* Ada Monthly meeting
A lot of programming languages and libraries have meetings/meetups
which allow the community to come together and have a chat, share
ideas, proposals and better utilise and prioritise resources. I
would like to propose such a thing for Ada. Below is the rationale
and some ideas and issues.
** Motivation
The Ada community does not have many members when compared to other
more-well-known communities. However, there is still some interest
in having such type of meetings. This was recently made clear after
some people pointed out they would like to have such a thing in the
Ada channel over at Gitter.
Personally, I have been playing with such idea and that is what
motivated me to volunteer to drive the FOSDEM Ada devroom. I would
like the Ada community to be more well-known and to have the same
"resources" as other communities have. Meetups are a great way to
have fun while discussing what we like.
In meetups, generally speaking, users and developers can have the
opportunity to come together, discuss topics, organise resources
and help each other. Gray-beards can help those who still have
colour in their hair; people with different sets of skills can
propose solutions to problems that one may not have thought about;
authors can present their work or improvements, etc.
I would like to use the Fortran community as an example of what
meetups can be used for. Here is their April monthly-meetup
[1]. Their meetups are very focused on the language and "core"
tooling... it is quite formal, which may not be what I had in mind,
but we will see.
** Who is this meant for?
Everybody who is interested.
I would love to see some participation of the "Industrial users".
But I understand that a lot of people see Ada (and many other
things) as a tool that brings food to the table, nothig more. So I
would not expect much participation of this group.
Newbees and beginners are also more than welcome. They could see
what people are doing and ask questions that are better answered in
real-time by a person, instead of a Stackoverflow for example.
Though, I must be honest, it is mostly intended for people who are
interested in the Ada environment and open side of things. This is
due to the nature of an open discussion and building a community. I
have to be clear and state that I am biased towards the libre
community, so feel free to point out any unfairness.
** How would it work? What would it be like?
THIS IS JUST A PROPOSAL, SO TAKE THIS AS SUCH.
I thought about having a Jitsi room (libre conference system that
runs on your browser, same one used in FOSDEM) [2] where people can
just join and take part of the meetup. Jitsi allows for moderation
too, so that speakers can talk without getting interrupted and it
has a built in chat too.
So, what could be discussed? Here is a short list of ideas that I
have:
- Monthly news: new releases, milestones, etc.
- Presentations: attendees may want to present their work or do a
demonstration. They may also want to have a discussion about a
specific topic (for example, the use of Ada 2022 features).
- General libre software coordination: improvements to tools,
feedback, questions, past goals discussion, etc
- General Q&A related to Ada and open to everybody.
- Finally, a beer.
I think this could take place between 30 min to 2 hours, depending
on the load of that day. Presentations would obviously be much more
casual and easy when compared to an actual conference.
** Potential issues
1. Not enough interest.
2. Timezones! Users are mostly concentrated in Asia-Pacific/EU/USA,
which makes coordination an absolute pain. A compromise could be
found, or a different schedule each month in such a way that
everybody benefits (and gets skrewed) equally.
3. Organisation: there needs to be a main organiser and a second in
command.
1. There also needs to be a medium in which to spread the
word. C.L.A is a good starting point, but may not reach the
wider community. It could be announced everywhere every
month, but that is a tedious task.
** Feedback
I have probably said enough, even if not everything has been
said. So I would like to ask for your feedback and specially know
if you would be interested.
Thank you for your time,
Fer
** References
[1]
https://invidious-us.kavin.rocks/watch?v=8-_ll4f0gN8
[2]
https://meet.jit.si/
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