User:Scrain

Dr. Steven P. Crain

I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the lovely SUNY Plattsburgh [1] nestled in the Champlain Valley at the base of the Adirondack Mountains. When I am not working with students, I am often seen hiking in the mountains or sliding silently along a ski trail. (OK, so really I am seen in a jumbled up mess at the bottom of a small hill....) I am an aspiring 46er [2] and have hiked 12 of the 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks so far, though I am aiming to add 4 more this week.

My research area is machine learning, with a special interest in humanitarian applications. I often work with the Diabetes Hands Foundation [3] on search and recommendation projects. As a rule, I would rather focus on involving undergraduate students in my work than on churning out publications.

Notes on Participation in HFOSS

IRC

How do people interact?

The interactions are informal, productive and collegial.

What is the pattern of communication?

The meeting focuses on one person at a time, but everyone chimes in with whatever will be helpful, either for solving a problem the focal person is facing or to build community. Normally the post is understood to be directed to the focal person, but a specific person can be addresses if they raise a point that warrants discussion.

Are there any terms that seem to have special meaning?

There are many common software development terms (e.g. VM, UML). Beyond that, "lab" may have special meaning.

Can you make any other observations?

This is definitely a productive working meeting. They tackle one issue at a time, and try to either work through whatever is blocking as a group or at least point the person in a productive direction. When issues are more work than they are worth, they table the issue and find more productive things to work on.

Summarize your observations of #mifos

I found the IRC channel easily using a web search for "mifos freenode." There are 1 or 2 people hanging out on the channel, but no discussion going on at present. The channel topic indicates that the channel is logged, but the link to the log goes to a non-responsive server. The Internet Archive [4] has record of an IRC session log from 2010, but the log itself did not get archived.

Summarize your observations of #openmrs

Given that #mifos was a flop, I also looked at #openmrs. This channel has a bunch of automatic updates whenever anyone starts working on a task or commits a change. Also, the result of automatic builds gets logged to the channel. People generally start conversations by saying "hi" to the person they need to talk to. In one conversation, someone was concerned that a design decision another made might not be wise long-term. He asked if the decision might be bad in the future. A collegial conversation proceeded in which they worked out the best plan and figured out who would implement it. Other conversations revolved around figuring our how to migrate features from one release to another and making arrangements to work together on particular tasks at a convenient mutually agreeable time.