Well..., so far pretty responsive this thread. Interesting the amount of
brain power some fellows have put into my original and almost "naive"
proposal. I certainly have no idea how overworked the lammps team is and how
little $ support they have on their side to run their shows. My suggestion
this has nothing to do with being overworked, but is a simple matter
of the boundary conditions of the organizers of the workshop working
in a national lab in the US of A.
about videos, at least those of invited speakers, was assuming that most of
those talks were related to cool science done with lammps and not related to
implementation of new algorithms/features into the platform. Personally, I
rather watch the Feynam/Sadoway online lectures than read any of their
papers because I like to enjoy seeing those guys running their shows and
yeah, but how many of us fall into *that* category?
and i do not mean to disrespect to people who present at the LAMMPS
workshops. in fact, would particularly encourage people that have less
skill and experience to present talks to submit talks to workshops
like the LAMMPS workshop, since they are very familial affairs and
thus a good venue for people to acquire experience in presenting w/o
having to dread aggressive questions or an empty lecture hall as they
may have to face at "proper" conferences.
such experience to me at the personal level is more fulfilling than
digesting their manuscripts. Of course I have not claimed anywhere than the
first option would be a replacement to the second one when it comes to
learninng the fundamentals. Moreover, I believe from reading the names of
the forum participants that many community memebers reside outside
northamerica and probably do not have $ to make any face to face contact
i have to say, i am getting quite irritated about the "i don't have
the $$s to attend" line, because it is unfairly putting social
pressure on people that don't deserve it and ignoring that there are
ways to deal with that. granted, not for everybody, but more than you
might think. for the most part they just require initiative and
volunteering some time and effort. there are travel grants that can be
obtained from all kinds of funding agencies in all kinds of countries.
sometimes, you have to be a bit creative and schedule trips so that
you can combine them with attending a second event like the LAMMPS
workshop. also, if you cannot get to the workshop, you can bring the
workshop to *you*. this is a unique opportunity to give your
institution a worldwide visibility. again, there are national and
international funding agencies that do provide funding for such
events. if you organize it in the very same fashion as the current
LAMMPS workshops are organized, the cost and overhead is fairly low
(that *why* the LAMMPS workshops are done in the way they are done).
you may even get corporate sponsorship, if you are creative. also,
there are places where you can propose/organize workshops and that do
even provide (partial) travel support for *attendees*. there is
www.cecam.org or www.ictp.it, which i know about from personal
experience, there are likely more.
considering the rapidly growing user base of LAMMPS in europe, it is a
mystery to me that - so far - nobody has taken the initiative and set
up a tutorial or workshop via CECAM. we did a workshop at ICTP in 2014
(when there was an opportunity with minimal cost and with sponsorship
from ICTP and Scienomics) and it would be a good idea to interleave
the ones in the US with activities elsewhere, be it europe or
south/middle america or the middle east or asia or ???
ever possible. I could continue providing further reasons to my suggestion
but the principal one is simple: FUN, would be fun and enjoyable (to me and
I cannot speak for others) to have access to that material. My request was
it may be fun to observe, but it is a non-trivial logistical affair to
set this up. i have presented at conferences that were videotaped, and
also have been asked to talk about research and software development
on video and the legal complications from that were - mildly put -
annoying. i don't even want to know what an effort it would take to
organize this. it is most certainly not something that i personally
would consider "fun".
i am not saying it cannot be done, but as much of what happens with
and around LAMMPS is self-organized and requires community support,
people that are interested in that, would have to own up and do more
than just ask for it. it is always easy to ask for something.
all about engament and enjoyment of science via video support not about
"best value/practices" and/or "efficient" ways to bring lammps to all the
homes in the planet.
i content that my counter-proposal of providing good self-study
tutorials would *particularly* provide engagement and enjoyment of
science. it is very much evident from the posts to this lists that
there are a *lot* of people that are particularly frustrated and
(sometimes) desperate and would massively enjoy and benefit from such
material.
ok. i guess i better shut up now and not stir the flames even more.
axel.
