Welcome and some ideas/thoughts moving forward

[Kevin Fenzi]

Welcome to the list everyone. :) 

Hopefully there are enough folks here now that we can get started. 

Som first, a bit of history: 

We started out the Classroom doing the first weekend of the month (both
days) and then moving around the times of classes so we could include
all timezones in things. (Ie, one month it would be good for North
America, another for Europe, etc). The downside to this is that it made
it hard for folks in another zone to attend/teach classes, so they had
to wait until the right time came around for them. Also, I think it
caused confusion as to what time classes were being held. 

So, next cut, we moved to our current system. This is one day the first
weekend per month where we block off the entire day (in UTC time) and
just ask teachers to sign up for when they like to teach their class.
This has the advantage that every timezone can teach/attend if there is
desire, and there is less confusion about when classes are. However, it
also has some downsides: mostly it's only once a month, so if teachers
can't make that day they are out of luck. 

So, I would like to propose for comment/consideration a new setup: 

Classroom sessions can be anytime a teacher wishes to sign up for and
tech. We either keep the wiki page updated or try and come up with
some calendar/feed for announcements about classes. (Or both).

Pro: Classes can be given anytime there is an interested teacher. 

Pro: Folks can idle in the IRC channel and just note/participate in
classes as they come up, or read back in their scrollback on classes
that have recently happened. 

Pro: No need to try and push to get teachers for a specific day or
weekend, or try and announce classes widely. 

Con: It's hard to announce classes if there is shorter notice.
Especially if a teacher signs up to teach right before their class,
there may not be much notice to interested students. 

Con: If there is only 1 class in a time period, it may be hard to
gather students who know to specifically attend at that time. If there
is a number of classes ( like a weekend ) some students may be more
interested in attending. 

Con: If we are not announcing widely, there may be less students in
general. 

What do people think? Is this something we should look at going to? 
Or are their better ideas moving forward?

I look forward to feedback. 

kevin
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