G'MIC workshop ?

Hello there,

More and more, I think it could be nice to organize a kind of online “workshop” about G’MIC, where people interested could follow short presentations or demos (15-45 mn) about the use of G’MIC for different cases : creating new filters, scripting things, discovering undocumented G’MIC corners (like the nn_lib), using filters for photo retouching, or illustration, etc.
I think there are enough materials and things to say about it.

Do you think this is something we could try to organize? It would require finding speakers willing to show either slides or do live demos (or pre-recorded videos if necessary).

Any interest from @garagecoder , @afre , @Reptorian , @grosgood , @patdavid , @Iain , @luluxXX , @samj , @lylejk , @KaRo ? (and others…) :slight_smile:

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Sure, why not. I suppose it depends on the amount of preparation and coordination required, as some of us are busy (and industrious) like yourself.

With 2 jobs (and the main one on weekends), it’s difficult at best (and no electronics allowed in the room I work in), David. Still, it would be cool for such an event. :slight_smile:

That is too bad. I would have loved to see your artistry live.

Yeah, possible, I could present some processing and featuring of multidimensional/spectral data including time sequences.

Still my time table is difficult. Up to week 28 (!) I have only sporadic internet or access to my pc. The latter is necessary for large data.

I’ll have a look into already prepared material…

I think there is enough in the tutorial realm. Perhaps the in-progress ‘Beginner’s Cookbook’ on “Wheelie Animation” (Post #75 G’MIC Tutorial Fragments) would serve — not pushed yet, but almost there, and the material is quite fresh in my mind. Or one of the simpler ones like Cauldron. A “funny one liner”, but there is a great deal going on in that one liner.

I’m also keen on blurring the divide between the perception: “G’MIC is a paint program plug-in”, which is all that many know about G’MIC, and “G’MIC is an image-processing toolkit”, mainly to address the practical aspect that, lacking a working knowledge of the scripting languages, plug-in filters can’t/won’t be written.

Would this be like an “online conference” venue, something that would be streamed?
EDIT:

Ah. The key question. I have no trouble doing live presentations, so long as I stay on-script (and take the time to write that script). The only limitation is time — a lament already expressed here. i am anticipating that my schedule will lighten up as the summer approaches. Perhaps showtime in the early fall?

Just to clarify some things:
I think that for a first edition of a G’MIC workshop, it could be convenient to :

  • have the workshop entirely “online”. We have BBB instances here at the University that could be used to host the workshop without much limitations on the number of attendees.
  • ask each speaker to pre-record a video of its talk, that would be then streamed. I think that it is specially interesting for people wanting to demonstrate stuffs, because it reduces the risk of things not working live :slight_smile: (also better for people that may be stressed to present live).
  • On the workshop day, have the speaker connected online for answering questions after the talk, if possible (but that’s not mandatory, if the speaker’s schedule does not permit it). Here again, if the speaker is present, that’s better, but if he’s not available, at least we still have his video.

This is basically how LGM’2021 worked last year, and I actually found the format really nice, because we had time to prepare and record the talk, with no stress, and this was very flexible at the end
(e.g. I was not there for the questions, but @patdavid accepted to replace me for this task).

Having the time to prepare a video talk reduces the stress doing it live, and make it easier for the organizers to set up a reasonable schedule (because we know by advance how long each talk will last, and the chances something goes wrong are highly reduced).

Concerning a possible date for the workshop, there are no constraints yet. Doing it at the end of the year would be nice.
At this point, to organize such a workshop, all we’d need to know is :

  • Who would like to be a speaker, and on which topic? Like we need a title of a talk, and a brief summary (a few lines). For example, a speaker would commit to making a video between 15 and 45 minutes.

If we get enough speakers, then we could agree on a date, et voilà ! :slight_smile:
Then, collecting the videos and setting up a schedule should be easy.

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I’ll have a go. So long as it is no earlier than mid-summer’s day, 2022. Been looking for an excuse to see how a tutorial might play out in a video format. Thirty minutes. I need to peer out into space for a bit before I can settle on a topic…

EDIT:
This topic: Seeking Better
Breakdown:

  • Making a G’MIC animation - survey of the technique: 20%
  • Practical Example: Guiding Animation with an Image: 30% — This, methinks is the topic title
  • Pseudo code walk-through: setup, generating loop, output considerations: 30%
  • Variations on the theme: 15%
  • Where to deep dive: Math references, plus a companion “Beginner’s Cookbook” with implementation code, which goes into the example in greater detail. 5%

This on a baseline of 100% = 30 minutes. There will be a permanent, companion Beginner’s Cookbook article, which I’ll write first. It will be fun…

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Feels longer than 30 min. :fast_forward: