Ideas for LiveCode workshops - help needed

[Dave Kilroy]

Thank you all for your ideas, questions and suggestions

First of all, as regards who will be coming to the workshop - basically I’ll take anyone with a pulse (might even take the undead…). 

Therefore I have to cater for a wide range of capabilities. Maybe in the future when I have more of an established audience/group here I can do stuff more tailored to what they need but as of now I need to cater for as wide an audience as possible (hence my email to the usegroup)

That said, from other workshops I’ve done here I think I’ll have two main types - those who are completely new to coding and those who are proficient in other languages and want to give LiveCode a whirl…

It sounds like between us all LiveCoders we have a long list of training we would like to receive ourselves, if I have time I’ll set up a Facebook survey thingy to see what the most popular workshop topics might be - and from there we could see what ways we would have to addressing that need.

So as to my workshop on September 17th, I think I’m gravitating towards the fun ‘scribbling-on-photos-of-your-friends’ app idea - I know how to do a basic version of scribbling on mobile and if others were to donate more advanced graphic-effect snippets (I’m looking at you John) that would be lovely to keep my more advanced participants happy

Kind regards

Dave

PS: Come to Plymouth on September 17th for a fun day with LiveCode! http://www.meetup.com/The-THINQTANQ-Events-Meetups-and-More-in-Plymouth/events/226749341/ <http://www.meetup.com/The-THINQTANQ-Events-Meetups-and-More-in-Plymouth/events/226749341/>
PPS: the £10 charge goes to the venue and not to me...


> Ditto what Graham said: 
> 
> We semi-proficient coders hit the wall when we create a scrolling group on desktop and then transfer to our iPhone and it doesn't scroll or set a simple player to a URL for an mp3 on web server and discover that you need a to create a mobile player. What if you have content (a little puzzle game) that really should only be viewed/locked down in landscape?  and this is on card 3 of a stack that is otherwise portrait? on desktop it’s a 4-line-of-code simple resize trick. "Wow Livecode is so cool" newbie feels proud they figured that out. Not so on mobile. For the level of workshop you are targeting perhaps (my guess) this would probably be an "advanced track" .. these are the things that someone Javascript person watching over your shoulder says "really, why don't you do this all in HTML 5?"  because it like its  soooo hard (in livecode) and the html5 world has thousands of answers…" [I'm not buying it yet. I've seen some of these html5 apps with their snake pit of libraries and dependencies and 5 times the lines of code in the end and the endless javascript debugging of what doesn't-quite-work-right yet… until the code becomes so opaque that even the developer himself can hardly read it 6 months later. Give me LC any day… but some things are stil too hard in LC.] 
> 
> And, yes: iOS provisioning, Android developer ID et al: a dark grey mountain of mystery that needs sunlight for the newbie. after a year.. I *think* have iOS pretty much figured… but still putting off building for android locally. Challenge is, non-professionals are no doing this day-in-day-out so we really depend on thorough documentation and examples, that is missing in manby cases or out of date (Livecode lessons are pretty good for some things, but not all) 
> 
> So your work shop can include supplementary material on "where to find what you need to know; disclaimer, everything you need to know may or many not be there." 
> 
> BR 
> 
> 
>> Graham Samuel" <[hidden email] <http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4707332&i=0> on behalf of [hidden email] <http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4707332&i=1>> wrote: 
>> 
>>     so I’d like to see a workshop that creates a trivial app (say a variation on the clock/stopwatch theme - but it could be anything), discusses the differences (if any) needed in the code for different platforms, and which is then actually installed on all the available platforms, indicating all the pitfalls of deploying on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux - what installer software to use, getting stuff approved/certificated etc. and including a jargon-buster for the deployment end of things ("what’s device provisioning?" for example). 
>> 
>>> On 4 Aug 2016, at 23:50, Dave Kilroy <dave at applicationinsight.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Thank you all for your ideas and suggestions!
>>> 
>>> I’m summarising them as follows:
>>> A drag and drop matching game. 
>>> A to-do list app. 
>>> A simple e-reader app. 
>>> A walking tour app with a map that you can click for additional information and photos. 
>>> An app that helps with web research (grab text and images, write notes & emails, filter and ordering).
>>> A client-server user registration system. 
>>> A bare bones personal cloud type thing with clients for every platform.
>>> Go through all past conferences and look at the different track subject matter. 
>>> Try to solicit other to be presenters.   
>>> Focus on UI/UX - everything must look 2016 rather than 1995
>>> 
>>> I’ve also remembered a suggestion I once got from a teacher for a workshop topic "A humorous photo editor (draw moustaches etc on photos of your friends)"
>>> 
>>> 
>>> MESSAGING APP
>>> 
>>> @rjd318 this is a link to a thread on the forum from a year ago covering the workshop where we did the messaging app (including an introductory video and download link to get the stack and .lc script) http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24465 <http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24465>. Since then I ran another version of this workshop in a different environment and I added some more polish to the app - let me know if what I did was of interest and I’ll dig out the newer version for you. 
>>> 
>>> Got any more ideas? Keep ‘em coming!
>>> 
>>> Kind regards
>>> 
>>> Dave
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On 4 Aug 2016, at 09:54, Dave Kilroy <dave at applicationinsight.com <mailto:dave at applicationinsight.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> This is a request for ideas for LiveCode workshops
>>>> 
>>>> That is, where one of us is organising a day-long workshop on LiveCode and are looking for a main topic for the day.
>>>> 
>>>> I’m not looking for fully-worked up teaching resources (although that would be nice), but general ideas or topics for the workshop - so that we can say to people, and publicise “come to this LiveCode workshop where we will build …” or “at this LiveCode workshop you will learn how to …”. 
>>>> 
>>>> In the past I’ve done LiveCode workshops where the main idea has been:
>>>> - build a mobile messaging app (that connects to a web service and mysql database)
>>>> - build desktop widgets (little things like an app that watches a folder, using the clipboard etc)
>>>> - learn how to search documents and save notes with LiveCode
>>>> 
>>>> I think my ideal would be to get an idea which is:
>>>> -  a ‘draw’ (afterall I want lots of people to turn up!), something like “learn now to connect to the Pokemon Go! API”
>>>> - doesn’t involve me doing too too much preparation work for the workshop
>>>> - can give a positive experience to participants with differing levels of ability (perhaps by my preparing some partly completed exercises for those who need them) 
>>>> 
>>>> So, ideas and suggestions please!
>>>> 
>>>> Kind regards
>>>> 
>>>> Dave
>>>> 
>>>> PS: my next workshop is on 17th September and I haven’t decided what to go in it http://www.meetup.com/The-THINQTANQ-Events-Meetups-and-More-in-Plymouth/events/226749341/ <http://www.meetup.com/The-THINQTANQ-Events-Meetups-and-More-in-Plymouth/events/226749341/>
>>>> PPS: ask potential participants what the workshop topic should be usually doesn’t help much!
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>