Community input wanted: How to compile questions for an interview.

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:07 PM, "Sankarshan (সঙ�কর�ষণ)"
<foss.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
> How about asking what stuff they'd like to see in Fedora in terms of
> internal engineering bits ? Or, the very usual 'why did you end up
> choosing Fedora ?'

Let me stress. The point of this email is to ask this list how to
compile a list of questions... not what questions to ask.

-jef

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On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk@redhat.com> wrote:
> What should we do to make Fedora more Newby-friendly?


Damn you... now I can't actually start the interview off with that.
You have KILLED my introduction.

To make up for that, I demand that you help me figure out how to take
in community questions and rank them in a way that makes sense.

-jef

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On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk@redhat.com> wrote:
> Everyone says "you should use a Digg-style interface."
>
> What better interface than Digg itself? Every one in Fedora should have a
> Digg account anyway.

What if I told you that I don't have a digg account? Would you think
less of me?

So basically have everyone post a different potential question at a
different url somewhere on the net that other people have to randomly
discover it and then digg them. Sure okay...but Digg doesn't support
tagging does it? I can keyword search, but does that really let me
reach into digg and make sure I collect all the questions?

And Digg specifically states that if the "article" doesn't fit one of
the pre-defined topics..it shouldn't be submitted. I think its a
stretch to use digg for this.

-jef

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2008/7/17 Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:07 PM, "Sankarshan (সঙ�কর�ষণ)"
> <foss.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
>> How about asking what stuff they'd like to see in Fedora in terms of
>> internal engineering bits ? Or, the very usual 'why did you end up
>> choosing Fedora ?'
>
> Let me stress. The point of this email is to ask this list how to
> compile a list of questions... not what questions to ask.

Jef,

My opinion is not to ask questions based on their popularity but on
what will make the best interview. I know that's actually out of line
with Fedora's whole approach to things, but it's adding a whole extra
layer of complexity that won't necessarily lead to a better
end-product.

In the past I've run interviews where I've invited people to send in
their questions and then just used the best of those, and ordered them
in the way that makes it the most interesting for the audience and
also causes the interview to make sense. This worked well. Having some
flow from question to question is, I think, important.

I am also not that keen on sites like Digg etc, as I believe they can
lead to a "lowest common denominator" situation, something you
definitely don't want for an interesting interview!

Best,

Jon

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I believe the Slashdot way is to solicit as much question as possible from the community, and then rank it up so that only questions that are relevant and strings of question can flow nicely.
*
Nearly identical question can be tweaked and merged to become a single question. Other unrelated question may be stored in some kind of question bank, and used again next time if we want to interview other people (eg. Formula One system engineer)


*
On 7/17/08, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:
Okay,**I have the ear of a certain Dr. Gregory B. Newby concerning the
use of Fedora and scientific computing.

Dr. Newby**is currently the Chief Scientist at the Arctic Region
Supercomputing Center here at UAF which is how I found him and why I'm
most interested in talking to him.
ARSC makes heavy use of Fedora as a platform and I think we should

spent time talking with an expert in the field of scientific research
computing about how we can better match Fedora and this community
for overall social benefit and better science.**It's nice that we know
that the biggest, baddest computer in the world uses Fedora. But

there's a deeper conversation that needs to be had about turning this
sub-community of users into an organized sub-community of active
contributors within the Fedora tent.

Everyone here should take a moment and read his bio:

http://people.arsc.edu/~newby/bio.txt
It's a fascinating read, and there's more... much more....there to
think about talking to him about from the Fedora project perspective.


Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to compile a list of questions
taken from the community to ask him and them I'm going to hold a
somewhat longish video and chop it up into segments based on general

subject matter.**But how do i compile that list of questions? I'd
prefer a list to be somewhat rank ordered so I make sure I ask him
some of the most popular questions.**Though I plan to reserve the
right to things not highly rated as well.


Suggestions on how to compile the list of questions and get it
somewhat ordered by popularity?**Obviously this is very much like how
slashdot does its Q/A threads using slashdot karma to vote for
questions...but we don't have that.**Is there something else floating

around out there that I can setup and drive people to? I'm asking in
marketing because once we figure out how to do it, we can run other
interviews with other experts in other areas using the same
mechanism... so its in this group's best interest in helping me setup

a process we can re-use.

-jef

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Max Spevack wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:


Use Digg.

Everyone says "you should use a Digg-style interface."

What better interface than Digg itself? Every one in Fedora should
have a Digg account anyway.


+1

/runs


Methinks that there should be number of FOSS packages replicating the
Digg functionality (Google tells me about something called "Pligg"), so
installing such an application and linking it to the FAS would be a sure
way to be sure "every one in Fedora" has an account


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On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 09:24 +0100, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> 2008/7/17 Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com>:
> > On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:07 PM, "Sankarshan (সঙ�কর�ষণ)"
> > <foss.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> How about asking what stuff they'd like to see in Fedora in terms of
> >> internal engineering bits ? Or, the very usual 'why did you end up
> >> choosing Fedora ?'
> >
> > Let me stress. The point of this email is to ask this list how to
> > compile a list of questions... not what questions to ask.
>
> Jef,
>
> My opinion is not to ask questions based on their popularity but on
> what will make the best interview. I know that's actually out of line
> with Fedora's whole approach to things, but it's adding a whole extra
> layer of complexity that won't necessarily lead to a better
> end-product.
>
> In the past I've run interviews where I've invited people to send in
> their questions and then just used the best of those, and ordered them
> in the way that makes it the most interesting for the audience and
> also causes the interview to make sense. This worked well. Having some
> flow from question to question is, I think, important.
>
> I am also not that keen on sites like Digg etc, as I believe they can
> lead to a "lowest common denominator" situation, something you
> definitely don't want for an interesting interview!

Hear, hear. At some point, the process overwhelms the actual goal, and
you spend more time on the process than actually accomplishing anything.
If something occurs to you during the interview, do you plan to put the
interview on hold, come back to the community for more processing, and
then return to the interview subject? I'd hope not.

Write a list of questions with topics that make sense to you. Turn that
into a conversation if it helps elicit interesting information. I
assume that if you ask questions and get answers once, the door will not
be shut on you forevermore at that point. ("You have had your three
wishes, no begone!")

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On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 12:24 AM, Jonathan Roberts
<jonrob@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> My opinion is not to ask questions based on their popularity but on
> what will make the best interview. I know that's actually out of line
> with Fedora's whole approach to things, but it's adding a whole extra
> layer of complexity that won't necessarily lead to a better
> end-product.
>
> In the past I've run interviews where I've invited people to send in
> their questions and then just used the best of those, and ordered them
> in the way that makes it the most interesting for the audience and
> also causes the interview to make sense. This worked well. Having some
> flow from question to question is, I think, important.

I defer to your expertise and experience. I'll probably just ask for
questions on my blog and sift through them.

-jef

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