[12/21/15, 9:31:54 AM] P7: Hello!
[12/21/15, 9:32:04 AM] Yu Wu: Hey
[12/21/15, 9:32:06 AM] P7: ready when you are
[12/21/15, 9:32:06 AM] Yu Wu: how’s going
[12/21/15, 9:32:12 AM] Yu Wu: Yeah I’m ready
[12/21/15, 9:32:16 AM] Yu Wu: Let’s start!
[12/21/15, 9:32:27 AM] Yu Wu: I’m wondering how long have you been a professional software engineer?
[12/21/15, 9:32:52 AM] P7: Would you prefer text vs. audio vs. video?
[12/21/15, 9:33:23 AM] Yu Wu: Sorry, I can do text only. Otherwise I need further approval from my university
[12/21/15, 9:33:32 AM] P7: Gotcha
[12/21/15, 9:33:55 AM] P7: Professional software engineer? about 1.5 years now
[12/21/15, 9:34:26 AM] Yu Wu: What motivated/inspired you to start the * project?
[12/21/15, 9:34:47 AM] P7: I started watching * a while back and kept a list of the ones I thought were stellar
[12/21/15, 9:35:03 AM] P7: I would bring them up in conversation frequently enough that friends would ask me for recommendations
[12/21/15, 9:35:26 AM] P7: so at some point, instead of sending round a document by email or giving friends excerpts from the list, I decided to put it up no GitHub
[12/21/15, 9:35:32 AM] Yu Wu: oh, so you want to share with your friends as well as for your own personal reference?
[12/21/15, 9:35:43 AM] P7: then that turned into an idea for a website, but that hasn’t gotten fully up off the ground yet
[12/21/15, 9:35:54 AM] P7: Indeed, friends + own reference
[12/21/15, 9:36:03 AM] P7: And it’s an interesting topic of conversation when meeting people
[12/21/15, 9:36:09 AM] P7: so it comes up then as well
[12/21/15, 9:36:19 AM] Yu Wu: You talk with your friends about those * frequently?
[12/21/15, 9:36:44 AM] P7: Yes, I suppose? Was there something in particular you were interested in knowing about?
[12/21/15, 9:37:11 AM] Yu Wu: Just what is the problem your project intend to solve
[12/21/15, 9:37:34 AM] Yu Wu: Sharing with your friends is definitely a good one
[12/21/15, 9:37:54 AM] P7: Originally, the list was for myself to remember which talks I really enjoyed. Sometimes I go back and re-watch them
[12/21/15, 9:38:07 AM] P7: my interest in those talks led to bringing them up in conversation, so then it helped solve that problem too
[12/21/15, 9:38:17 AM] Yu Wu: Got it
[12/21/15, 9:38:22 AM] P7: At this point, I sometimes encounter people who’ve watched some TED talks and didn’t really like them
[12/21/15, 9:38:38 AM] P7: but my hunch is they haven’t seen the great ones, so I send them to check out my list to see if I can convince them otherwise
[12/21/15, 9:38:52 AM] Yu Wu: Wow, interesting
[12/21/15, 9:38:58 AM] P7: because given the number of talks I’ve seen, there’s definitely a spectrum of quality
[12/21/15, 9:39:01 AM] Yu Wu: This is really good idea
[12/21/15, 9:39:07 AM] P7: Thanks :)
[12/21/15, 9:39:41 AM] Yu Wu: Did you also learn from other awesome-* lists?
[12/21/15, 9:39:55 AM] Yu Wu: Recently, there are many awesome-* lists avaiable
[12/21/15, 9:40:02 AM] P7: ? I must say the answer is no
[12/21/15, 9:40:26 AM] P7: Didn’t really think to research around. Out of curiosity, what have you seen? I won’t ask much into it since this is your time and I know you only have until 1
[12/21/15, 9:40:51 AM] P7: The markdown file on GitHub was just a transliteration from a text file I had going
[12/21/15, 9:41:24 AM] Yu Wu: You meant this file? https://github.com/*
[12/21/15, 9:41:28 AM] P7: Yup
[12/21/15, 9:41:39 AM] Yu Wu: I’m just very curious that your project is unique as comparing to other lists
[12/21/15, 9:41:49 AM] P7: Everything else in the repo is geared towards the nonfunctional website I mentioned I was working on
[12/21/15, 9:41:50 AM] Yu Wu: because yours contain source code, others are only lists
[12/21/15, 9:42:11 AM] P7: The backend for it works; just need to do the front-end development
[12/21/15, 9:42:18 AM] P7: ah, that makes sense
[12/21/15, 9:42:38 AM] Yu Wu: exactly! You went further
[12/21/15, 9:43:22 AM] P7: So the website was a bit of professional development. I wanted a side project to work on outside of my daily work, and this is something I was passionate about
[12/21/15, 9:43:46 AM] P7: Plus I figured it couldn’t hurt for someone working in software to have their own website
[12/21/15, 9:43:54 AM] P7: I already have the domain name
[12/21/15, 9:44:06 AM] Yu Wu: Got it! I think it is a great idea
[12/21/15, 9:44:07 AM] P7: and was waiting for some content worthy of putting up in association with my name
[12/21/15, 9:44:28 AM] Yu Wu: So what are your criteria to select/filter resources from your list?
[12/21/15, 9:44:50 AM] P7: Hmm, for a while it was just gut instinct
[12/21/15, 9:45:06 AM] P7: “Would I watch this again?” “Would I recommend a friend to watch this?”
[12/21/15, 9:45:36 AM] P7: But I’m noticing that the rate at which I’m adding talks nowadays is much lower than in the beginning
[12/21/15, 9:46:01 AM] P7: Back when the list was just a text document, I would purge the list every now and then to keep the average quality of talk high
[12/21/15, 9:46:20 AM] P7: Today, my criteria are something like:
[12/21/15, 9:46:37 AM] P7: 1. Talk quality - Is the message clear, and well-presented?
[12/21/15, 9:46:51 AM] P7: 2. Novelty - is this something I didn’t know, or think most people wouldn’t know?
[12/21/15, 9:47:19 AM] P7: 3. Relevance - Is this something I think everyone (or most people) should know about?
[12/21/15, 9:47:27 AM] P7: there might be more, but that captures most of the talks
[12/21/15, 9:47:35 AM] Yu Wu: This is well-thought. Thanks a lot for sharing :)
[12/21/15, 9:47:39 AM] P7: Of course
[12/21/15, 9:47:46 AM] Yu Wu: Did you receive recommendations from others as well?
[12/21/15, 9:48:41 AM] P7: Early on, yes, but at this point it’s rare to encounter someone who’s seen more than one talk I haven’t and bring it up in conversation
[12/21/15, 9:49:24 AM] P7: Actually, let me change my answer
[12/21/15, 9:49:32 AM] Yu Wu: yep, no problem
[12/21/15, 9:49:56 AM] P7: I definitely encounter good recommendations from other people, and I’ll add them to the list
[12/21/15, 9:50:09 AM] P7: sometimes it’s because the talk is too new and therefore I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet
[12/21/15, 9:50:27 AM] Yu Wu: Oh, you watched every videos included in your list?
[12/21/15, 9:50:36 AM] P7: sometimes it’s a talk that I had forgotten about, or didn’t fully absorb at the time
[12/21/15, 9:50:41 AM] P7: Yup, every one
[12/21/15, 9:50:46 AM] P7: And more
[12/21/15, 9:50:50 AM] Yu Wu: impressive
[12/21/15, 9:50:58 AM] Yu Wu: So what kind of benefits do you think creating/maintaining the list has brought to you?
[12/21/15, 9:51:16 AM] P7: Breadth of knowledge / understanding about the world
[12/21/15, 9:51:42 AM] Yu Wu: So you definitely has learn a lot from this project
[12/21/15, 9:51:53 AM] P7: Being able to succinctly communicate a recommended idea for someone to check out, just by pointing them to a talk or the list
[12/21/15, 9:52:09 AM] P7: I would say so, yup
[12/21/15, 9:52:32 AM] Yu Wu: Do you plan to further maintain the list for a long time?
[12/21/15, 9:52:50 AM] P7: As long as TED keeps putting up talks on their website, and TEDx talks on YouTube
[12/21/15, 9:53:07 AM] P7: For the foreseeable future
[12/21/15, 9:53:59 AM] Yu Wu: I think you have done great work for this topic. But do you think if there is a way to market your work to people of similar interest, it can help even more people?
[12/21/15, 9:54:26 AM] P7: Definitely yes, but I think it would be more obviously helpful to the viewer if it were presented better
[12/21/15, 9:54:45 AM] P7: Hence why my current efforts (or where I was when I last worked on it) are on the website and not marketing
[12/21/15, 9:55:03 AM] Yu Wu: oh, I also wanna ask this. Why did you choose to host it on GitHub, rather than say Wikipedia, or your blog?
[12/21/15, 9:55:03 AM] P7: In a sense, the website is marketing
[12/21/15, 9:55:46 AM] P7: It’s not an objective piece of knowledge, and therefore doesn’t belong on Wikipedia. I also didn’t have any previous experience editing wiki pages, so it didn’t come to mind
[12/21/15, 9:55:51 AM] P7: As for a blog, I have no blog :P
[12/21/15, 9:56:06 AM] P7: GitHub was a tool that I was familiar with
[12/21/15, 9:56:15 AM] Yu Wu: Awesome!
[12/21/15, 9:56:31 AM] P7: and I know it’s publicly available, and it’s something that does well for hosting the website I was planning on building at the time I digitized/published the list
[12/21/15, 9:56:47 AM] P7: so GitHub seemed to suit the need
[12/21/15, 9:57:09 AM] Yu Wu: So if in the future, you have a similar idea of collecting resources for a topic, would you do the same thing? I mean creating/maintaining a list on GitHub, and receive suggestions from others
[12/21/15, 9:57:45 AM] P7: Eh, maybe?
[12/21/15, 9:58:08 AM] P7: It would probably depend on the topic and the kinds of things being collected
[12/21/15, 9:58:29 AM] P7: * are nice in that they all have a single URL for full consumption
[12/21/15, 9:58:36 AM] P7: It wouldn’t work as well for a book
[12/21/15, 9:58:49 AM] P7: I could link an Amazon page, but that doesn’t immediately show the consumer its value
[12/21/15, 9:59:00 AM] Yu Wu: Got it! I pretty much covered what I would like to discuss. Do you have any further comments or suggestions?
[12/21/15, 9:59:27 AM] P7: A few things: What department are you in at Penn State? I don’t think you mentioned in your emails
[12/21/15, 9:59:44 AM] Yu Wu: Oh sorry, I’m with College of Information Sciences and Technology
[12/21/15, 9:59:53 AM] P7: Oh, never mind - your bio page covered it
[12/21/15, 9:59:55 AM] Yu Wu: it is included in the first link in my email
[12/21/15, 9:59:56 AM] Yu Wu: yeah
[12/21/15, 10:00:07 AM] P7: I’m assuming this transcript will be recorded?
[12/21/15, 10:00:33 AM] Yu Wu: yeah, and you will be anoynimized. would it be OK with you?
[12/21/15, 10:00:36 AM] P7: Totally fine
[12/21/15, 10:00:57 AM] P7: Though I’m not sure how much anonymization if you go into sufficient detail on the project
[12/21/15, 10:01:48 AM] P7: there aren’t that many search results for * on Github
[12/21/15, 10:01:59 AM] Yu Wu: I wouldn’t reveal any of the info, which might cause your identity to be exposed.
[12/21/15, 10:02:14 AM] Yu Wu: Will it be OK?
[12/21/15, 10:02:26 AM] P7: of course; wasn’t expecting much anonymity anyway
[12/21/15, 10:02:37 AM] Yu Wu: aha, thanks a lot for your help
[12/21/15, 10:02:39 AM] Yu Wu: If something comes up in the future, can I followup with you?
[12/21/15, 10:02:46 AM] P7: Definitely
[12/21/15, 10:02:59 AM] Yu Wu: OK, great! I really appreciate chatting with you P7
[12/21/15, 10:03:02 AM] P7: It’s 1 pm and you said you had to go, so it was nice chatting with you too!
[12/21/15, 10:03:06 AM] P7: Have a nice day!
[12/21/15, 10:03:19 AM] Yu Wu: Yeah, and Merry Chirstmas :)