enzo user workshop followup

[Brian O'Shea]

Hi folks,

I wanted to mention that response to the poll for the user workshop has been tepid.  There are five responses:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13bkAc11CJg7Eu_DWljrWYQbbiWqpvBUnaBJXzCt8F8o/edit?usp=sharing

Four of the five respondees have indicated that they would need either partial or full financial support to attend the workshop, and 3 of those 4 respondees appear to be international.  It seems that the cost would be prohibitive to bring all of them to one spot, and I'm not sure (A) if it's worth having a workshop for 5 people, and (B) where we'd get the funding.

I'm wondering if, instead of trying to have a workshop that's physically in one spot, we maybe do an online user workshop, or have a set of online office hours/training sessions?  Google Hangouts are a sophisticated enough technology that it would be perfectly easy to do that.

Any thoughts?

--Brian 

[James Larrue]

Rather than have a one-off, multi-day session, what about an on-going monthly or bi-monthly series?  I am imagining something similar to a group that my wife is involved with (in a totally different field).

In her group, somebody gives a presentation online about once-a-month, each time a different person and a different topic.  The topics target different levels of expertise, so some topics are general, while other topics are very specific.  Interested parties tune in from around the world.  The IT system used by my wife's group lets everybody see the presenter's slides, hear the presenter's voice, and hear voices of the audience members.  After the presentation, the slides are available for download.  Their system is provided by a large institution, but I suspect Google Hangouts (or similar) would work for Enzo's purposes.

If the Enzo group wants to do a similar presentation series, we probably need a volunteer or two to coordinate the series: find topics of interest, schedule speakers, moderate the presentations, etc.  (In my wife's group, this role rotates annually.)  I am willing to be one coordinator, but I think we should have two.

[Brian O'Shea]

Hi James,

That's a great idea!  It definitely allows us to more carefully target what users need and want, and will also give us an opportunity to look at our documents and hopefully improve them.  Unless there are objections, I think this is the right way to proceed.  Thoughts?

If we do go this way, the first thing we ought to do is assess what people actually want to learn about.  I'll put together another Google Form, and then we can ask people who signed up as being interested in the workshop a few questions ('what would you like to learn about?' and 'what time zone do you live in, so we can find a convenient time?'), and also send that to the whole user list.

I'd like to hear other peoples' thoughts on this, too!

--Brian

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[John Regan]

I think this is definitely worth a shot anyway. We could run it for a trial period and gauge interest, see what works what doesn't etc. It has my vote!