As I’ve been talking to CE users, it’s become clear that people would enjoy having small groups to do design reviews and/or talk through the difficult parts of their projects. For those I haven’t yet talked to, is this something of interest?
The primary driver is that there are a lot of people working on electronics by themselves all over the world. There is no one to bounce ideas off of, nor to “sanity check” design decisions. I am thinking that small groups would allow this to happen on a formal or informal basis. Certain aspects of this are offered by Contextual Electronics (especially tutoring sessions), but that is not always the right choice. Some people cannot afford those and sometimes it’s not needed.
Has anyone been part of a remote group like this before? How did it work? Any thoughts?
I’d be happy to help review projects. Seems like the hard part will be finding a time when people are available all at the same time. My schedule varies a log, I wonder if there would be a way to do a review live but then also make it available for people to view and review later?
I also have dozens of half baked (not finished) projects that I would be happy to present as a test if that would help.
I agree, the timing would be the hard part. But I think if there were two times to start with, people could try to plan for it. I think it would require a “three strikes and you’re out” or some kind of similar policy so people are motivated to show up. Maybe not that harsh, but there needs to be an incentive for being there, so ideas about that are appreciated.
Could one option be to use the lounge to put out an advert out to say “I would like a review”. Then who can or is willing to join could work out a time amongst themselves?
I was thinking since the designs would most likely be on GitHub - when announcing a review, the participants could grab a copy and go through them and post any questions. Though I was imagining, a Skype or Hangout session where by the design could be walked through and or demonstrated. Questions could be discussed there and then. If people were still interested in making the extra effort, in their own time, they can still refer to the GitHub repo.
Great idea !!
I also may suggest an intermediate step , before going to the full blown “Design review Group”…
I suggest to have a sub forum called “users projects” or something similar ,
every user with a personal project can post his project , and CE members can view the posts and give their comments , this will give a form of feedback to project designer , and motivate people to contribute …
if this sub forum works , we may also take it to next level , of voting to the best project and best advisor …
I’ve never seen anything too fancy in any Discourse forums before, I don’t know how many options there are for plugins to do anything like that, have you seen something similar implemented anywhere?
We actually have that! It’s called “Build Logs” and is open to everyone (was going to be closed to just CE members but that seemed silly in retrospect)