[yocto] [Yocto-Advocacy] Yocto Project Upcoming Conferences and Developer Days

[Rudolf J Streif]

Chiming in here

On 5/7/19 11:18 AM, Behan Webster wrote:
>> On May 7, 2019, at 2:47 AM, Bas Mevissen <abuse at basmevissen.nl 
>> <mailto:abuse at basmevissen.nl>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2019-05-07 07:20, Behan Webster wrote:
>>
>>> > On May 6, 2019, at 8:36 AM, Bas Mevissen <bas at emcodev.nl 
>>> <mailto:bas at emcodev.nl>> wrote:
>>> > On 5/6/19 12:45 PM, Josef Holzmayr wrote:
>>> > I'd actually word it a little bit differently:
>>> > If there is only *ONE* attendee who did not properly do the 
>>> homework, it
>>> > will have a massive impact an the rest of the group. And that somebody
>>> > will show up unpreparedly is absolutely certain in my opinion.
>>> > With sufficient trainers, one can continue for most and provide 
>>> some assistance to the one falling behind.
>>
>>> Usually more than one. And this is generally very disruptive to the 
>>> class as a whole.
>>
There are always people who are prepared to the T and others who just 
casually stroll into the class. We all know that as we all went through 
various stages of schooling. :) No matter what you do, there always will 
be a glitch. I tried it all from course preparation instructions, shell 
scripts setting up systems, USB sticks and network drives with downloads 
and shared state cache, virtual machine images, build systems set up in 
the cloud, you name it. If it is not somebody who is unprepared it is a 
technical issue: lack of disk space, network connectivity, corporate 
computers that do not allow USB sticks,... Instructors just have to deal 
with it.
>>> >> As someone who actually got started through the YPDD beginner 
>>> track (and
>>> >> also often recommends it to new beginners), my opinion is clearly 
>>> that
>>> >> we either should have it, be it only for a handful of attendees, or
>>> >> offer a *real* replacement, with face to face training. My 
>>> experience is
>>> >> that this personal thing in the very beginning is an absolutely
>>> >> essential part of many YP/OE careers.
>>> >
>>> > I agree. That is how I started, next to a compressed Linux 
>>> Foundation Yocto training that was offered just before the event then.
>>
>>> Yes. By me and my colleagues who train for the Linux Foundation.
>>
>>> > So it might be wise to ask LF or get something organised. It would 
>>> mostly require a room and a sponsor for some small devkit.
>>
>>> We've run the beginner track for the last few years. The discussion 
>>> is precisely that the YP event is proposing to not run the beginner 
>>> track this year at all.
>>
>> But why? There appears to be a constant demand.
>
> An excellent question. I agree with you. I don’t have an answer 
> however. Not my decision.
>
I certainly would advocate to have the beginner track. It's a good way 
of getting people interested, and eventually excited, for the Yocto 
Project. Conferences and dev days are an opportunity to do advertising 
and to grow the community. We cannot do that just by catering to people 
who are already using YP. We need new folks as we are already running 
into issues where things have to be dropped because there is nobody who 
is maintaining it.


>>> We're happy to do it again if given the space.
>>
>> Yes, both for LF and YP it are off-the-shelf trainings that do not 
>> require much preperation.
>
> Speaking as a course maintainer for LF, keeping the YP course updated 
> is actually a tremendous amount of work (I’m the co-maintainer for the 
> LF YP course).
>
> However, the beginner slides tend not to need more than a few hours of 
> updates every 6 months (which again is something I do).
>
> Either may appear off-the-shelf, but they aren’t from my perspective. ;)

I can wholeheartedly second that. I developed the original YP class of 
the LF and taught it many times and have since developed my own class 
material teaching classes. While the basic concept of course remains the 
same it is the little details that change. With every new version of the 
YP a course maintainer has to go through every single exercise and 
example in the course material and try it out again to see if it still 
works. And quite frankly, sometimes it is rather silly things that have 
changed and break something.

In particular for a beginner class lasting one day only, every single 
disruption sets the class back and there is no opportunity to recover 
from it. The day is already packed just to cover the core concepts.

Cheers,
Rudi


>
> Thanks,
>
> Behan
>
-- 
-----
Rudolf J Streif
CEO/CTO ibeeto
+1.855.442.3396 x700

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