Andy Matuschak
patreon
This Friday: live Q&A session (2022-07-22 @2PM PDT)
🕑 Added 2022-07-18 21:12:34 +0000 UTC[Edit: oof, I accidentally recorded with no sound! Apologies! Thankfully, all who sent me questions came live, at least. We'll try something different next month…]
Hello, all! This Friday (July 22) at 2PM PDT, I'll be hosting a live Q&A session. [Add to your calendar]
I'm happy to (try to) answer questions about whatever you might like: design, engineering, cognitive psych / learning science, independent research, memory systems, new media, etc.
Here's the Google Meet link! I̵'̵l̵l̵ ̵r̵e̵c̵o̵r̵d̵ ̵t̵h̵i̵s̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵s̵h̵a̵r̵e̵ ̵a̵ ̵v̵i̵d̵e̵o̵ ̵a̵f̵t̵e̵r̵w̵a̵r̵d̵s̵.̵ (oops)
Send me questions by commenting on this post, sending me email, or showing up for the live session. I'll make space for live question-askers and discussion around the questions.
Background rumination
I'm trying this Q&A format in lieu of office hours this month. I've been glad to run the office hours experiment, but I'd like to branch out and try some other formats—I can't help feeling those sessions are stuck in a bit of a local minimum.
I was hoping that people would bring interesting work-in-progress I/others could dig into and learn from, but it seems like most folks are more interested in more informal requests for advice or information. That's fine, of course, but I bet it'd be more valuable to more people in a recorded, write-in format—the live format really shines for demos, fine-grained back-and-forth, etc.
I also get the sense that some office hours attendees like just being able to hang out with other people interested in "weird new computer ideas". I wonder how best to support that sort of thing in an ongoing way. I know Discord and Slack are popular in some communities, but I haven't been able to make them work for me—too scatterbrain-making. Maybe intermittent coordinated gather.town hangout time or something? I'm curious if other folks have ideas or have seen this done well elsewhere.
Other comments and ideas on event formats are very welcome!
Comments
Andy Matuschak
Not easy to reproduce, sorry! Since only about a dozen people attended, no need to worry about duplicates…
Can Sar
Would it be possible to get the questions that were asked so we don't ask duplicates next time and out of general curiosity? :)
Here is my question(s) along with some thoughts. When you are entering into a new domain and you are trying develop your understanding it, how do you approach reading dense texts in said domain? For example, can you recall what it was like when you first started reading into human learning? Would you approach things differently now? Or did you already know what your goals were? A little context, in your livestream from last September where you read through Agarwal et al, 2021, it was obvious that you understood the domain and you had clear goals within it. Those goals guided even your first pass through. They kept you focused and efficient. I find this extremely difficult as I enter into a new topic, and I'm reading a dense book (I usually try to find the best books within that domain), I feel so new and ignorant, that writing prompts can feel so premature due to my lack of understanding, and the organization of information that I feel like I'm still trying to accomplish. I guess this is the key idea is that it feels like I need to still organize things before I can write the prompts properly... Said another way: Reading is supposed to have goals. But, how do you read when you don't know the goals to have because you are just starting out? Thanks!
Ruben Artus
Maybe another experiment with the office hours could be to set loose themes in advance. People could bring small presentations/work-in-progress/questions/interesting findings as before, but the preset topic may spark some more dynamics.
Ruben Artus
Looking forward to it! My question: in which area of life do you think software tools would have the biggest positive effect right now, but too few people seem to pay attention to?
