Re: [Swarmfest2005] on Sunday 5

[Paul Johnson]

I tried the tutorial thing last fall at the Ecological Society of 
America and found it to be a difficult, frustrating experience.  I don't 
think I am incapable of doing that kind of thing, but it is very tough.

I was knee deep in detail and most of the people were wanting more 
general conceptual material than I had to give.  None had computers with 
working Swarm, but some were very sophisticated and wanted to ask very 
detailed questions.  There were many Java and C++ programmers there who 
kept wanting translations between Obj-C and Java or C++.  They would ask 
things, and get me excited, and we'd travel off on some detail that was 
totally boring to most people.  And probably boring to me, after all was 
said and done.

I had resolved at the outset not to do the same old "read the bugs 
tutorial" to them, since they could read that on their own before hand 
or after.  I made up some slides on the Sugar Scape and tried to sell 
them on the idea that they should just dig into details and see what 
does what, but the detail was too intense, at least to start.

I think if I were doing this again, I'd go at it like this

1. 1 hour survey of swarm apps and what cool stuff can happen.

http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Presentations/ESA-Portland-2004/Presentations/Step_Two_Swarm.pdf

That is not details, and what details I have in there should be cut out. 
 Emphasis is on having things with ACTUALLY working code, applications, 
and where possible, publications.

2. Detailed review of a working swarm model.  I prefer to work on Sugar 
Scape.  I'd like to distribute this code to people ahead of time.

http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Presentations/ESA-Portland-2004/Presentations/SSS_Swarm_Tutorial1.pdf

I made a line-numbered printout of all that code.

http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Presentations/ESA-Portland-2004/Handouts/sss-2.2-Handouts.tar.gz

I added a "predator" to the model, just to illustrate the adventure.

Honestly, it is very frustrating to make this kind of a presentation 
because the users are diverse, some not knowing where the fundamentals 
begin and some knowing a whole bunch.

It is a big problem that the state of Java Swarm applications is up in 
the air.  Tim Howe was making revisions over the years in jheatbugs, but 
the last batch of changes grossed me out so much I completely threw up 
my hands on that whole enterprise.

pj


Pietro Terna wrote:
>         Dear Paul and all,
>
>         on Sunday 5 we'll have the opening reception and the poster 
> session at 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM as last year.
>
>         What I don't know and I'm asking to every one is if we can have 
> a tutorial session. Paul Box or Paul Jonhson can arrange for it?
>
>         Yours, Pietro
>
> At 23.53 04/04/2005, you wrote:


--
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
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