[Scipy-organizers] Diversity blog post

Sun Jul 27 13:55:29 EDT 2014

There are a lot of interesting ideas here, and I was wondering how we could
discuss all of them without each idea getting buried in the email thread.
Suggestions?

On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Bennet Fauber <bennet at umich.edu> wrote:

> Andy,
>
> Thanks for including me on this.  I'll apologize ahead of time for the
> length.  I hope haven't strayed too far afield in what follows.
>
> I'd like to see a regular track at SciPy 2015 that is really meant to
> be more like training than conferring.  I think that would be more
> successful than segregating beginning workshops at the beginning.
> Here are the things I'd dream about trying to do in it.
>
>
> -- Make the 'training track' parallel to and on an equal footing with
> the 'presentation track'.  That way people who are there to learn can
> do so all the days of the conference, not all crammed into a couple at
> the beginning.  And they can step aside to go the regular conference
> as desired.
>
> -- Limit the amount of training given in one day to something like
> three hours.  There's only so much a beginner can process in one day.
> More time should be spent consolidating what's been learned than
> forging ahead to new topics before the last has had a chance to
> percolate.  Perhaps BOFs for the regular people could happen
> concurrently, and training is like an extended BOF of people who want
> to learn.
>
> -- If possible, configure the rooms to encourage interaction.  Hold
> the workshops in a room with cafe seating, three people to a smaller,
> round table (think four-top).  Mix up the tables from workshop to
> workshop so people don't sit with the same two people the whole time.
> (We do our precalculus and calculus classes here like this, and it
> seems to work.)
>
> -- There should be a homework project every day.  Projects should be
> presented as talks the following day.  Some people hate it, but I
> think it's good to do homework in groups of three to four people.
> This is about community, and that means sitting with people, talking
> to people, working with people.  Let's provide an atmosphere and
> activities where we give people a chance to try that.
>
> -- There should be a separate space, available in the
> afternoon/evening where the people who are working on the training
> homework can have their own 'sprints' and be with people of
> like-interest and more-alike ability.  I would much rather have gone
> off to work on a beginning- intermediate- level homework problem in a
> room with a half-dozen other people who were just learning python than
> going to the happy hours.  The happy hours are good for people who
> already know each other.  For me, it's just another party at which I
> know no one.
>
> -- There should be some presentations of work that isn't 'awesome' but
> that shows some real examples of python getting work done by people of
> middling ability; something that can provide an 'Ah, Hah!' moment for
> a beginning or intermediate python programmer.  Something that looks
> within reach of someone still struggling with list comprehensions.
> This isn't going to appeal to the main conference attendees, unless
> they're interested in teaching python to people.  Ideally, some of the
> topics shouldn't require three years of college math.  This, and the
> homework projects, are, I think, the hardest part to get, and
> especially to get right.
>
> -- Maybe no one else cares, but I'd like to have a bit more Sci at
> SciPy.  We have a thing in Ann Arbor called 'Nerd Nite', which are
> short talks about some subject of interest to the presenter, typically
> given at a bar.  Topics I've seen are the flu pandemic, brain imaging,
> how does malaria work.  I think it would be fun to have some 'my work
> for a lay audience' talks.  Kind of like lightning talks, but with
> some time in between for people to ask questions and talk to each
> other.  Again, I think these would be better done in a smaller room
> with cafe seating at much smaller tables.  It should feel more like a
> poetry slam, or karaoke, or something.
>
>
> I may well be projecting my own wishful thinking on an unsuspecting
> world because I never got to go do Outward Bound for a week in the
> Rockies, and I never got to go to the cool science summer camps, and I
> never got the military boot camp (though I think I'm actually pretty
> glad to have missed that one), and at some point, I wanted to do all
> those things.
>
> I'd want to attend a conference that had a track like that.  I think I
> could make that fun, and productive, and I think something like that
> has a good chance of kickstarting the nucleus of a new generation of
> collaborators, given a little care and watering.
>
> I also think that by providing a more constructive and welcoming
> environment for the less advanced, in general, perhaps it would change
> the overall tenor and feel of the conference to one where people who
> are not already part of a project can come to _start_ being involved
> in one, or just plain start one.
>
> The person who's been most helpful to me is Julia Evans
> (http://jvns.ca/), and this
>
>
> http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/02/27/graphing-bike-path-data-with-ipython-notebook-and-pandas/
>
> is the sort of thing that I think would be awesome to present in an
> afternoon talk to a beginning/intermediate audience after a morning of
> workshops.  It's enticing, interesting, and it's the kind of project
> that a beginner could look at and say:  Hey!  I could do that.  In
> fact, it turns out, I can do that.  I'd probably have given up without
> that example.  She was also receptive when I asked her question about
> it, and I even got to submit a bug to the Canadian Weather service
> about an off-by-one error on their web site.  How cool ist that?!
>
> That's the kind of experience I'd like to help people have.
>
> The main problem I see with a conference like that is, how will people
> pay to go to it?  Many of the people who would be best served don't
> have funding, or don't have time, etc.  Maybe parts of that can be
> made so people can take only a day or two out of the whole program and
> still get to the conference part that provides the budget
> justification?  Would some sort of certificate help?
>
> I have some time and energy I can contribute.  I can work on bits of
> the outline above, or if people have other ideas and I can contribute,
> I could do that instead.
>
> Thanks, again, for the opportunity to put my oar in the water.
>
>                           -- bennet
>
> #pragma
>     printf("The views expressed here are mine and not those of my
> employer.\n");
>
> --
> University of Michigan
> Ann Arbor, MI 48019
> 1-734-764-6226
> _______________________________________________
> Scipy-organizers mailing list
> Scipy-organizers at scipy.org
> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-organizers
>

-- 
sheila at codersquid.com