sorting out vvvv Fundamentals

[joreg]

i am very uncertain when it comes to thinking about the structure of onboarding/beginner-courses. one reason is because there are many different formats:

• two hour free intro workshops we run bi-weekly in berlin for anyone
• consider what a beginner-workshop at NODE20 would look like (we'd have more than 2 hours, but should we really do 2 full days again? wouldn't 6 or even 4 hours of fundamentals be enough and then participants could branch out to taking additional 3-hour hands-on courses that are alread more tailored to their interests?)
• consider a multi-day intro course a la vvvv academy in one week: 5 days, 6h each
• consider a live webinar on 4 days of a month, 4h each
• consider a full online course on platforms like lynda, kadenze,... and then obviously there are many different interests that participants will have.

so here is an attempt to identify what we should consider as vvvv fundamentals. ie. things that any of the above courses would cover, irrespective of their length and special interests of participants. these fundamentals should then be put into video/text form and be available for people looking for "getting started with vvvv".

the idea is:

• after going through those fundamentals, a user would be able to follow beginner tutorials
• any experienced user can take the fundamentals as a guide when running an intro course

so here goes my initial attempt:

vvvv Fundamentals

Introduction

• Downloading and Installing
• Exploring Examples from the Helpbrowser
• Navigating a Patch: Pan/Zoom/Reset
• Tweaking Parameters of Examples (how to use IOBoxes)
• Adding IOBoxes to Examples (alt+click for middleclick alternative)

Patching Level 1

• The Nodebrowser
• Creating Nodes and connecting them with Links
  • what exact very simple demo do we create here?
• Creating Comments
• Saving a Document
  • where is it saved
  • * shows we're not saved
  • reset to saved state

Intermission: Overview of the Development Environment

• Quad menu
• Document menu
• Help browser
• Global settings
• Backups

Patching Level 2

• Making a Node
  • Utility Operations
  • Process Node
  • inputs/outputs/signature
• Application vs. Definition
• What is a vl document
• Working with multiple documents (referencing)
  • project structure
• Exporting an Application

How to find help/connect

• Helpbrowser, forum, chat
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Join the community...

Next Steps

• Tutorials
• Consult the Documentation
• vvvvTv episodes

---

not part of fundamentals, but further:

• Patching Level 3: could be up to including loops
• Patching Level 4: could be OOP style patching
• Patching Level 5: could be reactive/async and advanced patterns

---

i am hoping for a discussion regarding:

• missing topics to add
• less important topics to remove
• order of topics
• details you'd expect for the topics
• exact naming of topics (consider the above could be titles of invidual chapters/videos)

[baxtan]

That looks great! I assume Level 1 and 2 can be a one-day workshop.

• 2 Hours for lever one and "Ice-breaking" activities (as mentioned: messing around with examples and so on)
• 3 Hours for level two (without too much unnecessary explanation which is often caused by underestimating participant)
• 1 Hour for unexpected things

[mhusinsky]

sorry for the late reply.

from my experience it works good to give people something to play with fast (before going into theoretical details of the language). at the first vvvv-encounter, many are overwhelmed with the new interaction concepts and the lack of affordances that the patching interface offers. to me it boils down to:

• show them the nodebrowser, how to create nodes and links, how the dataflow works, etc.
• do some toy examples like performing combined math calculations (i.e. add two values and multiply them by a third), mix colors, ...
• show them the renderer, how to draw and group shapes and move them around, ...

that's all you need to be able to create something visual and do a few patch-along examples with them. they will start to play around with these options and hopefully try to achieve some visual output.

why is this important?

it boils down to repeating these very basic interactions (using the nodebrowser, creating nodes/links/ioboxes, ...) that you need to do and getting them into muscle-memory as soon as possible. it makes much more sense to continue with "more advanced" language-features only when you feel that your in control of the software. believe me, when you're new to VVVV the gray patch is like a gray wall you're standing in front of. as a teacher it must be in your interest that the students will be able to stand on their own feet as early as possible and become creators. i found that many repetitions are the key for this.

how does this relate to your proposal:

what i wrote above should be in between patching level 1 and 2. it does involve throwing a new technology (e.g. skia) on to people, but gives them some things to achieve and play around from early on. no own node-creation, application/definition and project structure explanation, ... is necessary for that. when people have created something, these questions will come up almost naturally (how to better structure the patch? can i join item A and B together somehow? ...)