Gabor self reporting for 2019.12

Last month I started to write monthly progress reports again. I am going to continue now with a review of December 2019 and with some plans for 2020. I won't write a "New Year's Resolution" as those not tend to to work. Just some thoughts on what might happen.

Most of the days in December I spent at a client in Tel Aviv. A few days around Christmas I was in Budapest and took a few days off. I've also started two training courses at a client in Migdal HaEmek. A town near Nazareth. It is a bit hard as I have to drive 120 km to get there. It takes 1:15-1:30 in the morning. Coming back is similar though one of the days it was 2:30 hours. I listen to podcasts during the drive, but it is still very tiring. I wonder when if at all will we get to the point that we can run these training courses remotely?

Actually it is funny as at the next meeting some people will not be able to attend and they asked me if we could use Zoom so they will also be able to participate from home. I'll see tomorrow how that works out.

I have recorded several chapters in my Python training course and I ran 3 workshops using the videos. Some people started to return to continue the course, but we are still only at 15 people. There are a few more places available in the class-room. I wonder what is needed to attract more people?

  • Is it the day/time? All the meetings were on Thursday evening which is the last working day of the week, so many people might head to their weekend already.
  • Is it the fact that we still only have about 1/3 of the Beginner Python course?
  • Is it the lack of good branding?
  • Is the explanation about it unclear?
  • Is the whole idea of videos at the meeting a broken concept? (It works well for she-codes.)
  • Is the fact that the meeting is free of charge causes people try it, but lack long-term commitment?
  • Something else?

I also tried some experiments. At one popint I felt that if I keep advertising "Beginner Python" for the meetups it might be a bit "boring". So instead of recording the continuation of the course step-by-step I jumped ahead and recorded two slightly more advanced parts. Regular Expressions and Object Oriented Programming in Python. I was hoping that the regex part will bring in many new people, but that did not work either. When I advertised the OOP meeting I wrote it is "advanced" as, well, it was way more advanced than the previous meetings, but several people arrived with 5-6 years experience in Python hoping for some super advanced and new techniques. So that's about expectations.

In a way I feel that "Learning Python" might not be attractive enough.

Plans for 2020

Some plans for the next year.

Renew the article series on QA, testing, and project management of Open Source projects. Invest some energy - an hour or two - trying to understand how it is done, write it down as a draft on the code-maven site. Contact the developer or the lead developer asking if s/he could help me fill in the missing pieces.

Record my courses in Hebrew and English and make them available to the Code-Maven Pro subscribers. The course I plan to record are Python including testing and Flask, Intro to Linux, Git, Docker.

Staring from January spend 1 day a week working on the online courses. By April 2020 get to the point where I spend 2 days a week working on the online courses.

Keep learning Spanish.

Near Future

January is already fully booked. I am not even sure I'll manage to allocate one day every week to work on my videos. Neither will I be able to run workshops every week.

In February I already have 12 days booked including 7 training days and a few vacation days. I still have a few days I could allocate to clients. One of my courses is at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

In March I have 5 days training at Weizmann Institute of Science and a few other days allocated to a client.