2021-07-29 –, BoF/Mini Track
The goal of this session is to gather people interested in streaming their programming sessions. Streaming code is a particular exercise, we want to foster the exchange of best practices, tips and thoughts. In particular, we would like to see to which extent Julia streamers have managed to reach an audience beyond the Julia community, used streams as a teaching medium and how we can improve the formats to make it more accessible to newcomers. The BoF is not limited to streamers, people watching
Live streaming is a recent phenomena that has seen huge growth due to services such as Twitch, Youtube Live, and Facebook Live. Although this burgeoning community’s focus is generally on video games, vlogs, and talk shows, a niche that is increasing in this community are educational streams. Examples of such streams are where students studying invite audiences to “study with me” or educators hosting ask me anything sessions. In particular, one area in this niche that is particularly relevant for the Julia community is live coding.
Live coding is where software developers or programmers stream their programming development to a live audience. It can take many shapes where a developer works on an open source project, a coder is learning a new language, or an interactive back-and-forth to create a novel application. Live coding works as a sort of give and take relationship where streamers get the opportunity to make new connections and the audience gets to be exposed to new programming styles or learn new skills. Often, this works in the reciprocal as well.
For the Julia community, with the advent of the COVID19 pandemic, many individuals were suddenly left in a common, but highly unusual, circumstance. As many have experienced and are experiencing, the days of being in a work office setting and having passing conversations with colleagues have become somewhat distant memories. Instead, many find themselves at home behind their computers with their only company being either family, pets, or the whir of their computer’s fan. In conjunction with this, the amount of interest in live streaming programming in the Julia community has been growing.
In this Birds of a Feather, we want to gather those people who have been live streaming within the Julia community and those interested in live streaming. In this gathering, streamers can share their ideas around best practices, tips and experiences in the streamer community. This could be a strong opportunity for the Julia community to also discuss how to reach and engage with people outside of the Julia community. Furthermore, this BoF could also lead to productive discussions on how to help within the Julia community whether that be in the form of increasing visibility to amazing Julia packages or leading teaching sessions.
Finally, this BoF would also provide an open avenue for individuals who are interested in live streaming to freely ask questions. This could range from questions such as “what is needed to get started as a streamer?” to “how do you build a great community around your stream?” As a result, this can not only increase outreach from the Julia community but also foster new and meaningful connections one could make - especially in the pandemic era.
My Name Is Jacob S. Zelko – Pleasure To Meet You!
I am a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology with a BS in biomedical engineering. While pursuing my BS, I worked as a data information specialist and biomedical informaticist in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Emory University doing research in the areas of computational psychiatry and worked with The Center for Discovery as an engineering consultant to aid in caring for their juvenile neurocognitively diverse population. Currently, I work as a Health Data Analytics and Informatics Researcher at Georgia Tech Research Institute and as a Consultant with the Centers for Disease Control.