Friday Hacks

[Eli]

Hi everyone,

We're thinking of a couple of small changes to Friday Hacks, and would like your feedback.

For starters, we've been talking to some attendees, and they tell us that FHs this sem feel more like lectures than a talk. Part of this is, we think, due to the seating arrangements. So we're going to try and mix things up a little the next FH. 

The talk quality has also dipped a bit, but we're aware of that and we're trying to figure out how to refine our speaker invite process. 

A few other suggestions that have popped up over the last few weeks: 

• Have a Linux install corner for anyone who wants to set up Linux on their computers.
• Have a backchannel chat room (IRC, or some webapp) to chat during the session itself
• Have a paper reading lunch once a week.

I'd like to know what you think.

Warmly,

Ced

[Shubham Goyal]

Wow...paper reading lunch sounds cool. So, which papers will you guys be reading? Will it be related to specific domains or will we read the very famous ones (like in CS2309).? I also wonder how it will be implemented. This is because from my personal experience, everyone doesn't take the same time to read a paper (due to differences in the level of understanding). Will someone be presenting on a paper? I wonder if we can invite PhD students to tell us more about their research work :D

Thanks.

Warmest Regards,
Shubham

[Jason Yeo]

Where's the hacking? We're hackers right?

We should have a corner to a hack on something. For example, we can try building a supercomputer with the raspberry pis.

[Joel Low]

Where did I hear that suggestion? I remember someone telling me the exact same thing on Friday…

 

Regards,

Joel

[Eli]

@Shubham: we'll probably start with some of Stripe's stuff. https://blog.gregbrockman.com/2012/07/paper-reading-group/ and https://github.com/gdb/stripe-prg/wiki/Papers

@Jason: yes, FH started out as a for-hacking event. After the event people are suposed to stay and work. I think either we've forgot to mention that (e.g. "stay behind, and if you have programming questions, or you'd like some help, or you want to show off, feel free to mix around and talk") or it just doesn't work.

There are two ways of looking at this, though:

• Most programmers do their best work alone. FH is a place for them to come together and show off what they've done and socialize
• Friday Hacks == Hacks Talks on Friday

[Shanmugam]

-1 for paper reading lunch, don't brand it as "reading papers". Make it sort of like a lunch together and you can read papers, discuss about upcoming pranks, or show off your designs to take over the world!

Cheers

~Shan

[Laurence Putra]

+1 to Shan's suggestion :)

-- 

Regards

Laurence Putra Franslay

http://geeksphere.net

[shawntan]

The whole idea for the paper reading lunch is to delve into more academic subjects, which, in our case, could then be translated into cool projects (hopefully).

And I totally get it if people are not into that kinda thing, so if reading boring research papers are not your kind of thing, just... come for lunch and listen to the rest discuss?

[Shubham Goyal]

+1 to Shawn :D

[Eli]

The paper reading lunch isn't for everyone. It's simply for those with interests in academia, as a career, which is a subgroup of people in NUS Hackers.

(E.g. Angad, Shawn, Davin).

Of course, the idea is to have it open to anyone, so if you want to attend, the only thing that's required is that you do the reading for the week. Think of it as a way to get exposed to new ideas. Which is the way Stripe does it, because they think it's still good to have their engineers exposed to cutting-edge research.

Besides, I'm really looking forward to have the Nintendo Games are NP-Hard discussed by people more knowledgeable about computational theory than myself.

Ced