Having a static table of objects that informs the user what's included in the
currently shifting target that is Pd-extended is the wrong approach. My
solution would be to delete the entire table, but maybe someone else has
a better, less drastic idea.
-Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@at.or.at To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com Cc: Max abonnements@revolwear.com; PD list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 11:57 PM Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
The FLOSS manuals book is editable by anyone. Please fix it if it has wrong info. :)
.hc
On Feb 9, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
There are still a lot of sticking points with Pd for new users-- someone
recently wrote
the list asking where all the objects are that are listed in the FLOSS
manual. At least
some of those objects have to be downloaded/installed separately-- [pvoc~]
is listed
under Pd extended but it's not included in it, nor is the relevant
library listed.
But even if pvoc~ doesn't create, how does the user know for _sure_
that there isn't
a pvoc~ binary living somewhere on their machine? Pd is like those
magnetic words
you put on a fridge to make poetry, but over time roommates come in and
remove
some of the words, and now you need your own blank magnet and pen and write
the
word and put it back on the fridge. Or, you can put the word
"import" with some words
that describe last place where you found the word-- many of those places
have helpful
names that are the initials of the person who wrote them that you've
never met. None
of this is clearly documented btw, unless you ask on this listed and get a
reply in the
time it would have taken to finish a patch if there had been clear
documentation in the
first place.
Well let's remove the object chain with pvoc~ in it and try a different
approach. Oops, I
can only "undo" pvoc~ itself because I've reached my
"undo" limit. Is this program from
the 1980s or what? Maybe it is-- I can't even move this array that
holds a 1-sec waveform
I loaded into it without Pd being sluggish.
Well at least there aren't any presets to impede my creativity...
I'm finishing up a search plugin that will somewhat alleviate the pvoc~
example, and pd-l2ork
has helped by having infinite undo and snappier graphical displacement of
objects. But
these kinds of problems definitely hinder new users, and if you're
seeing students are seeking
out Pd on Facebook because they have a hard time configuring a mailinglist
digest, you can
bet they are Googling for better tools when they run into these or myriad
other
usability/documentation problems.
-Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: Max abonnements@revolwear.com To: PD list pd-list@iem.at Cc: Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 10:50 PM Subject: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
Dear list and Pure Data community,
I'd wanted to write this down since a few months now and finally
had the
chance to do so. To welcome you in Weimar and Berlin in August has been a great pleasure
for us.
The Pure Data community has proven to be a diverse, inspiring and very
thankful
audience. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and professionalism and
sometimes patience of performers and guests as well. It was the first time for most of the team to be involved in any kind
of event
of this scale. We have gained a tremendous amount of experience through
hosting
it. Those who have been to Weimar/Berlin for the convention will agree
when I
conclude that it was a great success. http://www.uni-weimar.de/medien/wiki/PDCON:Testimonials Never the less I'd like to take some time to critically assess the convention giving future hosts the opportunity to build up on our
experience.
CONFERENCE: Using the openconf system proved to be a choice that helped
tremendously to structure and guide through the submission and paper
review
process. In fact I would try to use the same system for concerts and
the
exhibition as well. The peer review process is augmenting the quality of the papers and is
giving
the conference and publication a higher academic relevance. It seemed
unfair to
ask for finished papers to be reviewed (and possibly rejected)
that's why we
asked for extended abstracts for the review. It turned out to be hard
for the
reviewers to fully assess the relevance and quality of the paper from
just
reading the extended abstract. I now think that it would have been
better to let
the reviewer read the full papers. After all most of the papers – once
written –
may also be submitted to other conferences such as ICMC or Linux Audio.
A
bar-camp day could have complemented the more official conference part
to give
latest developments and impromptu idea-sharing its space. All though it
was part
of the plan we failed to provide a live-stream of the conference,
partly because
of our lack of know-how, limited resources in time and the inability of
the
institution to provide the necessary installations. At the forums and
Q&A
sessions an IRC chat or twitter hashtag projected could have improved
audience
participation.
WORKSHOPS: In my opinion it has been a wise decision to organize most
workshops
on an open, registration-free basis. This saved us from managing
registrations
and I know from experience that it is frustrating having to exclude
possible
participants because of a full class when in the end some of the
registered ones
decide not to show up. That happens especially when participation is
free of
charge. The cooperation with the Bauhaus Summer School wasn't
trivial in its
execution but made sense organisational and financial.
CONCERTS: It would have been impossible to endeavor in such a venture
like the
Pd-Convention without the support by the Studio for Electroacoustic
Music.
Consequently the concerts were very well organized and a real highlight
of every
day. It would have been much easier to organize though if the exact
demands of
the musicians would have been clear from the submission stage. Using a
web-form
or the openconf could have made that more straightforward. Making clear
that the
musician is responsible for everything until the specified mixer input
for
themselves would have made things clearer from the beginning.
EXHIBITION: The exhibition was certainly the least prepared part simply
because
the venue was unclear just until two weeks prior to the event.
Unfortunate was
that the venue wasn't open at all times which happened due to misunderstandings and possibly not enough controlling.
FUNDING: Getting the necessary funding was certainly the issue I
personally
spent the most time on. We had an overall budget of around 17.000 EUR.
This
doesn't take the value of things and services into account the
university
gave us for free, that is all the equipment and the lecture
halls/concert venues
and neither my own regular salary as employee of the university.
Roughly 10k of
the Budget came from different funds at the university and the ministry
for
economics and were bound to specific aspects of the convention. The
rest was
covered by the sponsors. That budget is less than a third of what the
convention
in Montréal had available.
EXPENSES: We spent most of the budget supporting our participants. The
biggest
expense there was covering for the accomodation, followed by a
contribution
(around 100,- €) towards the travel expenses for the participating
artists
(those either performing or exhibiting). The accomodation costs turned
out to be
about 2500 Eur more expensive than necessary since we had to pay for
those
participants who reserved the hostel through the online sign-up and
then decided
neither to cancel nor to check in. The workshops were handled
separately through
the Bauhaus-Summer School. Further expenses were catering, printing,
renting a
car for transport and so forth.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Frankly I've been a bit surprised that the average age wasn't a
bit
lower. This certainly has implications on how to accommodate the guests
in the
future (youth hostel, again?), but more importantly is to think about
the future
user-base if, and when yes: why Pd is deterring for newcomers. And here I'm hoping to get into a discussion (which we should have
had at
the convention)
There are great programs out there who might make more sense to learn
instead of
Pd for certain kind of projects: Processing, Supercollider,
OpenFrameworks. I
was taught in university Programs like Freehand, QuarkXpress and
Director, all
more or less dead softwares today. In my role as a university educator
I ask
myself what makes the most sense to teach; what persists and where do
the
students learn concepts that will help them master other environments
yet to
come. The BSD License and Pd's open source community is making sure
that it
won't die because of a companies merger (like Freehand from the
list above).
Thinks like that IOhannes is practically the only overall dev for Gem
aren't
making it more comfortable. Yet I see that Pd meets for many of the young artists exactly that
level of
abstraction to be easily picked up while having the maximum amount of
freedom in
the creativity without the presets that could hinder your expression. Combine that with the real-time experience tweaking and tinkering until
it works
is ace. I personally find beauty in the dataflow paradigm which can be
nicely
put in context with cybernetic flowcharts of systems interconnected
through
input and output.
When I find artist like Lukas Buschfeld presenting his prints printed
by a
custom large scale dot matrix printer which is programmed in and run by
Pd
entirely (plus a little Arduino) I'm stunned. Look at the prints: http://lucasbuschfeld.com/index.php?cat=graphic
In an attempt to improve the first impression you get when checking out
Pd
I've been experimenting with vimeo gathering Pd based works in a
group:
http://vimeo.com/groups/puredata/
When you look at a few other OSS Audio related softwares i find their
websites
to be very clear and well structured http://musescore.org/ http://www.iannix.org/ http://ardour.org/
Now compare. It's a great ressource but plone can certainly look
nerdy and
cluttered: http://puredata.info/
In my classes I am shocked to see that the majority of the young
students have
trouble setting up their mail client in a way that they efficiently can
use the
mailinglist - if they know what a mail client is at all. Facebook seems
to
replace this more and more, but I'm strongly opposed to accepting
that.
The Pure Data group on Facebook is not what the Mailinglist is: http://www.facebook.com/groups/4729684494/ I think that a new kind of digital divide is happening silently between
the now
adolescent nerdy natives and the young
instant-web-app-social-connectedness
generation who think that there is no internet beyond the web. The
forum for now
is a kind of a bridge between those worlds, it certainly would be
interesting to
know the demographics of the users in all four channels: mailinglist,
forum,
facebook and IRC.
I'll leave it at this hoping to spark a little discussion on the
list now
for example about how Pd can become more attractive in our very own
interest not
to loose a future user base not only for the next convention. Also
I'd be
interested to hear where the next convention will take place ;)
MN
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