- seattle - mailman3.common-lisp.net

[LispSea] A 'get things done' web-app (in Lisp)
by Justin Grant 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

As mentioned in an earlier post today. I would like to avoid duplication and hear ideas. I realize we already have the wiki and site but the group would pack more punch if we could tell those that our own site is implemented in Lisp. Dis/agree ?

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[LispSea] Networking
by Brandon J. Van Every 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

You know, "networking" is a word that doesn't put techies off, that encompasses business concerns. It could soften the blow on words like "promotion" and "selling." Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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[LispSea] the Lisp Questionnaire
by Brandon J. Van Every 12 Jun '06

12 Jun '06

The Lisp Questionnaire http://www.xs4all.nl/~alemmens/alu/questionnaire.txt is ineffective. If you look at the database of people who answered the Questionnaire http://www.xs4all.nl/~alemmens/alu/database/ you will see 235 replies. The first submission was made in June 2004. 226 of the submissions occurred in 2004. Only 8 in 2005. Only 1 in 2006, in January. And this is worldwide. That's PATHETIC. Since this resource is all but useless, and all but ignored, we should ask why. If we think surveys are important, we should do a proper one. And figure out what makes for a "proper" one, so that we don't end up with something equally pathetic. Some obvious things about what's wrong: - I'm not about to dig through a worldwide list of 235 people, one by one, to find out anything about them. It's an invitation to a big chore, with no promise that it's going to get me anything of value. Why would I look at such a list, compared to posting on comp.lang.lisp or some other forum where people will actually respond to my question? Even if crickets chirp, they chirp more quickly than digging through a list of random stuff. - If people were grouped by geographic location, I'd have a much stronger incentive to look at their stats. - If people were grouped by interests.... - If people were grouped by Lisp implementations.... - If groupings in general were searchable, like a proper database... - If the Questionnaire and Database were displayed on a website that had a certain level of professionalism, so that it appeared to be well maintained, well cared for, actively supported.... - If the database were simply much larger, so that it appeared to have value... - I'll wager no active effort is being made to get people to answer the survey. Either that or sporadic efforts were made, and the survey taker was too swamped to do anything with the results he got. So there is an infrastructure and automation issue here. Now, there may be a meta problem about whether anyone cares about these sorts of things. The last time I think I ever looked at a database of people's stats was probably on Gamasutra. That would have been 3 years ago, when I was sticking myself in there as a contractor and was curious what others were doing. I've never cared since. So my question is: - is there a site out there, for any language or technology, that demonstrates "best practices" for taking surveys and using the results to further some promotional goal? 'Cuz we should study that up. Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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[LispSea] draft charter
by Daniel Pezely 11 Jun '06

11 Jun '06

A minimalist draft of a charter for LispSea is available on the wiki: http://wiki.alu.org/lispsea Please continue to send comments via this mailing list. Let's keep the wiki page clean and simple. Thank you, -Daniel

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[LispSea] Lisp Gardeners
by Daniel J Pezely 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

Just in case this is new to anyone: There is a larger group called the Lisp Gardeners, which is not tied to a single geography. http://www.lispniks.com/cl-gardeners/ Their mailing list started only a few months ago, so it's fairly easy to get caught-up. Consider LispSea to be /somewhat/ of a Seattle chapter yet not necessarily tied to Common Lisp. This implicit relationship also frees us from doing everything ourselves and allows constructive overlap and a loose local group (so we need not become burdened with policy or dogma). There can be much traffic on the Gardeners list. It's bursty. For a while, I simply read it periodically via the Mailman interface linked from the above URL. -Daniel PS - Please respond to the Lisp Questionnaire: http://www.xs4all.nl/~alemmens/alu/questionnaire.txt

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[LispSea] Re: starting point
by Daniel J Pezely 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

Brandon wrote: > If the goal is to get business people interested in Lisp, wouldn't an > Eastside venue such as Bellevue Community College or Digipen be more > appropriate? The business aspect is more of an outreach project. We'll most likely work with the WSA, ACM or perhaps UW to issue surveys. Subsequent interaction might take the form of a 1 or 2 day conference, and Meydenbauer Convention Center in Bellevue might be appropriate. I'm not expecting business executives to attend presentations by Lisp programmers. Such a conference might involve the Assoc. of Lisp Users (ALU) for legitimacy and would most likely be a year away. Promoting Lisp is a longer-term effort. First, we need to resolve important logistic details within the Lisp community itself. For example, with Python, you have "one stop shopping" for nearly all your needs. With Lisp, first it's which flavor? Then, which implementation? And of course, there is the matter of de facto libraries. (With Common Lisp, ASDF and ASDF-install should be standard but aren't because they arrived after the ANSI spec. With Scheme, you have the Revised^nth game...) Within a business perspective, these details add complexity, which in turn adds risk. In an effort to resolve all this, the early sessions I described yesterday are a first step. After a few months, maybe we'll come out with our own InstallShield-built packages or perhaps LispBox will be even more mature. Or maybe we merely each contribute a blurb to the new Lisp FAQ project: http://www.lispniks.com/faq/faq.html Either way, much of the activism is to get Seattle programmers more involved and contribute that much more to the Lisp community at large. By working together, the amount of work by any one individual remains quite small, but for any of us to do it alone would be more than a full-time job. I'm a practical idealist. :) -Daniel

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[LispSea] starting point
by Daniel Pezely 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

This is for those interested in Lisp programming in Seattle: As a group, we need to start somewhere, and I'm putting a stake in the sand. My approach is to keep things simple but not simplistic. For the time being, the home page is: http://wiki.alu.org/lispsea The purpose of this group is to "promote, nurture & expand Lisp in Seattle". But what does that mean? By promote, I mean selling Lisp to businesses-- not a specific tool chain but the idea that Lisp is perhaps more appropriate than other mainstream options available. In order to promote Lisp, this involves contacting various employers in the area to see if they're currently using Lisp and if not, find out why and address those issues. Think of it as illustrating the need so those of you who wish to do consulting have an easier path. To nurture: semi-formal sessions will be offered to present and discuss different aspects of Lisp. This includes specific tools. I'll be the focal point for the time being and will lead the early sessions. While I'll be the default presenter initially, my personal tools are common lisp. Where other Lisps are concerned, either someone else can present to the group, or if too shy, show me, and I'll present the topic. I'm always open to learning... For expanding Lisp, this applies to more than just the Seattle metro area. LispNYC recently announced that they're providing mentors for a few projects within Google's Summer of Code. While it's too early to really worry about the next one, let's entertain the possibility. Additionally, we expand Lisp by talking about it to others and having facts readily available. This means as a community, doing our part such as contributing to the new FAQ effort-- which needs help! Finally, we can expand use of Lisp by contributing to ancillary efforts like the "Lisp movies" that demonstrate some unique quality of a particular library or updating documentation where it might be lacking. So this element is about more than just Seattle. Obvious questions begin with how, when, who and so on. First: how. I'm looking into reserving a classroom at Seattle Central Community College, even though this group has no direct affiliation with any school. Regarding the classroom-- think of it as complimentary to SeaFunc (functional programming; see the above URL), which meets in a tavern. Rather than make you choose one format over the other, you have the option of either or preferably both. I've toyed with the idea of formally creating a free course through the UW Experimental College or something similar, but let's try a looser model first. The objective for the classroom type of venue is to convey information so we all can expand our knowledge. (clean sound, video projector, etc) I've found taverns to be difficult when the group grows beyond single digit counts. ...and yes, I'm planning that by autumn, we'll have those numbers. As with other group meetings, the format would probably begin with social time then move into a specific topic for 20-60 minutes and ending with more conversation time. (We'll look into sponsorship for the obligatory stack of pizzas to precede presentation.) When: Once a location is arranged, we'll set a date. There is a possibility that the first meeting could be the last week of June but probably July. Summer always introduces conflicts on people's time, but this is an opportunity to get the bugs out. (As with the Vancouver meetings, I'll record my sessions, so people won't miss anything.) Who: I plan to present at the first few sessions. This isn't so much to set the pace or tone but to ensure that there is content and to build momentum. Topics: While there is LispBox, which does a good job of getting you started, my first presentation will be to move beyond the learning mode. Likewise, since installing a free common lisp system involves more than extracting a tar file or even knowing tweaky 'configure' options, the first session will probably be this: MacOSX + sbcl + Emacs + Slime with VirtualPC running FreeBSD (aka, fixing the reddit.com model). A subsequent session might be Apache with mod_lisp (specifically different than the web project in Peter Seibel's book, just to give you options). By the way, I'm a Unix systems programmer by trade, and by that, I tend to do software systems integration involving a multi-server architecture. For more on my Lisp background, follow the links at the above URL. This gives you somewhat of an idea of where my presentations will originate, but of course we're never just the sum of our jobs... Thank you for participating! -Daniel

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[LispSea] Seattle Lisp group will relaunch soon
by Daniel J Pezely 07 Jun '06

07 Jun '06

The Lisp programming group in Seattle will relaunch soon. Details will be sent within the next few days (June 2006). -Daniel

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