for it :) 15:26:46 quaid: i know 15:26:56 * mchua is all ears - I'm really curious what you think this kind of workshop should look like 15:27:08 since we have no constraints as to what it should cover 15:27:20 mchua: so let's talk about a possible mini-workshop 15:27:59 doing a two-day bootcamp on participating / contributing in virt 15:28:19 starts fri evening with a dinner and intros 15:28:30 then dives into details over sat and sun 15:28:53 we have pre-reqs - such as knowing the tools already (irc, bugzilla, svn etc) 15:28:59 Ok - and do this the weekend before OSCON, up in Portland, to try and get people for that? 15:29:56 +1 for prereqs. 15:29:58 mchua: yes - before or after - whichever works for the OSL folks 15:30:49 * mchua nods, I can do either (though it's a little easier before) 15:30:52 quaid: ^? 15:31:12 alolita: What audience would we be targeting? the profs you've spoken to who have different needs than what a POSSE serves? 15:31:19 * mchua trying to get a feel for where we're aiming 15:31:24 so in the current posse curriculum we have - we have three distinct focal areas: open source culture, open source tools, actually going thru the process of committing a bug/patch 15:31:39 it seemed like they were more interested in a tech deep-dive, which would mean we'd really want to get someone like lutter in to be a "I made this stuff, I know everything about it" guru 15:32:11 alolita: yep, all with the framing of "how does this work within the context of the classes that you teach" 15:32:15 alolita: maybe that's the difference - classes vs research 15:32:53 mchua: mel - the feedback i have gotten is from profs from the schools in the bay area - i think doing the camp in portland would pull in other profs not these research profs :-) 15:33:16 Ah, ok 15:33:47 so should we focus on the two day specialized bootcamp for the research profs or the two day version of our current curriculum for oscon profs 15:33:55 i see them as two distinct groups 15:34:27 alolita: I agree they're two distinct groups, and think we should focus on whichever one you think would be more productive - the sense I get is that quaid and I are mostly trying to just follow your lead here, for the mini-camp. 15:34:37 it seems like you're the person with the clearest idea of what you'd like it to be. 15:35:04 mchua: well at oscon i see the following :-) 15:35:09 I'm mostly trying to figure out "hm, okay - what bases does POSSE /not/ cover, and what needs to happen in this other workshop so those bases do get covered somehow?" 15:35:29 1. get osu-osl to help us get profs involved within their network 15:35:41 2. get the word out that we're doing a 2 day camp around oscon 15:35:51 3. any other profs are welcome to join in 15:36:55 4. the format is a 2-day camp with pre-reqs of knowing the tools so that they can focus on walking through the process doing a patch / committing a bug 15:37:33 to any particular kind of project? focus on virt, or have profs come in with a target foss community based on their research interest? 15:37:54 5. we also focus on areas of direct interest from them in curricula - what areas do they teach where we can work with them to do oss labs 15:38:28 * mchua nods 15:39:01 6. yes we could focus on virt - but at oscon / osl - we would have to gauge what their (profs) depth is - i.e. are they deep into virt or cloud or security 15:39:20 alolita: Do you think we could find that out ahead of time? 15:39:26 (how many attendees are you thinking?) 15:39:38 about 10 15:39:49 if we get more - that's very good 15:39:50 * mchua trying to figure out how we'd get domain experts from all these open source communities if we have a wide range of research interests to cover 15:40:02 mchua: sorry, thought we'd discussed my participation before -- I cannot do anything after OSCON, and the weekend before I'm primarily at CLS, but I can break away for teaching, meeting, etc. 15:40:19 alolita: ok. can we top that out at, say, 15? since it's the first time we'll be doing it, and there'll be only 2 of us physically present. 15:40:22 mchua: actually i would again ask you not to focus on research at oscon - 15:40:50 let's focus on one area at the most 15:40:53 at oscon 15:41:08 quaid: aye, just confirming :) if we can double this up with CLS that would be nice, so you could swing by and say hi (and vice versa) 15:41:22 yes - cls is a good place to do this too 15:41:26 alolita: Ok, and when/how do we pick that area? 15:41:48 let's suggest the areas to the osl folks and ask them 15:42:08 there are three areas that i have been hearing about repeatedly 15:42:23 virtualization, cloud computing, security 15:42:38 #idea potential topics for mini-bootcamp: virt, cloud, security 15:42:41 i think all areas are good but cloud would be the crowd-puller 15:42:51 pullers 15:43:04 sorry :-) 15:43:39 * mchua nods. If we know far enough in advance we might be able to get an engineer up there with us, to help deep-dive into the tech. 15:43:45 since there is a lot of activity on the west coast in the cloud space and rht is doing some cool stuff integrating rhel into the cloud - there is at least half a day of discussion there 15:43:51 for a starter camp 15:44:01 alolita: want to ask the OSL folks and pick a topic, say, sometime next week? 15:44:14 then quaid and I can ask around wrt who from RHT (or elsewhere) can come up to be our tech gurus 15:44:20 since I don't do cloud dev myself :) 15:44:26 sure 15:44:45 mchua: we can get folks from eucalyptus or hadoop also 15:44:47 #action alolita to talk with OSL and pick a topic (cloud, virt, or security) by end of next week 15:44:50 alolita: yes! 15:45:00 who's the target audience? 15:45:02 but let's plan step at a time - get the ball rolling with osl 15:45:12 jeff_s: hi! 15:45:13 ie. how technical is this? 15:45:16 alolita: hola 15:45:28 my ears were itching ;) 15:45:54 jeff_s: the level would be introductory - intermediate 15:46:06 we have a lot of (technical) virtualization expertese 15:46:37 contribution expertise? 15:46:40 jeff_s: that's fantastic - so it could actually be intermediate to expert 15:47:00 jeff_s: could we get some of your experts to participate 15:47:01 contribution? to what? 15:47:05 alolita: surely 15:47:22 jeff_s: cool :-) 15:47:35 yay! 15:47:42 Jeff_S: goal of a POSSE event is to teach how to contribute/participate in FOSS projects. 15:47:44 quaid: contribution comes later, participation first :-) 15:47:52 so I was asking which type of expert, that's all 15:47:53 quaid: yeah, that's what I'm trying to grasp, thanks :) 15:48:18 but then why concentrate on cloud/virt/security? I feel like I'm missing something 15:48:57 jeff_s: actually we're talking about two separate camps at the same time 15:49:19 well, actually, I was just trying to understand which type of expert jeff meant 15:49:31 quaid: ok 15:49:40 #link http://iquaid.org/2009/04/14/community-sets/ 15:50:10 the pyramid of participation -- we are trying to get people from consumer to participant, where they can see value of contributing, but it helps if some of the instructors are versed in contributing :) 15:50:14 jeff_s: who would be the right person(s) to work with at osl? would you be able to help? 15:50:17 quaid: well most all of our students/staff contribute in some fashion to various projects 15:50:37 alolita: I'm glad to help. just trying to figure out exactly what's desired 15:51:09 * quaid agrees with Jeff_S on OSU/OSL contrib experience, should be a good fit 15:51:23 jeff_s: that's really great! it is a great fit 15:51:56 alolita: what do the OSL folks do for the class? 15:53:05 * quaid means during the class session, although recruiting is also part of it 15:54:25 quaid: we would jointly with osl select one area that is of interest to their profs/students such as virtualization and walk through doing a patch / bugfix in that area; and also walkthrough the latest in virtualization technologies which comes directly from one of rht's engineer gurus 15:54:57 assuming that the participants already use the standard oss tools - 15:56:03 hmm, it just seems to me if you are trying to teach people about how to interact (and potentially contribute) with OSS communities, that such a highly-technical topic such as virutalization/cloud/etc. is not a good place to start. It will derail the conversation because everyone will start talking "cloud" 15:56:17 but I've never gone to a POSSE, so I'm not sure what the norm is 15:56:23 I apoligize :) 15:56:41 jeff_s: yes that is the idea if we were to specialize around a specific area 15:57:02 Jeff_S: Well, this workshop is different from a POSSE (for a POSSE, I agree - it's why we try to choose large projects with a diverse set of low-barrier-to-entry contribution options). 15:57:26 mchua: can you describe the current posse layout 15:57:33 i.e. the focal areas 15:57:38 Jeff_S: however, alolita has been pointing out that there are some professors with needs that aren't filled by the POSSE format, so this smaller 3-day workshop would be targeted to them - I'm also still trying to figure out what that means, honestly. 15:58:16 mchua: the specialized topics I have outlined are coming purely from feedback in the Bay Area schools 15:58:23 alolita: Sure - once instance of the POSSE curriculum is at http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_2009#Topic_Schedule, but that's almost like saying "here's the schedule that we ran for a Barcamp" 15:58:41 because no two POSSEs are alike. The best way to get a feel for the event is really http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_Blogs. 15:59:16 The purpose of POSSE is to immerse profs in an open source community - it's cultural immersion, process immersion, getting a feel for what it means to become a contributor and what sort of scaffolding is available and what would need to be constructed 15:59:23 for the students in their classes to participate. 15:59:25 mchua: so the posse curriculum we do with OSL could be more like what we do now 15:59:43 because that's the ultimate goal - for professors who want to bring the students in their classes into FOSS contribution, how do they do that? 16:00:13 mchua: yes 16:00:23 a big part of that is learning the processes (i.e. code reviews, how to submit a patch, etc) and to do that you need to know the tools (version control, etc) 16:00:41 but you also get introduced to a network of collaborators that you can then ping during the semester to work with your students 16:00:53 and above all, you get a feel for what it means to be "productive lost" in an open source community 16:01:00 how to react to what's going on around you, how to tell what's happening 16:01:10 which is why it's so difficult to describe what will happen in any given POSSE in advance 16:01:15 and why we need a full week for it. 16:01:26 alolita: not sure if that was the sort of explanation you were looking for. 16:01:51 so in Portland there are enough local developers, I think it would make sense to get one or two "local" projects involved to come out and interact with the profs 16:01:54 mchua: that's an excellent overview :-) 16:02:10 jeff_s: yes i agree 16:02:33 Puppet! 16:02:41 we could even get maybe a small project and a large project 16:03:02 quaid: yeah, that may be a good one :) or ie. caligator, or even meego perhaps 16:03:17 oh, yeah, forgot about the Intel folk there 16:03:21 jeff_s: would a two-day camp format work for you 16:03:42 quaid: the intel folks would be great too but may make the program pretty complex 16:03:47 alolita: that seems good to me 16:04:04 Jeff_S: yes! we have a traditional Thursday night POSSE dinner where we invite all the local FOSS folks we can find to come hang out with the profs, but being able to do that more throughout the week would be even more awesome (for a POSSE, not sure if the same applies to this workshop as well). 16:04:04 alolita: well, I would think more like bring their community manager for meego, and maybe a dev or two 16:04:32 jeff_s: we could get Dawn Foster, community mgr for Meego 16:04:33 mchua: cool 16:04:40 she is based in Portland 16:04:49 alolita: yeah, I'm meeting her for lunch today, I can see if she might be interested 16:05:03 for a session - excellent - please ask her 16:05:57 if they could do a session (~2 hours) on contributing to meego 16:06:06 ok, I have to go 16:06:11 I'll check the logs later 16:06:23 quaid: i have to go too soon :-) ~ 10 mins 16:06:26 * mchua too 16:06:47 alolita: I'm not sure where this leaves us wrt the focus/target/design for the mini-bootcamp. 16:07:03 jeff_s: should we follow-up on email? 16:07:08 alolita: You're picking a target area of focus sometime this week - but beyond that, I'm fuzzy on how we move forward. 16:07:22 alolita: can you write a descript/summary of what you're thinking, and I'll try to wrap my head around that? 16:07:26 alolita: maybe to the TOS list? 16:07:33 +1 to that 16:07:38 mchua: yes certainly I will do that :-) 16:07:43 alolita: thanks! 16:07:45 * mchua will watch the list then. 16:08:16 alolita: my apologies for being so slow to grasp this :) I'm trying to understand what it is you're aiming for, since it's different from the way I'm thinking about this space 16:08:17 mchua: that's cool :-) so let's do that and touch base same time next week? 16:08:21 (but that's also why I'm interested in it!) 16:08:25 alolita: Can do. 16:08:30 * mchua makes note on calendar 16:08:31 quaid: ^ 16:08:36 (when you read backscroll) 16:08:43 mchua: fantastic! 16:09:21 alolita: and by then I'll have read your initial draft, so hopefully I'll be able to start charging towards it with you more usefully then. 16:09:24 * mchua has to jet 16:09:26 thanks, alolita. 16:09:32 mchua, quaid, jeff_s: thanks for listening! let's make progress :-) 16:09:41 bye for now! 16:09:44 #endmeeting