BarnCamp 2017 workshop proposals

Example Entry

Proposed by

Exampley Mc Exampleface

Time

3-4 years

Level

Some experience of using a wiki required

Resources

Laptop and 10 mice, USB hub (10 port)

Number

up to 10 people all huddled round a laptop and USB hub with 10 mice in it

You will learn how to make generic fictional entries into wiki pages, demostrating the format of the page expected, together with some humour. You will also use bullet points to:

• show how bullet points are used in Mediawiki
• add some much needed recursive self reference
• make friends

You'll then finish off your description with how exciting workshop will be, or with an uncomfortable orphan sentence type paragraph.

This is the end of the example.

Coding

Keeping your code clean

Proposed by

adelayde

Time

3-4 hours

Level

experience of programming at a intermediate to advanced level, or beginners who are keen to get into coding.

Resources

projector, sound, laptop (have one), this may be suitable for active workshop in the second part.

Number

up to 30 with people working in pairs or mobs for Part II

Part I (talk/discussion): No matter if you're new to coding, or a seasoned coder, applying the principals of Clean Code can help you maintain and understand your own code, especially when you come back to it six months later. Applying Clean Code principals to code makes modularisation and reusability easier, aids other programmers who may want to work on your code, aids with self-documentation, and sets the foundation for adopting test driven development. In the workshop we'll address how:

• small is beautiful
• simple is best
• comments suck
• reusability is king
• code should be crafted not thrown at the screen
• readability trumps cleverness and complexity

Part II (practical workshop): But what about that horrible code you're having to work on that somebody else, or even you, wrote? We'll also have a look at how to tackle nasty, unreadable, spaghetti, untestable legacy code; how we can gradually improve it in small, iterative steps; and ultimately how we can get it into shape, rather than just throwing our arms in the air and re-coding the whole lot. We'll cover:

• identifying ways in to legacy code
• performing minuscule iterative improvements
• how we can use test driven development to make this process safer.

Programming language: undecided but will try to cover a number of different ones in the examples, and for the practical will look at something everyone can get up and running, hopefully in a web browser, but popular, such as Python, Ruby or JavaScript.

Media Applications

GIMP 2.10 prospective new features demo

Proposed by

Ben Green

Time

0.5 to 1 hour depending on takers.

Level

No experience of gimp necessary.

Resources

Projector, fast laptop.

Number

any number of people

GIMP has come a long way since 2.8, but hardly anyone has seem the results. The hugely long development cycle leaves us punters mostly in the dark. This talk seeks to inspire GIMP users, and potential GIMP users about what's happened, why, and the implications artists, developers, and for the nature of the universe.

Scribus

Proposed by

Ben Green

Time

2 hours

Level

No experience of Scribus needed.

Resources

Projector, fast laptop.

Number

Max 10 or so

Scribus is one of the best publishing packages available. I'll show you how to use it to get documents together quickly. We'll be using the latest 1.5 development release.

Each person will need a copy installed, I'll post details, it's an easy package to install as there are Windows builds and an AppImage for Linux.