Re: [eclipsecon-na-program-committee] raising the bar etc. for tutorial

[Gunnar Wagenknecht <gunnar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Am 24.01.2012 21:27, schrieb John Arthorne:
> - Having a way for people to skip steps, or "catch up" if they missed a
> step is critical. Otherwise if someone gets behind near the beginning
> they may waste the next three hours because they can't catch up.  Gunnar
> had an excellent plugin for managing this that he used in his server
> side tutorial. Maybe he can share a link to that code or put the plugin
> up somewhere that all presenters can find it.

Kudos go to the RCP book authors because they initially created it.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/samplings/

> - Don't assume wireless will work quickly or reliably - have a
> contingency plan for when wireless fails or is too slow to download
> builds, etc.

Yeah, that's always a surprise. Especially when your setup plan includes
installing things into Eclipse. I highly recommend preparing packages
for Linux+Mac+Windows for 64bit +32bit in advance. However, that's quite
an effort.

Also, there are some other gotchas we run into over the years:

- We prepared our tutorials on Windows. Ports <1024 typically don't work
on Linux+Mac because the users don't work as root. Thus, make sure to
make a dry run on other platforms as well.

- Some guy actually complained about my OS/Desktop using a non-English
setup. You should likely create a second user/profile just for
demos/tutorials that has a default setup with no distraction (no
background image, etc.).

- As a presenter, I'm too fast when doing the exercises. For example,
quite a lot people don't know shortcuts. Thus, whenever you type and use
a shortcut, explain the shortcut. Don't expect attendees to know every
available quick fix and shortcut of the Eclipse Java editor.

-Gunnar