Howdy-
Campbell Vertesi, whom several of you will remember from his contributions to our initial discussion regarding the Africa Project, will be joining us at our weekly meetings when he can. As he's based in Paris, I'd like to move our meeting next Wednesday to 6:30 EST in order to better accommodate him (although I'll keep it open until 8:30 EST in case that's too early for others who'd like to join us).
Meanwhile, Campbell has created an IRC channel for Project PM that will be open around the clock. I think this will be very useful for a couple of reasons:
1. Those who are particularly active in Project PM may choose to "idle" in the background and look in at their convenience.
2. It will help to accommodate discussion among all members, including those who aren't part of our weekly meeting group but who might be interested in contributing to our general ongoing dialog.
3. It's something to which we can provide a link to new recruits so that they can get involved immediately or at some convenient point in the future.
4. As we continue to grow, an IRC chat will help to facilitate discussion among large numbers of participants.
I imagine it will work as such: Clark and I, plus whoever else is capable and inclined to do so, will have the IRC idling in the background for most of the day so that whenever someone drops in or says something, our respective chat client programs will alert us to it. This way we can address any questions or ideas that come up. Meanwhile, I would imagine that Scott Mintz, Tim Ellis, and others who are active in the project but who are busy with work and such will drop in every once in a while and perhaps idle in the background when convenient. The majority of our participants who haven't yet been asked to get involved but who would like to contribute to our various plans on occasion or who have a question or are just interested in seeing what's going on will sign on whenever the need arises. As we grow - and we're about to have another growth spurt over the next two weeks - we'll probably have four or five people idling at any given moment, another dozen who come in once or twice a week, and a couple dozen more who will be coming in once or twice a month. All of this, I think, should go far in facilitating far more interaction among our participants, and thus new solutions and ideas as well as increased understanding of what we're doing and how a given participant can help.
As Campbell notes below, our IRC room may be accessed at #projectpm on freenode (
irc.freenode.net). I'll be logging on later today once I've finished the Skeptical Inquirer announcement piece, and later this week I'll send out a mass e-mail to our 100 or so participants and associates inviting them to check it out as well unless there are any objections. If anyone needs any help getting onto the chat, reply to all on this message and Campbell or someone else can probably assist.
Thanks again to Campbell and to everyone else for their contributions thus far.
Also, I'll be turning in the science journalism announcement piece this evening, at which point I'll send a copy to everyone else who's weighed in thus far; the editor of Skeptical Inquirer usually doesn't put the article up until a few days after submission, so we'll have a chance to make any necessary tweaks.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: Project PM Africa Development Program
To: Campbell Vertesi <
campbell@vertesi.com>
Thanks a lot for setting that up for us; I'll check this out later today and let everyone know about it. We can definitely meet earlier; how about 6 EST? Additionally, since the IRC is up I'll probably idle there for most of the day and so will Clark Robinson and probably a couple of other people, so we'll probably de-emphasize the weekly meetings over time in favor of continuous dialog.
On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Campbell Vertesi
<campbell@vertesi.com> wrote:
Hi Barrett - I can set us up channels, no problem. I would think we'd want up to two channels: a public channel for open discussion, and potentially a private channel if we want password-protected, administrative discussions separated from everything else. For now, I've created #projectpm on freenode (
irc.freenode.net). Anyone can join. Let's start using this!
7:30pm ET is 1:30am for me. I will try and make it but it will be a challenge to be consistent. Is there any possibility of doing it earlier in the evening?
C
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 11:44 PM, Barrett Brown
<barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Campbell-
We've been meeting on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 EST. Gchat has been used for no particular reason, although we're fond of a couple of features it has. I've actually been thinking than an IRC channel that's constantly up might work better for our meetings as well as a perpetual manner of communication and collaboration to supplement those meetings as well as our e-mail lists and other mediums. I'll ask a couple of our people about starting one up; I've used IRC before but don't know much about our options in terms of setting up a private channel.
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Campbell Vertesi
<campbell@vertesi.com> wrote:
Hi Barrett - I'm interested in all of it. I'd love to just listen in to the thoughts of the Science Journalism committee - those are very impressive minds! As for the evening Gchat... evening in which timezone? I'm based in Paris, so evenings ET can be a bit tricky for me. Not impossible, just tricky.
I'm interested in why you chose Gchat instead of a more open group discussion medium, like IRC. It would be easy enough to create a private channel...
Anyway I'm looking forward to the Africa discussion.
Thanks
C
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302