Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
So, this is embarrassing.
Some of you will recall that I ranted about a piece of software (Phrase Express) a while back, like...8 weeks or so? (Recap: the developers are German; they do sell an English language version; I'd been trying to do an if-then-else scenario, which the software says it does and I'd hit a wall. With zero viewable documentation about what went where, right?)
I was sitting here on Sunday, staring at it and saying a few not-so-genteel things to it, when I accidentally clicked someplace...and lo, the answer was staring me right in the face.
What had happened, in reviewing it, is that I took a single word, that they said, LITERALLY. I simply read a sentence and thought that they meant X. They didn't mean X (X was something I had no idea how to do, or where to start); by X they meant varied functionality within the program.
Once I realized that X wasn't "X," but all this other s**t, it was EASY.
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Been there, done that, and understand.
But X in that context is a generic - it's a variable, where what X actually
means is context dependent. Once you realize that, confusion magically abates.
And it's part of what makes it fun for me when I'm trying to provide answers. "What does the person asking the question already know? How much background must I provide so they will
understand my answer? Too little and they are still lost at sea. Too much and they get annoyed at suggestions they are ignorant. (And they often
are ignorant, and don't know as much as they think they do.)
But documentation, or lack of it, is a constant issue.
I find myself hip deep now in virtual conferencing. One of my hobbies for decades has been helping to plan and run literary SF conventions. (These days, mostly as the chap that deals with the venue where the con is held.) COVID-19 means many such events (including two I work on) have been cancelled. Others have gone virtual, as things that can be accessed online.
That's nice.
How?
An example is CoNZealand, the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention that was to take place in New Zealand. New Zealand locked down hard. The organizers faced the choice of cancelling the con or going virtual, and chose the latter. The Tech Director for CoNZealand is in Australian TV for $DAYJOB and well versed in broadcasting remote events. But that's "one to many", where the many are passive viewers. When you have audience interaction, all bets are off. (I know CNZ's Tech Director electronically, and we've interacted in other contexts.)
CoNZealand has chosen to use Zoom for programming (and Zoom has Webinar and Meeting modes, so which personality it will assume will depend on what you're doing and must be set in advance.) Because of COVID-19 and Work From Home, most folks will at least be aware Zoom exists, and may have used it
They are using Discord for social stuff. Discord is an originally voice only chatroom app developed for gamers, which has added text and video support. If you are a gamer or anime fan, you may be familiar with it because it is popular in those communities. If you aren't Discord may be terra incognita.
There are a few other pieces of the puzzle as well, but Zoom and Discord are the main ones.
I find myself a Problem Solver in Mission Control. My job will be monitoring usage on various parts of the platform and taking appropriate action. For instance, Zoom instances have license based capacity limits on how many may participate. What happens if a Zoom room overflows? (And in in-person cons where events take place in hotel spaces, programming is always a crap shoot. Guaranteed, something you thought was a Main Tent item is lightly attended, but an obscure item in a small meeting room has a line down the hall.)
I'm looking at the Zoom API and the dashboard used to monitor things. But the Zoom docs are devoid of actual
examples. Without a running Zoom instance to connect to and use the dashboard, it's a bit hard to learn stuff. (The assistant Tech Director is US based and someone I know personally. He's willing to spin up a Zoom instance we can play in together. It's just a matter of when a convenient time might be where we could work together, especially since he's in CA.)
(And I managed to get confused by time zone differences and miss a CNZ Discord training session over the weekend. <Grrrr>
)
Fun, for suitable values of the term.
______
Dennis