What topis should we talk about in the next upcoming user group meetings?

[KurtFriday]

Hey Mike

Thanks for organising a great 1st user group I'm looking forward to the next one.

Will be good to throw some ideas arround for the next one and see if we can get some more people allong

Possible idea from me Plugin Architecture

[lgranger]

Hi Michael, Kurt,

Thanks for your presentations last night and thanks also for all Finisar staff for hosting.

Someone from SoftWire should be able to present at the next event. Hopefully we can do a case study, but if not I can do a presentation on some of the tools / tips that we use in our software development (VIPM, Log files , Error handling etc.)

Thanks again!

Liam

[tst]

MikaelH wrote:

Sad to hear, maybe we can start recoring them one day and/or use GoToMeeeting or similar

I had good experience with recording our presentations and then uploading to YouTube for our last meeting. I even edited them to transition between the screen and the speaker at relevant points. This takes some doing, but makes techincal content accessible world-wide and over long periods of time. I have also seen other user groups do this (although generally just a screen recording, which tends to be harder to follow).

Some points for consideration for this:

1. Coordinate with the speakers. Not everyone wants to be on YouTube.
2. Phones today can shoot in HD, but keep in mind that you need enough storage space and battery life. Also, some form of stabilization.
3. The biggest problem tends to be unclear audio. I would consider getting a wireless clip-on mic. I didn't for our last meeting, but I'll probably get one for our next one.
4. You can use VLC without installation to do a screen recording and save to an AVI file.
5. You can use Blender to edit the two videos. Blender is not primarily a video editing software, but it's surprisingly good at it and it's the only free one I know which works well on Windows. There are some good tutorials for that on YouTube.
6. If the two videos are of a different resolution (common with projectors) and framerate, you can ffmpeg to convert the screengrab beforehand. That's easier than dealing with it in Blender. More dedicated software probably handles it better.

[PaulSMason]

Certification

I think there is a gap in certification that needs to be filled.

Background

As far as background (non-specific) certification goes, most of us probably have a degree of some kind - whether it be electronics, computer science, electrical or mechanical engineering, or whatever.

Product specific

Then we have product (i.e. LabVIEW) specific certification with the NI CLAD, CLD, and Architect exams.

So what's missing?

We have no relevant practical qualification that certifies our ability for analysis and design.

I think it is fair to say that Object Oriented design has been embraced by academic institutions, as the way forward with software engineering, for at least two decades now.

Therefore ... I think we need to find (or develop) some sort of tirerd certification program that verifies our ability to craft solutions with sound architecture that guarantees efficient maintainability, extensibility, re-use, etc etc. - that is, all the good stuff that gives us real value in our profession as Software Engineers - particulary, LabVIEW software engineers.

Any thoughts?