Hey hey! Another estival update / discussion, this time on communication itself. I’m still enjoying my vacation here but it will be good to be back at big computer (my favorite place)
I guess this is not a question in and of itself, but more something that’s on my mind and I want to talk about it, so I guess it’s a question I ask myself lol. After all, we say in French that an engineer’s job has three parts: le savoir-faire (know-how), le faire (do), et le faire savoir (make known). While I’m pretty solid on the first two, le faire savoir has been a bit of a recurring theme, and might be more important than the others lol
At its core it’s a bit of a balancing act with many parameters: you need to be able to be found, but how much you reach out to people is a slider, which people you are targetting, and how much time you spend on doing that versus the software itself. As you can probably tell by all the previous updates, I am a yapper but very much tend to talk technical. While I can explain parts step by step well enough (I’ve been told I’m quite good at making complex knowledge accessible, such as with my line rendering article on my blog), especially if I take the time to properly write articles, I tend to have a “minimum level” and don’t value the same things as most people, so my updates can be a bit dry. I’m definitely not suited to “shiny thing” type of communications for instance lol (this has been an issue for me in computer graphics academia, but that’s a rant for another day).
There’s a big balance to be kept between the speed of development, keeping people updated on it, and promoting it, along with managing my energy level. There’s a reason why video updates have stopped: it’s a fair bit longer to write these videos and the whole uploading and promotion thingy compared to just stream of thought writing I do with these regular updates that you can fetch from RSS. Still, the promotion part is still quite some mental effort, which is why for instance these updates are not posted on twitter / bluesky / mastodon (that and not being home and I don’t wanna bother with it). It very much feels like posting into the void, except on the discord / forum as people actually react and interact with it, please keep on doing that lol
Unfortunately, this is kind of a chicken and egg problem: while other people can communicate on Castagne, they need to be aware of it first and become invested (which I’ll talk more about in a future update), which means someone’s gotta do it. It’s also tricky, considering I’m the source on most of the advances and will remain that way for a bit more (nobody can really communicate on the private software that only lives on my computer lol), and it also sets the tone of the community (which is in a really nice place I think). That’s the kind of thing that will solve itself as the software become available and more people use it, but there’s still a problem to solve in the short-term.
My answer to that is going to be, like most things, programmation. I actually enjoy writing these updates themselves (although translating is a chore), but the annoying part is all the mechanical steps in posting. I’ve been meaning to find ways to automate that as much as possible, although there’s been some issues on each platform which make it a harder deal than initially expected. I probably need to lock in and do that properly, and that includes thinking more about the workflow and modalities of updates. I’ll be honest, this format right here has been the most fun for me, I just write what’s on my mind or in the update in a longform way (thus allowing more detail into the uses compared to quick “hey look at this” stuff) and it gets pushed to people that care about it directly, while also being quite direct in its usability as I’m just writing from my text editor.
Something I do want to improve, is my video workflow. I don’t enjoy editing video, so I already made a software to do that for me, which I used for the previous updates. However, this still takes time, and thus increased pressure in what is included in these vids. Updating on what I just did feels a natural way to finish a workday, while preparing those updates in depth usually also involved drawing schemas and having to reverify a lot… I think there’s still a lot to do there, so I also need to lock in on that and spend a couple days to make it robust based on that prototype. I do need it for stuff beyond Castagne too, as video tends to be the main format these days.
The mailing list is also one I’ve been meaning to improve, as I am extremely bad at being regular (in general). The mailing list has a bit of a weight, but I need to make people more able to select what they want to hear about. Also, that’s how my parents get updates on what I’m doing (beyond hearing me complain or brag when I see them) so it would be nice to do them again. My current workflow has many moving parts that its very easy for some to slip inbetween the cracks.
There’s a reflexion to be had in general on what to communicate, when, and in what format. I try to not overthink it (I say just after 5 paragraphs on the subject) and post what comes up, so reducing that friction is going to be key for the future.
Time-wise, a progress update takes around 20 minutes to write in general, but the whole workflow tends to be 1h30 long, between losing focus (it’s at the end of the workday!) and all the manual steps. A video is even longer, clocking in at around 4 hours each week. These longer updates I’m doing now are more around 45m-1h but it’s a bit more exceptional.
Anyway this update was a bit more self-indulgent, I’m kinda pushing my thoughts onto you and you’re welcome to tell me I should think less or suggest solutions! Next time, we’re talking about another form of communication: documentation and tutorials!
