I just want to chime in and say that it was a positive experience for
me as well -- I got more pairs of eyes on what I was doing, and an
opportunity to get some feedback on something that wasn't ready for
publication or more formal feedback methods. Kind of like "Am I on the
right track?" or "Can you see any downsides I'm not seeing?" kinds of
feedback which can be invaluable as you're in the middle of a project.
I would encourage more of this kind of mid-project and/or simply
informal sharing. It plays well with the open source meme that "given
enough eyes, all bugs are shallow".
Roy

On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Birkin James Diana
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> (I posted this recently on g+, and a few folk pointed out that it'd make sense to post it here.)
>
> The other day Ted Lawless, a fellow programmer, called me over to show me some cool features he had added to the terrific new library search interface he's been working on. I wanted the code4lib community to see some of this great work, and remembered something Roy Tennant did a while ago.
>
> Roy had posted to g+ that he was working on something, and that he was going to set up a g+ hangout at a specified day & time to discuss that work with anyone interested. I and a co-worker working on similar stuff joined that hangout with a few other people, and it was a good experience.
>
> I think the growth of code4libcon, and of regional code4lib unconferences, is in part an indication that our community is loaded with passionate programmers who love learning how others create interesting useful things.
>
> With that in mind, it's made me think more of us should follow in Roy's footsteps: post a message to the c4l list about a success or investigation, and give a date&time of a g+ hangout to talk about it and show some under-the-hood code. This is sort of along the lines of Peter Murray's experimental webinar-based code4lib gathering some months ago, but more spontaneous and decentralized. Some of the 'showing' part might require a coworker to join the hangout to aim a phone or laptop camera at a screen, but it'd be an interesting experiment.
>
> ---
> Birkin James Diana
> Programmer, Digital Technologies
> Brown University Library
> [log in to unmask]
>