[mlpack] mlpack weekly video meet-up/meeting time survey

Ryan Curtin ryan at ratml.org
Thu Nov 21 14:18:53 EST 2019 

Hey, thanks to everyone who showed up!  I think that was nice.  We
thought that it would be nice if I wrote up a summary of the things we
talked about.  Here are a few bullet points (let me know if I forgot
anything... I think I might have):

 - We should do another release, and just do them more often in general,
   instead of waiting on everything for a milestone to be done.  So,
   I'll release 3.2.2.  I think that we can finish #1985 and #1933
   before I do that.  After that release happens, I'll merge the Julia
   bindings, meaning the following release will be 3.3.0.

 - The new website prototype is running at https://mlpack2.ratml.org/,
   and an open PR is at https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack.org/pull/9.

 - We agreed that it could be really nice to provide some better
   introductory documentation.  This might include redoing or changing
   the models/ repository, or maybe developing notebook examples (in
   Python or in C++).

 - I think it's time to update the website to point out that we have
   Gitter/Matrix/IRC all integrated, but, I was going to log in to
   Matrix to check that everything is working and that didn't seem to
   work... so maybe a little longer on that one.

 - We discussed and opened
   https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/2091.
   (I'll probably take care of this tonight, I think it's easy.)

 - We talked about making the changelog more readily visible from the
   website.

Really great to see everyone.  I think that we should do this again in a
couple weeks---I'll take a look at the poll results and figure out what
good times are.

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 09:09:50AM -0500, Ryan Curtin wrote:
> Hey there everyone,
> 
> Just a reminder, if you're interested in participating in the mlpack
> video meet-up (details below), it's today (four hours from now). :)
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ryan
> 
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 03:37:36PM -0500, Ryan Curtin wrote:
> > Hey everyone,
> > 
> > As discussed in the NumFOCUS summit thread (quoted below), I think it's
> > a good idea to try the weekly informal meeting, but we need to find out
> > times that work for everyone.  Since we're all globally scattered,
> > probably we should switch up the times.  So I set up this Google Forms
> > survey to see what works for different people:
> > 
> > https://forms.gle/vzZEmcKs3giL9eiH9
> > 
> > If you are interested in participating and want to fill out that
> > document, that can help us find a good time.
> > 
> > While we wait for the survey responses to come in, we can have the first
> > "video meetup" on Thursday, Nov 21, at 1800 UTC (to do a little time
> > zone mapping, that's 10am PST, 1pm EST, 7pm CET, 11:30pm IST, and 3:00am
> > KST).  Sorry if that doesn't work perfect for everyone (I think this
> > will be especially bad for SangYeon unfortunately), but we'll have to
> > try different times now and then.
> > 
> > The meetup is informal: we don't have a specific agenda.  We can all
> > just show up to the zoom room below and talk about things that are on
> > our minds (which actually doesn't even need to be mlpack-related,
> > technically):
> > 
> > https://zoom.us/j/3820896170
> > 
> > Some topics we might end up discussing could include:
> > 
> >  - how our days are going :)
> >  - discussion of PRs to be merged before a release
> >  - help debugging some issues
> >  - discussion of general development directions
> >  - interactive PR reviews?
> > 
> > Anyway, I don't want to focus too much on an agenda, because the idea is
> > that it's freeform.  In fact, if some others wanted to put on meetups at
> > certain times, it would definitely be okay for us to have more than one!
> > 
> > On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 07:56:34PM +0100, Marcus Edel wrote:
> > > About the informal weekly meeting, should we schedule something, maybe for the end of the week?
> > > 
> > > > On 8. Nov 2019, at 00:10, Ryan Curtin <ryan at ratml.org> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > On Thu, Nov 07, 2019 at 01:37:16PM -0500, Marcus Edel wrote:
> > > >> Hello,
> > > >> 
> > > >>> mlpack video meetings:
> > > >> 
> > > >> What about we create a shared document (e.g. google docs) and use that to manage
> > > >> the meetings, if someone has a particular question or topic they like to discuss
> > > >> they can write it down before the meeting. This allows us to prepare for certain
> > > >> topics. We can also keep track of what was discussed in the meetings.
> > > > 
> > > > That sounds good to me if you want to set it up; alternately we can just
> > > > send an email to the list beforehand and people could respond to it with
> > > > ideas.  Either is fine honestly.
> > > > 
> > > >>> giving talks on mlpack:
> > > >>> 
> > > >>> 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.
> > > >> 
> > > >> Agreed, maybe we can put a list together with events (local/global) as a
> > > >> starting point.
> > > > 
> > > > Sounds good---I'll see if I can compile a list of events I'm interested
> > > > in in the near future and we can share it here or somewhere.
> > > > 
> > > >>> C++ notebooks:
> > > >> 
> > > >> I have a setup running that I can make accessible, Sylvain used Binder, which
> > > >> has some limitations like 1-2GB of memory, kernel shutdown after 10 minutes of
> > > >> inactivity. If I'm thinking about running neural network examples, we might run
> > > >> into the mentioned limitations.
> > > > 
> > > > Sounds good---we can also use some of mlpack.org's resources for this,
> > > > and NumFOCUS might be able to help with the resources also via
> > > > connections to large companies or something?  I'm not sure.
> > > > 
> > > > -- 
> > > > Ryan Curtin    | "Wha' happened?"
> > > > ryan at ratml.org |   - Mike LaFontaine
> > > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Ryan Curtin    | "Hungry."
> > ryan at ratml.org |   - Sphinx
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> > 
> 
> -- 
> Ryan Curtin    | "Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?"
> ryan at ratml.org |   - John McClane
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-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "A present for my friends... at Thanksgiving."
ryan at ratml.org |   - Bruce

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