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

[Behan Webster]

> On May 9, 2019, at 8:38 AM, Rudolf J Streif <rudolf.streif at ibeeto.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.

And if you have a multiple day class, you can absorb such disruption.

But for single day events you basically have to make sure there is little to no wiggle room for failure. And for individual talks, there is almost no room for disruption at all during labs.

Assuming pre-class work essentially means there will be massive disruption on the day because many/most/all the attendees won’t have done it.

This is why we’ve largely done lecture only beginner talks at YPDD to make sure we cover as much material as we can and limit the possibility of in class issues.

>>>> >> 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.
> 
All agreed.

>>>> 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.
> 
And you did a great job!
> 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.
> 
So very true.
> 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.
> 
Precisely.

Behan

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