Besides IRL (which is hard to organize) I think other real time communication could be tried out as well. What do you think about the following options:
Traditional IRC
Google wave
Skype conference call
Realtime desktop sharing (e.g. mikogo up to 10 participants.)
Does anyone know a good IRC infrastructure that allows for quickly entering and displaying TeX formulas?
Does anyone know a good IRC infrastructure that allows for quickly entering and displaying TeX formulas?
There’s a plugin for Pidgin called pidgin-latex which handles just that.
ETA: If people start using this plugin (or, more generally, if we use TeX/LaTeX in any capacity for this study group), it might occasionally be helpful to use the detexify handwritten symbol recognizer—for when you want to use a symbol and can’t quite remember the command that produces it.
Other LWers have used IRC before, so that would be a good option to prolong our discussions. The difficulty I anticipate is dealing with time zones. People who have responded to the post are from all over the map.
I think some interactive discussion would definitely help to keep up the spirit.
I’d definitely be interested in joining a real time discussion if there is enough substance for an clear agenda. Using IRC with pidgin-latex sounds good to me.
It is also not strictly necessary that everybody participates at the same time: we could have two meetings, for two different time zones discussing the same topic.
I’ve set up an experimental Google Wave for this with Morendil. Eqygadget seems to be able to render Latex input in the Wave.
I can add people to the Wave so you can take a look. Just give your Wave account id here, on the #lesswrong IRC channel or mail it to rsaarelm at the Gmail.
Google Wave could be excellent for this, because it acts in part as a wiki (as well as a bunch of other things), meaning we could archive our discussions and come back to them. Also, it has Latex, which is probably necessary.
Also, it’s federated. Thus, if our hosts wanted to set up a Less Wrong Wave they could do so without needing to rely on Google storing our discussions. On the other hand, setting up a federated Wave certainly isn’t necessary.
I think this could be a fun project.
Besides IRL (which is hard to organize) I think other real time communication could be tried out as well. What do you think about the following options:
Traditional IRC
Google wave
Skype conference call
Realtime desktop sharing (e.g. mikogo up to 10 participants.)
Does anyone know a good IRC infrastructure that allows for quickly entering and displaying TeX formulas?
There’s a plugin for Pidgin called pidgin-latex which handles just that.
ETA: If people start using this plugin (or, more generally, if we use TeX/LaTeX in any capacity for this study group), it might occasionally be helpful to use the detexify handwritten symbol recognizer—for when you want to use a symbol and can’t quite remember the command that produces it.
Other LWers have used IRC before, so that would be a good option to prolong our discussions. The difficulty I anticipate is dealing with time zones. People who have responded to the post are from all over the map.
I think some interactive discussion would definitely help to keep up the spirit.
I’d definitely be interested in joining a real time discussion if there is enough substance for an clear agenda. Using IRC with pidgin-latex sounds good to me.
It is also not strictly necessary that everybody participates at the same time: we could have two meetings, for two different time zones discussing the same topic.
I’ve set up an experimental Google Wave for this with Morendil. Eqygadget seems to be able to render Latex input in the Wave.
I can add people to the Wave so you can take a look. Just give your Wave account id here, on the #lesswrong IRC channel or mail it to rsaarelm at the Gmail.
Sorry I’m late too. ispollock at googlewave
dimeforthepassingtime here. Sorry I’m late.
add me
m3lani3all3n
I’m robin.zimm—let me know a time to get on to see how this will work.
Cool.
I’m adelenedawner@googlewave.com
Google Wave could be excellent for this, because it acts in part as a wiki (as well as a bunch of other things), meaning we could archive our discussions and come back to them. Also, it has Latex, which is probably necessary.
Also, it’s federated. Thus, if our hosts wanted to set up a Less Wrong Wave they could do so without needing to rely on Google storing our discussions. On the other hand, setting up a federated Wave certainly isn’t necessary.
Any thoughts on an appropriate IRC host?
Is there something wrong with this?
Nope! Edit: Running a test of Adium on the channel now. Edit 2: Done—nobody online.