Reading group

[Sam Cook]

This is an idea we came up with whilst drinking after makerfaire: the idea is that there is a regular meeting once every (possibly) month we will meet up and discuss article/topic/paper that have been submitted in the previous meeting. 

The aim would be that somewhere online is a bin in which people can dump articles that they would like to discuss, others in the group can then pick one of these, research and digest it in order to give a short (we think 5 min) talk on it followed by chatting about it.

Any takers?

S

[AMB]

> Any takers?

I am up for that.

Ideally I think people should know in advance what is going to be
talked about beforehand so that everyone can read the same paper if
they want.

A google doc where people can collaboratively write notes about the
terminology in stuff that's going to get talked about would also be
cool. That way people wouldn't have to spend 5 minutes defining terms
and then run out of time to state the propositions which use those
terms.

[Sam Cook]

That's what we were thinking, I think avoiding technical terms as much as possible would be good. One of the other things was that it wouldn't just be from experts so people can present things that they don't have prior knowledge of. 

S

[Benjamin Fields]

Count me in as well.

Perhaps it could happen on Tuesdays (maybe one a month?) in the quiet room, although they're quite crowded...

(Also, hello everyone, I do believe this is my first post)

-Ben

Benjamin Fields

PhD Candidate (passed! applying required corrections...)

Dept. of Computing

Goldsmiths University of London

e : b.fi...@gold.ac.uk

m : +44 (0)796 106 1568

t : @alsothings

w     : http://benfields.net

"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?" --John Cage

[Sam Cook]

Good to see interest in this. 

I would say organising anything for a Tuesday is pretty much doomed to failure, even the quiet room is starting to get rammed now, also it's generally better to only have 1 event on at the space at a time (so people don't have to try to attend two).

If we run this only once a month we can probably shift the actual day from time to time to allow more people to make it (i.e. it shifts every month between the weekdays) ... or we can just pick an evening

S

[Benjamin Fields]

I've ever so very slightly partial to a fixed day, but could be easily swayed. 

Perhaps a page on the wiki for collecting interest and potential articles?

-Ben

[Benjamin Fields]

Also, I may have found our first article:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01986.x/abstract;jsessionid=3432514E5C135A9734C873F6E3DEDE2B.d01t01

[Jonty Wareing]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:31:21PM +0000, Benjamin Fields wrote:
> Also, I may have found our first article:
>
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01986.x/abstract;jsessionid=3432514E5C135A9734C873F6E3DEDE2B.d01t01

Congratulations, you've won the task of creating the wiki page! ;)

--jonty

[Nigel Worsley]

> Also, I may have found our first article:

"This study aimed to test the much-pronounced but poorly supported theory that "Guinness does not travel well."

Somebody should point out to those idiots that Guinness doesn't travel at all, it is brewed locally, thereby rendering
the entire study pointless (except for getting drunk in the name of science, of course).

Nigle

[Sam Kelly]

Something very tangentially related - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/NOT+EVERYTHING+IN+BLACK%26WHITE+MAKES+SENSE+.+.%3B+Do+Guinness+bubbles+go...-a061269039

"Do Guinness bubbles go up or down?" This guy was my supervisor at university.

Cheers,
Sam

--
Sam Kelly, http://www.eithin.co.uk/

That's it.  We're not messing around anymore, we're buying a bigger dictionary.  -  Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang.

[asc]

Here is another one that is very interesting for pub talk

http://law.bepress.com/expresso/eps/1087/
.

[Adrian Godwin]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:43 PM, Sam Kelly <s...@eithin.co.uk> wrote:

Something very tangentially related - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/NOT+EVERYTHING+IN+BLACK%26WHITE+MAKES+SENSE+.+.%3B+Do+Guinness+bubbles+go...-a061269039

"Do Guinness bubbles go up or down?" This guy was my supervisor at university.

Reminds me of a test we did at Northackton the other day - putting a Guiness in an ultrasonic cleaner to replicate the effect of their new bar widget.

The results were disappointing, probably because the can I used already had a plastic widget and there wasn't any more gas available to come out of solution.

So it needs retesting in a widget-free zone (which, as it happens, is difficult at Northackton ..)

-adrian

[Benjamin Fields]

On Mar 15, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Jonty Wareing wrote:

> Congratulations, you've won the task of creating the wiki page! ;)

Done.

http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Reading_Group

could certainly do with some fleshing out. Also, feel free to tell me I'm doing it wrong and that there's community style I'm not observing, I am new here...

-Ben