POSSE, Day 4. . .

A short day for me (due to tarnsportation issues in the a.m.), but a good one overall. I saw the work my team completed on the Sugar activity criteria table and was able to make some contributions. What was most meaningful (to me) was understanding their path of finding and enabling the solutions to the issues we discovered in the Sugar Activity documentation. Simply stated: collaboration, open and matter of fact. The fact that we engaged Walter directly spoke to the flatness of the community -- everyone is there to help others help themselves.

I'll be applying (extending) this model in my teaching and in the OPL's development work. On the latter, I haven't explored this model with the Drupal community but I suspect that doing so will change the quality and quantity of the work we can produce. . .

POSSE, Day Three. . .

Learnings:

1. Working in this environment requires a balance between A.D.D. and immersion.
2. I don't have that balance -- at least in this environment. Yet. . .


When we broke into our smaller groups in the afternoon, I re-confrmed that I am not a "chat" guy -- at least not in this environment. Managing windows (literally -- 20+ years of using a Mac had a clear impact on how I was trying to stay organized), managing conversations, using IRC to communicate with people in the room and simply trying to get my head around the problem we needed to address all took a toll. My background is in quality assurance (optimization, standardization of systems), so my natural state was to look at how to improve the functionality of the environment. For Sugar development, the huge disparity in documentation was my big hang-up. As I looked through the Activities pages and wiki support documents, I kept envisioning templated environments where developers played fill-in-the-blank with web forms that would automatically create formatted pages. {sigh} But I'm like that. . .

I also realized that I have way too much on my plate this week to really dedicate the headspace necessary to immerse myself fully in this experience. That too is impacting my uptake of the information.

POSSE, Day 2. . .

I'm realizing that the core content of this open-source workshop is as much or more about communication than anything. The concept of being "in channel" and seeking out the right communities to collaborate with to find answers seems to be core to success in open-source development. Funny, as this same model works in nearly every other mode of life as well. . .

Getting my head around SoaS and the like will take a little more time. The environments and way of working within then remains a bit foreign. The logic is there and, with familiarity, deeper understanding will follow. For now, it's a little like navigating a new city.

First day at RIT POSSE. . .

Mid-day at RIT's 2010 POSSE ( http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_RIT ) and I'm starting to sympathize more with my students. Taking notes, playing follow the leader and actually absorbing new content is tricky stuff.

Other thoughts? I need a better IRC client -- much better. . . Presentation of information is critical and the one I'm using now is making me edgy.