Ada Monthly Meeting

Events
1

Dear all,

this forum post was already written to the C.L.A, but I think it is worthy of being here too, as it may reach even more people. So here goes a summary of what I wrote over at the C.L.A.

What and Why? Ada monthly meetup

I would like to have a monthly meetup to gather the community, see each other, talk about some things and let people present or showcase their work and discuss the news.

When and how?

It would take place once a month and it should last between 45 min to 1 h. This would allow the discussion or showcase of two or three topics and leave room for discussion and smaller news.

The meetup would take place (initially) over Jitsi, a libre conferencing software that does not require installation (it uses modern web browsers for the clients). This would be the initial platform to test the waters and see if it works well for us.

I have selected Saturday 3, June 2023 to be the day we start. It would take place the first weekend of each month with the exception of August (as it is summer in most places, maybe even September) and February, as FOSDEM takes place.

The time would be around 12:00 or 13:00 UTC. That should be a more or less approachable time for most people all over the globe. Though I am aware that it is not great for those in the Americas or in eastern Asia/Australia. It is also meal time in EU, but that is a compromise for everyone. And of course, this is just the first proposal. We will keep improving things as we move along.

How to participate?

You can join just to listen and chat! That is probably what I will end up doing most. However, there are a few things we are looking for:

  • Tool developers that would like to showcase its features or new releases.
  • Demos of projects.
  • Issues within the language or technical problems with tools.
  • Cool stuff!
  • Questions!

This is a community oriented meetup, not a super heavy technical one, we leave those to the ARG :wink:

Feedback

There has already been some feedback over at the C.L.A., but some more would surely help. If you have any questions, issues or recommendations, please, share those!

Best regards,
Fer

4 Likes
2

Dear all,

due to the positive response from the community to this initiative, I will try to make it happen!

I say I will try, as in I cannot do it alone! I would like to make a call to the community to ask for people to propose a quick 10-15 min talk to showcase a project, topic, discussion, update, problem, etc. For this first meeting, I would advise in not showcasing anything important or serious, as technical problems are expected and I would like to leave some time for my introduction of the meeting and for feedback from the community. If there are too many people, the ideas would get pushed to the July meeting.

Please, share this with anybody that you would like or may be interested!

You can propose topics by replying to this forum thread, the C.L.A, Gitter/Matrix, IRC or my own email “irvise(at)irvise.xyz” if you prefer.

See you the next 3rd of June 2023 (Saturday) at around 12:00 or 13:00 UTC time! I will send the final time about a week before the meeting!

Very best regards,
Fer

P.S: any and all feedback is welcome!

3 Likes
3

Hi all,

this message contains the final time of the meeting, connection details and other info.

The (first!) Ada Monthly Meetup will take place this Saturday, 3rd of June, at 13:00 UTC Time. That corresponds to 15:00 CET (Central European Time: Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Rome…).

The meetup will take place over at Jitsi, a conferencing software that runs on any modern browser. The link is Jitsi Meet The room name is “2023AdaMonthlyMeetupJune” and in case it asks for a password, it will be set to “first”.
I do not want to set up a password, but in case it is needed, it will be the one above without the quotes. The room name is generally not needed as the link should take you directly there, but I want to write it down just in case someone needs it.

Talks:

No one proposed any topics, but that is fine as this first meeting will not be recorded. I will record it for internal testing and to see how it works, but it will not be published.

Having no talks will allow us, the community, to discuss any technical issues and comments that may help improve the experience of the monthly meetup. However, I will give a short introduction and share my ideas at the beginning :slight_smile: Someone could also propose a topic for the next meetup too.

If I forgot something, please, point it out so that any issues can get patched out.

Best regards,
Fer

P.S: I, Fer, will post this over at the C.L.A and Ada-Lang.io. Feel free to repost this to Reddit, Gitter/Matrix, Telegram or any other channels! The more people know about this, the better (I hope).

1 Like
4

Hi all,

yesterday we had the first meetup and it mostly went quite well! Here is a small recap of some of the details (though I did not take the minutes as this was a test ride):

  • Most if not all attendees came from the European and American timezones.
  • There were 18 attendees.
  • We had some technical issues at the beginning with me sharing the screen, but other speakers did not have much trouble, which is good.
  • We talked about the goals of the meetup, the conference software Jitsi, Alire on Macs, swapping values/arrays, ASIS, Alice and the Ada-Europe conference that will take place in a couple of weeks.

I was asked to make the conference link fixed. I will take a look into it, as there may be some problems but a solution was proposed, so it may actually be doable!

The recording of the conference failed. Jitsi only allows Chromium based browsers to record the meeting locally. I am using ungoogle-chromium for this purpose, which could have caused the issues. However, my internet connection was also very poor, which could have broken the recording. I will try to debug this in the coming weeks.

And @Max, since you already have a YT channel where you post the monthly Ada news, would you like to livestream the Meetups too? Jitsi allows for a conference to be livestreamed. This could also be used as a “recording backup”. I am asking you here publicly to maintain transparency :slight_smile:

Finally I would like to thank everybody that came and made this meetup possible! Thank you very much,
Fer

2 Likes
5

Fer, thanks very much for organising this - a good first meeting.

I noticed that people’s video feeds kept switching in and out - I know that it’s optional to display the video at all, but you’d have thought it would stay on once enabled! (it’s good to put a face to a name)

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Yes, sure. We can stream it on my YouTube channel. I can share streaming key if you want, so you can stream it if I won’t be online, I guess.

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I noticed the same, and it’s not my experience with previous jitsi meets. Maybe there was a bottleneck somewhere causing trouble?

Also, how would I like if jitsi allowed to hide participants without a webcam, at least while silent…

8

At times, most video feeds were off, so I switched mine off as well then. Maybe others did that too, which could explain the observed behaviour?

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Hi everybody,

thank you for your feedback :slight_smile: I hope that the Ada-Europe conference is going well :smiley:

My internet connection is very poor (due to an old computer) and that is probably why the cameras were dropping off. Around half an hour in, my connection started being very bad and all webcams dropped, so that probably was reflected on your video feeds too. Maybe it was also on Jitsi’s side… We will see.

@Max I hope to contact you soonish to see if we can live stream it. I want to still try to successfully generate a local recording.

I hope to send the next announcement soon as I will be traveling next week and I will not be available for a few days.

And once again, if someone has a topic that they want to talk about, feel free to propose ideas!

Best regards,
Fer

10

Hi all,

this message contains the final time of the meeting, connection details and other info.

The first “official” Ada Monthly Meetup will take place this Saturday, 1st of July, at 13:00 UTC Time. That corresponds to 15:00 CET (Central European Time: Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Rome…).

The meetup will take place over at Jitsi, a conferencing software that runs on any modern browser. The link is Jitsi Meet The room name is “AdaMonthlyMeetup” and in case it asks for a password, it will be set to “AdaRules”.
I do not want to set up a password, but in case it is needed, it will be the one above without the quotes. The room name is generally not needed as the link should take you directly there, but I want to write it down just in case someone needs it.

Talks:

No one proposed any topics, but there was a proposal that I quite liked!
An Ada user told me they would like for people to present themselves with a brief introduction so that listeners and other new users could tell who is who. I think this is a great idea as that allows the community to get closer together, know who is who and what they work on and have a better understanding of the speakers and their background. Obviously, this will be optional, nobody will be forced to do this in any kind of way. The introductions should be short (think 30s to a minute) and I will be the first one to do it to help break the ice :smiley:

If I forgot something, please, point it out so that any issues can get patched out.

Notice! The link to the room has been changed to be more “universal”. So please, share it with people who received the old link. Another point is that the password, in case it is needed, has also changed. I sadly cannot block the room with a password unless a moderator in connected. This means that there is a very unlikely chance someone could vandalise the room, but I do not expect this to be a problem. Also the presentation will not be streamed just yet. I did not have time to test it but Maxim kindly agreed to help, so that will be coming down the line.

Best regards,
Fer

P.S: I, Fer, will post this over at the C.L.A and Ada-Lang.io . Feel free to repost this to Reddit, Gitter/Matrix, Telegram or any other channels! The more people know about this, the better (I hope).

11

I’ll be unable to attend this time around, I’ll be in the middle of a trip :cry: . Have a great meeting!

12

When is the next meeting? I certainly could could lead a half hour debate “Total Quality Management and Ada”

1 Like
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Hi @Tom. The next one will not take place up until September or October due to the summer holidays most people take. I personally will not be available for a meetup during the first of September. So unless someone wants to organise it, it will be in October.

I hope that helps :slight_smile:
Best regards,
Fer

14

Hi @Max and everybody!

I finally got around editing the recording! The quality is fairly low as I just recorded my screen :confused: and there was this issue with my computer overheating and part of the recording just not being available.

Nonetheless, it is done and I have uploaded preview file on my website. If you have any feedback, please, say so. If the recording is deemed of “good enough quality”, then I hope it can be published by @Max :slight_smile:

Best regards,
Fer

15

Thank you. I shall look forward to it. :slight_smile:

16

I’ve pushed it to the YouTube. I found it not bad. The participants’ volume is quite different, but I don’t know how to fix it easily.

2 Likes
17

:bangbang: Note: There will be no meetup this month (August 2023) as many are on vacation :flight_departure:.

See you on September :spiral_calendar:, I hope.

18

Hello everybody!

I would like to announce the October Ada Monthly Meetup which will be taking place on the 7th of October at 13:00 UTC time (15:00 CET). As always the meetup will take place over at Jitsi. Hopefully this time I will not have the same amount of technical issues…

If someone would like to propose a talk or a topic, feel free to do so! I will be talking about FOSDEM, but only for a couple of minutes, since the dates have already been announced (the same as every year, first weekend of February).

Here are the connection details from previous posts:
The meetup will take place over at Jitsi, a conferencing software that runs on any modern browser. The link is Jitsi Meet The room name is “AdaMonthlyMeetup” and in case it asks for a password, it will be set to “AdaRules”.
I do not want to set up a password, but in case it is needed, it will be the one above without the quotes. The room name is generally not needed as the link should take you directly there, but I want to write it down just in case someone needs it.

Best regards and see you soon!
Fer

1 Like