Open office hours for talking Alfred

[vitor]

Inspired by Zach Lieberman, I’d like to try open office hours. I’ve never hosted or participated in any, so it’ll be a learning experience for me as well.

The goal is discussing Alfred (or anything you want, really). I’m not an extraordinary developer, but I do have extensive experience with Alfred and coming up with solutions to make workflows do what we need. We may or may not talk code, but time would likely be better spent discussing how to make your ideas fit a Workflow.

If you’re interested, reply to this post, send me a direct forum message, or tweet at me. Tell me if you have preferred days of the week and times. I’m in Lisbon (Portugal), so please give me your times in GMT (and if it falls at 5AM, you’ll know those aren’t suitable). Also include if you’d like to discuss alone or are fine with other people joining in. If you don’t have anything to talk about and just want to assist, that’s also fine; just say so and you can sit in on the conversations with the people that say they are fine with others joining (if any).

After (if) I get a few people interested, we can schedule a day and times from there. I don’t have a Skype account, so we’ll talk via appear.in. It’s like Skype, but you don’t need an account or installing anything, just a web browser. It also allows easy screen sharing via a Chrome extension that can be installed on demand. It supports up to eight people at once.

 

Emulating Zach, I’m thinking twenty to thirty minutes per person, over a couple of hours. At least for the first time, having just a few people might be best, to know what works and doesn’t.

[Andrew]

Thanks @vitor, this could be super useful!

[vitor]

So far, only one interested contact. Pinning this for a few days, to see if there are more.

[Technoshaman]

is the office still open?

[vitor]

Welcome @Technoshaman,

 

My available time has been a bit tighter lately. Still, I’d like a few more interested people before I do it.

 

Thank you for the interest.

[deanishe]

Oh, is it a group meeting kind of thing?

 

I'm in, lol.

[nikivi]

Would love to join too. ?

[vitor]

18 hours ago, deanishe said:

Oh, is it a group meeting kind of thing?

 

The idea was one-on-one. You don’t need my help with Workflows!

 

18 hours ago, nikivi said:

Would love to join too. ?

 

You were the first to contact me when I first opened the issue.

 

We could all schedule a group meeting. Though it would no longer be open office hours, since with the exception of @Technoshaman (whose Alfred proficiency I’m not familiar with) we’re all pretty versed in it already and would likely just take the time to goof off!

 

On a tangential note, I’ve noticed recently my goto (appear.in) as lowered the number of participants at a time from 8 to 4, and I haven’t been keeping up with the alternatives.

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, vitor said:

You don’t need my help with Workflows!

 

You can teach me how to make icons that don't suck!

[irish.cn]

Hey @vitor ... are you still doing this?

[vitor]

On 11/8/2018 at 3:51 PM, irish.cn said:

Hey @vitor ... are you still doing this?

 

Haven’t done it yet. Not enough interested people at once. The previous post still applies, or I might rethink the offer.

[Alex Popov]

Hey @vitor,

 

I think the office hours are a super awesome idea and I'm really surprised the response hasn't been greater. It is a super useful practice and one of the really cool things, that modern technologies offer us - direct contact to the creators/authors of things we use and consume. Another cool example is Mike Perham's Sidekiq's Happy hour: https://sidekiq.org/support.html

 

I started using Alfred again recently ago and I really love it. I do want to build a workflow. I think there is a ton of great resources on how to do that, so I haven't hit a blocker yet. That's why I don't currently need to visit the office hours, but if there is the possibility to do this in the future, I'll definitely want to join one of the sessions.

 

Also, next week I'm visiting Lisbon and would love to grab a coffee with you and meet you personally, if you have the time.

 

Cheers,

Alex

[Peter17]

I'm an Alfred newb who has experience with AppleScript. I'm keen to create some workflows once I know what's possible. Thank-you for the generous offer - I would love to participate in an open office hour if it goes ahead! I'm in Australia, so unfortunately I'm only available 10:00 am to 12 noon UTC-time and after 19:00 (7 pm) UTC.

Peter

[vitor]

@Peter17 You question is timely, because I have been thinking again about this as of late.

 

Right now there are two possibilities: one-on-one or a group. I’m still uncertain as to which to pick. Maybe we could have both. Does anyone have any experience with Twitch? Would it be any good for this?

[xilopaint]

I'm interested.

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, vitor said:

Does anyone have any experience with Twitch? Would it be any good for this?

 

Don't think so. They removed video chat and group messaging. It'd probably be suitable for a presentation, but not what you have in mind, imo.

[joeynotjoe]

I'm interested in this, too! I'm not a developer per se, but Alfred makes me want to learn.

[Coffeee]

i follow)

[trillionanswers]

Does this still happen?

[vitor]

On 1/4/2021 at 3:31 PM, trillionanswers said:

Does this still happen?

 

Rather, it hasn’t happened yet (only unofficially). Though I’m still very much interested in doing these, it’s the logistic that’s proving hard. As I’ve mentioned on the top post, hosting open hours is something new to me as well, so it’d help if I got answers to the questions above:

 

On 3/11/2017 at 2:57 PM, vitor said:

Tell me if you have preferred days of the week and times. I’m in Lisbon (Portugal), so please give me your times in GMT (and if it falls at 5AM, you’ll know those aren’t suitable). Also include if you’d like to discuss alone or are fine with other people joining in. If you don’t have anything to talk about and just want to assist, that’s also fine; just say so and you can sit in on the conversations with the people that say they are fine with others joining (if any).

 

Right now I’m looking for recommendations for a platform that will allow us to do it. Whereby (formerly appear.in) is the top contender, despite its limitations.

At this point, I think I should just try anything, see how it goes, and iterate from there. It’s unlikely I’ll do it in January.

[trillionanswers]

I think Discord would be the best. I tried actually to start an unofficial discord server for Alfred, wasnt successful at getting people on board. But its MUCH more comfortable for a community forum (in some respects) than a traditional forum like this.

 

It also has built in 'voice' channels where people can hang out with their audio enabled. Perfect for this type of 'office hours' casual discussion program.

[vitor]

15 hours ago, trillionanswers said:

I think Discord would be the best. I tried actually to start an unofficial discord server for Alfred, wasnt successful at getting people on board. But its MUCH more comfortable for a community forum (in some respects) than a traditional forum like this.

 

Like it or not, this forum is the official place of discussion for Alfred. I have no desire to go against that and split the community further. It would be particularly nonsensical for me to do so—I already spend quite some time on this forum helping users, so opening yet another avenue to manage would mean fielding questions and duplicates in different places. That would be a lose-lose situation. There’s no platform where everyone will be happy.

 

I’m only looking for something to host the occasional open-hours. It should not exist between those.

 

I’ve only opened Discord a few times and found it a bit confusing (all over the place). Plus, while I like that they don’t require an account, they push for it so hard that you wouldn’t even know it. I’m not entirely discarding it, but none of my experiences with it was pleasant.

[Floating.Point]

Hi Vitor,

 

I'd be interested in hanging out and discussing Alfred too. I'm a long term user who has recently committed to fully embracing Alfred's power, rather than my historically limited use of features. Like Peter17 I am in Australia, but don't mind having a late night / early morning if need be (with a large cup of green tea to help). 

 

I think trillionanswers is on to something with Discord. I understand it can be seem counterintuitive on first impression, but there is a lot of value there. It needn't be considered any kind of replacement / competition for this forum, rather it can be used exclusively for the purposes of these Open Office sessions (It would be a "Vitor's Open Office for Alfred" server, not a "Alfred" server). In-between sessions, it could be put into a shutdown state. Here people could still join and be presented with some kind of welcome message (you could also send updates about when the next session will start). And only when office hours are open again would discussion commence. Discord's free service is really solid when it comes to chat, screen sharing, voice communications, attachments, links etc. 

 

Of course, regardless of the platform, I'd love to spend some time with you and your expertise.  

 

Cheers, Nathan

[trillionanswers]

@vitor totally understand your points and they are valid. As @Floating.Point mentioned Discord could be adapted to our specific requirements of: Easy live audio chatting / screen sharing for office hours && not degrading the forums.

 

You can open a discord with ONLY audio channels, no text channels. This way people can only come to hang out and chat/screen share in audio channels and not bifurcate the community with chat channels that will duplicate discussions happening here.

 

Just a suggestion 

[vitor]

@Floating.Point @trillionanswers I’m convinced to look further into it.