[mlpack] NumFOCUS summit report and ideas

[Ryan Curtin]

On Thu, Nov 07, 2019 at 06:11:40PM +0000, Germán Lancioni wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Thanks Ryan for sharing this. I agree with several ideas. A couple of notes:
> 
> 1) Moving from IRC may be a good idea - I personally can't use it,
> let's say because of "1990's environment restrictions".
> 2) mlpack talks/workshops - this is a very good point. I've been doing
> some of this and it really pays off. The amount of user conversion you
> get by doing this is superior to opportunistic discoveries of the
> library. And I truly believe we need more users and more engagement.
> After all, that's why we build mlpack, right? I would add that we also
> need talks and workshops that are *not* super technical. For new users
> (consumers of the library I mean), metaprogramming is not really
> attractive. Instead, these users are looking forward a
> simple-useful-easy "Hello World" that delivers instantaneous value.
> Take a look at scikit-learn for instance, it's all about examples and
> ready to consume snippets.
> 3) Website - This is our presentation card. That's why I hope the new
> website we are finishing will give us the status mlpack deserves.
> Again, better website and documentation brings more users. More users
> means also more contribution and more grow. That is the final
> satisfaction. Looking forward to working more on this.

Agreed for sure on all three points!  If you're not able to use IRC, I
think even that is enough to set up and document the Matrix bridge and
other ways.  I'll add it to my todo list, and we can try it and see what
we think.  I didn't imagine it would be a controversial change---the
experience from IRC is the same anyway, so those of us (perhaps like me)
who want to stay on IRC should be able to with no problem.

I'll be working on tutorial notebooks with xeus-cling, so we can see how
much that helps with the examples and ready-to-consume snippets. :)

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "He's a peculiar man.  You could even say that he
ryan at ratml.org | has principles."  - Carson Wells