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
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
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
My students are terrified of Pure data. They fear linux too. Out of ten grads per year it used to be 1 or two would endeavor to learn GEM. Now a few more are interested because of libpd for senior programming projects. Currently in projection design I teach them pd, then Jitter then Isadora. They have to pay their dues with PD first and other software with nice intuitive PRICE TAGS come afterwards.
pp
-----Original Message----- From: pd-list-bounces@iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces@iem.at] On Behalf Of Jonathan Wilkes Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 1:23 PM To: Max; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
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
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
I'd like to hear more details about what terrifies them with Pd.
As far as Linux-- I'm really liking Gnome 3 a lot. You just shove the mouse up in the top left
corner of the screen (or hit the "Windows" key) and start typing the name of the program you
want to run, or even a keyword somewhat related to what you want. So in Wheezy "word" brings up
abiword (and probably libreoffice writer if you have it installed), dictionary, and some others;
"install" brings up gdebi, synaptic, updater, add/remove software; "settings" brings up system
settings, email settings, network, and so on. Takes only moments to learn and is powerful once
you learn it-- to bring up a terminal I click "<Windows-key>-t-e" (which puts "te" in the search
window and brings up the icon for gnome terminal in the results) then enter to run it. Basically
it's the GUI equivalent of tab completion.
With a distro like Linux Mint you get a Gnome 3 desktop tweaked to look like the common windows
taskbar and up to date drivers for just about everything.
-Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pagano, Patrick" pat@digitalworlds.ufl.edu To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com; Max abonnements@revolwear.com; PD list pd-list@iem.at Cc: Sent: Thursday, February 9, 2012 1:30 PM Subject: RE: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
My students are terrified of Pure data. They fear linux too. Out of ten grads per year it used to be 1 or two would endeavor to learn GEM. Now a few more are interested because of libpd for senior programming projects. Currently in projection design I teach them pd, then Jitter then Isadora. They have to pay their dues with PD first and other software with nice intuitive PRICE TAGS come afterwards.
pp
-----Original Message----- From: pd-list-bounces@iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces@iem.at] On Behalf Of Jonathan Wilkes Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 1:23 PM To: Max; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
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
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Some random thoughts on various topics that have come up so far:
- Being afraid of Pd: Usability experts like to talk about things like
discoverability and constraints, and most users have been taught to expect user interfaces that tell them what to do. Pd doesn't do any of that. It greets you with a blank canvas and no indication what to do next. Now, I happen to believe that that's the right foundation for creative work, but a lot of people are freaked out by the lack of guidance.
- Pd vs Max/MSP: My impression is that many serious users of Max/MSP
feel that the slightly smoother user interface is worth the cost of the license. An overhaul of the UI would help Pd a lot, I think.
- Pd vs Processing/openFrameworks: No conflict here. In fact, they
complement one another and might be taught together, now that libpd can be integrated into both Processing and openFrameworks.
I believe that libpd will make a big difference, in several ways. More than any other package I know of, it brings audio synthesis into the mobile realm. Moreover, real-time audio synthesis can now be packaged and deployed almost like static media files, and that opens up possibilities that weren't available before. Also, we're already seeing the emergence of alternative GUIs for Pd (in the form of Chris McCormick's PdDroidParty and Dan Wilcox's PdParty) that are based on libpd.
It's already looking promising. If we manage to solve a few problems that we've been talking about on Pd-Dev (better support for building VST plugins and such with Pd, building a new GUI), then I'm confident that Pd will attract plenty of new users going forward. Cheers, Peter
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com wrote:
I'd like to hear more details about what terrifies them with Pd.
As far as Linux-- I'm really liking Gnome 3 a lot. You just shove the mouse up in the top left
corner of the screen (or hit the "Windows" key) and start typing the name of the program you
want to run, or even a keyword somewhat related to what you want. So in Wheezy "word" brings up
abiword (and probably libreoffice writer if you have it installed), dictionary, and some others;
"install" brings up gdebi, synaptic, updater, add/remove software; "settings" brings up system
settings, email settings, network, and so on. Takes only moments to learn and is powerful once
you learn it-- to bring up a terminal I click "<Windows-key>-t-e" (which puts "te" in the search
window and brings up the icon for gnome terminal in the results) then enter to run it. Basically
it's the GUI equivalent of tab completion.
With a distro like Linux Mint you get a Gnome 3 desktop tweaked to look like the common windows
taskbar and up to date drivers for just about everything.
-Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pagano, Patrick" pat@digitalworlds.ufl.edu To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com; Max abonnements@revolwear.com; PD list pd-list@iem.at Cc: Sent: Thursday, February 9, 2012 1:30 PM Subject: RE: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
My students are terrified of Pure data. They fear linux too. Out of ten grads per year it used to be 1 or two would endeavor to learn GEM. Now a few more are interested because of libpd for senior programming projects. Currently in projection design I teach them pd, then Jitter then Isadora. They have to pay their dues with PD first and other software with nice intuitive PRICE TAGS come afterwards.
pp
-----Original Message----- From: pd-list-bounces@iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces@iem.at] On Behalf Of Jonathan Wilkes Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 1:23 PM To: Max; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
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
_______________________________________________ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Brinkmann peter.brinkmann@googlemail.com To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com Cc: "Pagano, Patrick" pat@digitalworlds.ufl.edu; Max abonnements@revolwear.com; PD list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Thursday, February 9, 2012 8:56 PM Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
Some random thoughts on various topics that have come up so far:
- Being afraid of Pd: Usability experts like to talk about things like
discoverability and constraints, and most users have been taught to expect user interfaces that tell them what to do. Pd doesn't do any of that. It greets you with a blank canvas and no indication what to do next. Now, I happen to believe that that's the right foundation for creative work, but a lot of people are freaked out by the lack of guidance.
It would really help here to get some feedback directly from new users who are having problems. I'm sure we all have our theories on UI but many more threads like "WANTED ALIVE objects" can help elucidate concrete problems that we can start fixing right away.
-Jonathan
Lets not forget RJDJ. I think the idea of having CUE-able pd/GEM "Scenes" is paramount in my hopes for pd [except I want externals too, not just vanilla :-)! Also Things like EVtoolkit are astounding leaps towards making pd a interactive theatrical presentation tool. If I could get sequential GEM scenes cued pd could replace Isadora for tons of student shows IMHO
pp
-----Original Message----- From: Peter Brinkmann [mailto:peter.brinkmann@googlemail.com] Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 8:56 PM To: Jonathan Wilkes Cc: Pagano, Patrick; Max; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
Some random thoughts on various topics that have come up so far:
Being afraid of Pd: Usability experts like to talk about things like discoverability and constraints, and most users have been taught to expect user interfaces that tell them what to do. Pd doesn't do any of that. It greets you with a blank canvas and no indication what to do next. Now, I happen to believe that that's the right foundation for creative work, but a lot of people are freaked out by the lack of guidance.
Pd vs Max/MSP: My impression is that many serious users of Max/MSP feel that the slightly smoother user interface is worth the cost of the license. An overhaul of the UI would help Pd a lot, I think.
Pd vs Processing/openFrameworks: No conflict here. In fact, they complement one another and might be taught together, now that libpd can be integrated into both Processing and openFrameworks.
I believe that libpd will make a big difference, in several ways. More than any other package I know of, it brings audio synthesis into the mobile realm. Moreover, real-time audio synthesis can now be packaged and deployed almost like static media files, and that opens up possibilities that weren't available before. Also, we're already seeing the emergence of alternative GUIs for Pd (in the form of Chris McCormick's PdDroidParty and Dan Wilcox's PdParty) that are based on libpd.
It's already looking promising. If we manage to solve a few problems that we've been talking about on Pd-Dev (better support for building VST plugins and such with Pd, building a new GUI), then I'm confident that Pd will attract plenty of new users going forward. Cheers, Peter
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com wrote:
I'd like to hear more details about what terrifies them with Pd.
As far as Linux-- I'm really liking Gnome 3 a lot. You just shove the mouse up in the top left
corner of the screen (or hit the "Windows" key) and start typing the name of the program you
want to run, or even a keyword somewhat related to what you want. So in Wheezy "word" brings up
abiword (and probably libreoffice writer if you have it installed), dictionary, and some others;
"install" brings up gdebi, synaptic, updater, add/remove software; "settings" brings up system
settings, email settings, network, and so on. Takes only moments to learn and is powerful once
you learn it-- to bring up a terminal I click "<Windows-key>-t-e" (which puts "te" in the search
window and brings up the icon for gnome terminal in the results) then enter to run it. Basically
it's the GUI equivalent of tab completion.
With a distro like Linux Mint you get a Gnome 3 desktop tweaked to look like the common windows
taskbar and up to date drivers for just about everything.
-Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pagano, Patrick" pat@digitalworlds.ufl.edu To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com; Max abonnements@revolwear.com; PD list pd-list@iem.at Cc: Sent: Thursday, February 9, 2012 1:30 PM Subject: RE: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
My students are terrified of Pure data. They fear linux too. Out of ten grads per year it used to be 1 or two would endeavor to learn GEM. Now a few more are interested because of libpd for senior programming projects. Currently in projection design I teach them pd, then Jitter then Isadora. They have to pay their dues with PD first and other software with nice intuitive PRICE TAGS come afterwards.
pp
-----Original Message----- From: pd-list-bounces@iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces@iem.at] On Behalf Of Jonathan Wilkes Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 1:23 PM To: Max; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
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
_______________________________________________ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
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
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
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
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management ->
http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
That table came from a static solution itself - I copy-pasted every one of
those entries (and many more which didn't get in) - into an excel file
first, which I use for myself. Pasting the most relevant parts of that
file to a wiki format was my main contribute to the floss manual.
But it's wrong, the content table should be dynamical just like the build
process is in each version. The thing is, I don't know how to work with
scripts, and there was no one else who did this. So the answer is very
easy, someone else make it better. I've done as much as I could, following
the editorial criteria of that time.
A dynamic list would be a very good resource for pd-ext, as very few
people know about externals outside of pd-van, gem and zexy. Be it in a
patch, a web page, the auto-completion plugin, or any other form. It
should only be in a form where it could be easily interacted with while
patching in Pd.
Having a static table of objects that informs the user what's included
in thecurrently 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
El 11.02.2012, a las 05:57, Hans-Christoph Steiner escribió:
The FLOSS manuals book is editable by anyone. Please fix it if it has wrong info. :)
I've tried to fix obviously wrong stuff, like for instance the senctence: “The numbers sent from our counter will increase endlessly.” on the page: http://en.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/ch031_step-sequencer/
If i log in and edit, I changed it to „The numbers sent from our counter will increase until the number 16777216.“ on http://booki.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/_edit/
although the edit was a few months ago it hasn't been published to the frontend. When I noticed that, i stopped editing because it seemed pointless. Am I missing something obvious?
m.
On Feb 11, 2012, at 3:41 PM, Max wrote:
El 11.02.2012, a las 05:57, Hans-Christoph Steiner escribió:
The FLOSS manuals book is editable by anyone. Please fix it if it has wrong info. :)
I've tried to fix obviously wrong stuff, like for instance the senctence: “The numbers sent from our counter will increase endlessly.” on the page: http://en.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/ch031_step-sequencer/
If i log in and edit, I changed it to „The numbers sent from our counter will increase until the number 16777216.“ on http://booki.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/_edit/
although the edit was a few months ago it hasn't been published to the frontend. When I noticed that, i stopped editing because it seemed pointless. Am I missing something obvious?
Its a publishing system, so the public facing version of the book is different than the one you are editing. The idea is that you can work on editing without affecting the public book, then when its ready for an update, you can flip the changes to the public version.
Derek and Adam always did that part, I haven't done it before, but it can be done whenever someone wants to take it on.
.hc
I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. -Admiral Gene LeRocque
Le 2012-02-08 à 04:50:00, Max a écrit :
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. [...] That budget is less than a third of what the convention in Montréal had available.
It's easy to spend a lot less money when not funding the participants' travel. I mean that for a fair comparison, your non-travel budget of 2011 should be compared to the non-travel budget of 2007.
The 2007 convention had a very large number of overseas participants and paid 350 EUR of plane ticket fees for _each_ participant who wasn't already funded by other means.
Despite that, IIRC, the total cost was a lot less than the 1st Convention, but I don't have actual numbers to show for comparison.
EXPENSES: We spent most of the budget supporting our participants. The biggest expense there was covering for the accomodation,
In the 2nd convention, there was almost no budget for accomodation. Hôtel was paid for just one person, and everybody else got free accomodation sharing apartments with volunteers. This made the cost of accomodation something about 2 % of the total cost of the convention (but I don't have actual figures).
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?),
I don't know how comfortable those hostels are, but access to actual homes for 0,- EUR is hard to beat.
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
On Feb 11, 2012, at 1:01 PM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
Le 2012-02-08 à 04:50:00, Max a écrit :
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. [...] That budget is less than a third of what the convention in Montréal had available.
It's easy to spend a lot less money when not funding the participants' travel. I mean that for a fair comparison, your non-travel budget of 2011 should be compared to the non-travel budget of 2007.
The 2007 convention had a very large number of overseas participants and paid 350 EUR of plane ticket fees for _each_ participant who wasn't already funded by other means.
Despite that, IIRC, the total cost was a lot less than the 1st Convention, but I don't have actual numbers to show for comparison.
EXPENSES: We spent most of the budget supporting our participants. The biggest expense there was covering for the accomodation,
In the 2nd convention, there was almost no budget for accomodation. Hôtel was paid for just one person, and everybody else got free accomodation sharing apartments with volunteers. This made the cost of accomodation something about 2 % of the total cost of the convention (but I don't have actual figures).
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?),
I don't know how comfortable those hostels are, but access to actual homes for 0,- EUR is hard to beat.
Staying in people's apartments in Montreal was nice, but that only works if there are enough volunteers to manage that whole process. I also enjoyed the arrangement in Sao Paolo, where we had the whole hostel housing only pdcon attendees. That took more money, but probably less work on the part of the pdcon organizers.
.hc
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. - General Smedley Butler
El 11.02.2012, a las 19:01, Mathieu Bouchard escribió:
Le 2012-02-08 à 04:50:00, Max a écrit :
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. [...] That budget is less than a third of what the convention in Montréal had available.
It's easy to spend a lot less money when not funding the participants' travel. I mean that for a fair comparison, your non-travel budget of 2011 should be compared to the non-travel budget of 2007.
The 2007 convention had a very large number of overseas participants and paid 350 EUR of plane ticket fees for _each_ participant who wasn't already funded by other means.
Despite that, IIRC, the total cost was a lot less than the 1st Convention, but I don't have actual numbers to show for comparison.
EXPENSES: We spent most of the budget supporting our participants. The biggest expense there was covering for the accomodation,
In the 2nd convention, there was almost no budget for accomodation. Hôtel was paid for just one person, and everybody else got free accomodation sharing apartments with volunteers. This made the cost of accomodation something about 2 % of the total cost of the convention (but I don't have actual figures).
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?),
I don't know how comfortable those hostels are, but access to actual homes for 0,- EUR is hard to beat.
Dear Mathieu,
we looked into the private accommodation option as well but decided against it because the convention took place during the summer break and parallel to the bauhaus-summer school. the summer school did pay for people subletting and thus had already scooped away the potential of private accommodation.
the deal we've got with the youth hostel was good - just that we were charged for those not checking in but reserving through our online registration made the accommodation expenses rise to 3606.- €
We are also talking about a lot more participants - around 140 people. Also there were many performers/artist in the exhibition who all together received 3703,88 in contribution towards their travel expenses. Travel and Accommodation together is 7309.88 that's comparable to what was spent in Montreal for the participants, just that it was there divided amongst fewer individuals.
Where we did actually spent less on, was equipment tech and rent which was close to zero due to the fact that we've mostly used university space and equipment. São Paulo afaik had to spend a substantial amount for a tax lawyer doing their finances due to bureaucracy hassle attached to the public funding.
I know that i wasn't the only one who missed you in weimar and i would like to see your interesting paper about the self generating help files to be discussed on the list.
cordially, max
Le 2012-02-11 à 21:25:00, Max a écrit :
we looked into the private accommodation option as well but decided against it because the convention took place during the summer break and parallel to the bauhaus-summer school. the summer school did pay for people subletting and thus had already scooped away the potential of private accommodation.
But I mean people that are not subletting. During the 2nd convention, volunteers were keeping their own apartment but shared the space with a visitor, using extra beds put in living room or unused bedroom or other. That's a different game not involving people who leave their own apartment.
the deal we've got with the youth hostel was good - just that we were charged for those not checking in but reserving through our online registration made the accommodation expenses rise to 3606.- €
You said that 2500 € were wasted ? How many people, times how much per person ?
Where we did actually spent less on, was equipment tech and rent which was close to zero due to the fact that we've mostly used university space and equipment.
AFAIR, the equipment was not actually rented with money, but had to be accounted as if it had been. However, I don't have this info and don't trust me about it. I saw the accounting once or twice, but either I lost it somewhere in my home, or I never had a copy of my own. It would be better to have this info from Marc or Andrew or Darsha, people who were more involved with that side of the Pd Convention.
i would like to see your interesting paper about the self generating help files to be discussed on the list.
I already wrote about that topic on pd-list before writing my paper for Weimar... though the paper went in greater detail. It didn't seem to attract any significant amount of conversation on pd-list back then. Who would you want to see writing about it ?
BTW, have you tried that documentation system ?
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
----- Original Message -----
From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca To: Max abonnements@revolwear.com Cc: PD list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 5:19 PM Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
Le 2012-02-11 à 21:25:00, Max a écrit :
we looked into the private accommodation option as well but decided against
it because the convention took place during the summer break and parallel to the bauhaus-summer school. the summer school did pay for people subletting and thus had already scooped away the potential of private accommodation.
But I mean people that are not subletting. During the 2nd convention, volunteers were keeping their own apartment but shared the space with a visitor, using extra beds put in living room or unused bedroom or other. That's a different game not involving people who leave their own apartment.
the deal we've got with the youth hostel was good - just that we were
charged for those not checking in but reserving through our online registration made the accommodation expenses rise to 3606.- €
You said that 2500 € were wasted ? How many people, times how much per person ?
Where we did actually spent less on, was equipment tech and rent which was
close to zero due to the fact that we've mostly used university space and equipment.
AFAIR, the equipment was not actually rented with money, but had to be accounted as if it had been. However, I don't have this info and don't trust me about it. I saw the accounting once or twice, but either I lost it somewhere in my home, or I never had a copy of my own. It would be better to have this info from Marc or Andrew or Darsha, people who were more involved with that side of the Pd Convention.
i would like to see your interesting paper about the self generating help
files to be discussed on the list.
I already wrote about that topic on pd-list before writing my paper for Weimar... though the paper went in greater detail. It didn't seem to attract any significant amount of conversation on pd-list back then. Who would you want to see writing about it ?
BTW, have you tried that documentation system ?
I'd prefer a self-coding system where you just have to write the documentation.
-Jonathan
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC _______________________________________________ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Le 2012-02-11 à 18:06:00, Jonathan Wilkes a écrit :
I'd prefer a self-coding system where you just have to write the documentation.
Actually, we'd prefer a self-coding self-documenting system in which we would just have to be armchair theoricians writing witty remarks on the mailing-list.
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
Caution: probably want to run this one with -noloadbang. :)
-Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com Cc: Max abonnements@revolwear.com; PD list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 9:51 PM Subject: Re: [PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention
Le 2012-02-11 à 18:06:00, Jonathan Wilkes a écrit :
I'd prefer a self-coding system where you just have to write the
documentation.
Actually, we'd prefer a self-coding self-documenting system in which we would just have to be armchair theoricians writing witty remarks on the mailing-list.
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
On 02/11/12 23:19, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
Le 2012-02-11 à 21:25:00, Max a écrit :
we looked into the private accommodation option as well but decided against it because the convention took place during the summer break and parallel to the bauhaus-summer school. the summer school did pay for people subletting and thus had already scooped away the potential of private accommodation.
But I mean people that are not subletting. During the 2nd convention, volunteers were keeping their own apartment but shared the space with a visitor, using extra beds put in living room or unused bedroom or other. That's a different game not involving people who leave their own apartment.
a thought from a participant (and i guess that i'm among those raising the average age): while i very much enjoyed staying in private accomodation in mtl, i think it is even nicer for the participants to "team up" and live together (whether its youth hostel or hilton is only a question of budget) the convention does not finish after the last concert, nor does it start with the first lecture.
however, a big drawback of this scheme (for which i haven't found a solution yet), is that the locals are kind of kept out of the fun (at least that was my impression when we did it in graz and all of you were doing party in the nunnery while we were busy trying to keep things running)
mfgasdr IOhannes
Le 2012-02-12 à 11:31:00, IOhannes m zmölnig a écrit :
a thought from a participant (and i guess that i'm among those raising the average age): while i very much enjoyed staying in private accomodation in mtl, i think it is even nicer for the participants to "team up" and live together (whether its youth hostel or hilton is only a question of budget) the convention does not finish after the last concert, nor does it start with the first lecture.
That's especially where private home accomodation is most flexible, if you're not too shy to ask for a special case. It's not like you couldn't have had extra days before and/or after. That's not something that you can do easily with a big space that has been reserved from day A to day B. I'm sure that it would have been easy to get extra days. I did give extra days to several people in my home.
however, a big drawback of this scheme (for which i haven't found a solution yet), is that the locals are kind of kept out of the fun (at least that was my impression when we did it in graz and all of you were doing party in the nunnery while we were busy trying to keep things running)
AFAIR, there was no party in the nunnery. We were all very tired from trying to stay awake 19 hours per day or something. The partying was always somewhere else and then we walked back to the nunnery. The time spent all together in the nunnery was the included breakfast in the morning.
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
On Feb 12, 2012, at 11:02 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
Le 2012-02-12 à 11:31:00, IOhannes m zmölnig a écrit :
a thought from a participant (and i guess that i'm among those raising the average age): while i very much enjoyed staying in private accomodation in mtl, i think it is even nicer for the participants to "team up" and live together (whether its youth hostel or hilton is only a question of budget) the convention does not finish after the last concert, nor does it start with the first lecture.
That's especially where private home accomodation is most flexible, if you're not too shy to ask for a special case. It's not like you couldn't have had extra days before and/or after. That's not something that you can do easily with a big space that has been reserved from day A to day B. I'm sure that it would have been easy to get extra days. I did give extra days to several people in my home.
however, a big drawback of this scheme (for which i haven't found a solution yet), is that the locals are kind of kept out of the fun (at least that was my impression when we did it in graz and all of you were doing party in the nunnery while we were busy trying to keep things running)
AFAIR, there was no party in the nunnery. We were all very tired from trying to stay awake 19 hours per day or something. The partying was always somewhere else and then we walked back to the nunnery. The time spent all together in the nunnery was the included breakfast in the morning.
That's my memory of it too. Plus that place was tomb-silent, I felt already bad enough coming into a nunnery at 3am after drinking ;)
.hc
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. - Thomas Jefferson
Le 2012-02-12 à 17:18:00, IOhannes m zmölnig a écrit :
On 02/12/12 17:09, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
That's my memory of it too. Plus that place was tomb-silent, I felt already bad enough coming into a nunnery at 3am after drinking ;)
so it turns out after years, that i didn't miss so much after all...cool :-)
You just had to ask...
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
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Hans-Christoph Steiner -
IOhannes m zmölnig -
Jonathan Wilkes -
João Pais -
Mathieu Bouchard -
Max -
Pagano, Patrick -
Peter Brinkmann