From: Bjorn Freeman-Benson
[mailto:bjorn.freeman-benson@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 11:49 AM
To: Richard Gronback
Cc: Gaff, Doug; eclipse.org-pmc-leads@xxxxxxxxxxx; Ed Merks; Scott
Rosenbaum; Tim Wagner
Subject: Re: Suggestion for tutorials
There are no logistics constraints on tutorial length.
The hands-on tutorials have not been a big success at EclipseCon in the past
few years for a few reasons: (1) some people don't have laptops (I can't
imagine why you would go to a hands-on tutorial without a laptop, but there it
is); (2) the exercises tend to be too hard to do in a short time (basically,
it's very hard to design small informative coding lessons against the huge
Eclipse APIs); (3) many of the attendees are at the wrong knowledge level to do
the exercises effectively. (Note that there have been successful hands-on
tutorials so these are not 100%.)
So I like this idea. In fact, maybe we should change the tutorials to two
kinds: Very Long Talks (2 Hours; 3 per day) and Hands On Workshops (all day; 1
per day). The HOW could then be smaller and have sufficient time to really do a
programming exercise. The HOW would be sort of a plug-in clinic about one
specific topic.
Richard Gronback wrote:
Hi Doug,
I don’t think it’s a bad idea, although I personally feel tutorials should
be hands-on and not just a long(er) talk. In reality, not all who attend
tutorials come prepared to actually do hands-on activities, which is
unfortunate.
>From last year’s feedback (http://www.eclipsecon.org/2006/SurveyResults/report.html),
it’s not quite clear what the general consensus is, so I’d be interested in
hearing feedback from others on this as well. I’m sure there are some
logistical aspects Bjorn can enlighten us about.
