[Chennaipy] Talks for the Next Meet

[Krishna Sangeeth KS]

I absolutely agree to the point on giving a talk not necessarily implying
social service. We are bound to forget things that we have just learned.
IMO the effective ways of retaining the newly learned topic is to either
write about it or talk about it to a group of people (preferably to folks
who might be interested in the topic). Thus talking about a cool thing
newly learned helps the speaker in retaining what he learned for a much
longer period. There are other intangible benefits such as building more
confidence or overcoming stage fear. So the speaker has more to gain from
the meetup AFAIK. (Yup. This is an advert for Giving a talk)

I like to use the word 'talk' instead of 'teach' in the context of our
meetup. This way we are freeing ourselves from the idea that the speaker
should be a foremost expert on the topic. Normally we are so accustomed to
one person talking and everyone listening from schools to college, that we
sometimes forget that any discussion or talk to be effective should be a
back and forth process with interaction. We often set prejudices where the
speaker is the highly knowledgeable teacher and the listener is the
slightly inferior lesser knowledgeable individual. This is so not true and
yet this leads to people not asking their doubt's for the fear of being
tagged as a stupid question.  (+1 for the fact that we have added a slot
for asking questions in our meet up format)

Since the common link that connects us is an interest in learning Python,
the one sure way that it would genuinely serve the purpose is if we
actively take part in the discussions whether it is asking questions or
giving a talk or interacting with fellow Pythonistas.

These are just few things that came on top of my head. As James said, I
feel very honored to be part of this community.

I am not sure whether we have a mission/vision statement. Since we are
delving into lots of good discussions it might be worthwhile to think of
one.

-
Sangeeth


 I think it's interesting that both Shrayas and Vijay agree and see eye to
eye on the social service point.  I've never thought of talks in that
manner, but I can relate and see your points.  On Stack Exchange, the
people answering the questions learn just as much as the people asking
them, if not more.  The times I've written an answer and been down-voted on
Stack Overflow were the times I really learned something extraordinary.  I
can see the same happening with talks as well.  They say teaching is the
best way to master something, so this makes sense to me.

Thank you both for organizing such a great community.  I am honored to be a
part of it.

James

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:13 PM, Shrayas rajagopal <shrayasr at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi All,

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Gaurav Sehrawat
<igauravsehrawat at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> i don't have the time to prepare and give talks and stuff
>>>> and i like discussing one on one rather than talk without an engaging
>>>> discussion
>>>> social service can wait. until i'm ready to serve.

One on one's are really a crucial part of our meets I feel. I've had
the opportunity to meet some absolutely fantastic people simply during
the tea sessions and learn so much from them. The popularity of our
one on one's is indicated by the fact that Vijay has to (almost
everytime) come and request us to get back into the audi so that we
can continue ;)

Also talking isn't social service. That ideology is quite flawed IMHO.
A talk is firstly, meant for oneself. When you _think_ you know
something, chances are that you don't know it. Only when you are
talking about it and explaining it to a bunch of people do you really
start to see the fallacies in it yourself. Such an experience is
vastly rewarding.

Social service is the act of helping people out and the person that
you're helping the most here is yourself. I'd probably even go to the
extent of saying that it is a happy side effect that it helps other
people more than the true intention.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 9:14 PM, James Mortensen
<james.mortensen at synclio.com> wrote:
> On that note, based on Gaurav's feedback, is another idea:  Can there be a
> 10-20 minute "discussion" on some topic instead of a presentation.

This sounds like an idea that we could give a shot to. I heard from
quite a few people that there was one such discussion during
Functional Conf 2014 and it worked out pretty well.

However I'd like to insist on the fact that such a thing really needs
to be moderated otherwise it might end up being like "The great net
neutrality debate of April'15". (wink wink)

> Would
> something more interactive take less preparation?

The thing with preparation is it is required in any case, be it for a
talk or for a discussion, if you're not thorough about your thoughts
and your opinions it can be hard to have a fruitful discussion. In
fact I might argue that it is harder during a discussion since you
should be able to refute what you don't believe in as much as (if not
more) what you believe in.

[...]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 9:36 PM, Vijay Kumar <vijaykumar at zilogic.com> wrote:

[...]

> But I would like debunk some myths here:
>
>   1. The talks give an opportunity for you to attract like minded
>      people, to the meetup first, and then for a One on One discussion
>      after your talk. So if you are interested in One on One
>      discussions, then you would be better off giving a talk!
>
>   2. Giving a talk is not a social service. That's at least not how I
>      think about it. When I learn something new, and I am excited
>      about it, I naturally feel like sharing it with someone else.
>      Unfortunately not many people around me are interested in what I
>      have got to say. That's why I talk about in a meetup, where there
>      are like minded people, who are more than willing to listen.
>
>   3. I sometimes do a talk for purely selfish reasons. For example,
>      when I want to improve my knowledge and understanding of a topic,
>      I do a talk on it. It forces me to learn the topic deeper, think
>      about it at length. The fact that others benefit from it is a
>      nice side-effect. So yeah, you don't need a halo above your
>      head to do a talk :-)

A wonderfully worded set of points. +1 to this.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 10:04 PM, Vijay Kumar <vijaykumar at bravegnu.org>
wrote:
> Having some form of organized discussions, is something I have been
> thinking about too. Fishbowl conversation [1] is one way of doing it.
> If somebody is willing to act as a moderator, then we can try it in
> one of the meetups.

Ah yes, I just remembered the session at FuConf was a Fishbowl as
well. I'm all +1 for this. We should give it a shot. Probably we'll do
it post break at one of the upcoming meetups?

---

Its so great that we have so much of diversity in this group. Makes me
feel so happy to see open ended discussions like these. Cheers to all
of us!

Regards,
Shrayas

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