We setup this community to help bring everyone together. That said, we are not experts at customizing, or moderating Discourse forums etc. If you have thoughts, suggestions, ideas on how we can all do better at this forum, please share your thoughts. We are looking for staff and contributors! Come help us and become a staff member! I am certain there is so much more we can all do if we put our minds together. Cheers!
So to everyone reading this… What is one idea on how we can get the community more engaged?
Thank you for offering this opportunity to make this community a better place. I do not have experience with moderating this type of forum, but I would be interested in and willing to help in any way I can. Please let me know how I can follow up.
My idea on how to keep this community engaged and growing:
I believe it would add value to create a Resources section (perhaps underneath the Education section) which contained a listing of various resources associated with TinyML. For example, a list of MCUs which are capable of TinyML that included a link to their datasheets and whether or not there is currently a port of Tensorflow Lite Micro for them.
This Resources section could also include information on topics which are associated yet are not directly TinyML. For example, information or tutorials on wireless protocols, MCU power management, circuit design, etc. I have hardware on my mind right now, but I’m sure there are other topics which would also be valuable to include.
Thank you VJ for this forum. I have completed the first 2 course and waiting for the 3rd and final course (Feb 23) and I am sure, by getting involved as one of the moderators of this forum, I will be able to learn more as well.
So what will be the requirements for being a moderator of this forum?
For the idea, I think, along with topic-wise discussion the sub-division of ‘Beginner’, ‘Moderate’ ‘Expert’ level will help and if possible, video conferencing and/or demo sessions (live/recorded) will also help to engage people on the applications.
Also, we can start Kaggle type competitions or may be release some datasets on Kaggle and this group can be used to form teams and take part in competitions.
It would basically be thinking, along with all of us, creative ways to help build the community organically. Fostering each other to share resources and learn from one another, and mostly building a mission statement for all of us.
What do you all think is the unique value add we can bring to the table? I feel one unique thing is that we can be a hub for sharing academic resources to build and learn stuff.
That’s a great suggestion. Laurence was suggesting that we do a Q&A session. We encourage people to post their questions and Laurence, Pete and I would take turns to help answer questions people have. What do you all think of this idea?
One personal reason I wanted to have a forum was so that I could help support students, many students email me on a daily basis but I don’t have the one-on-one time to help them all. So I thought a forum could be one of the ways that these students’ curiosity could be supported. To that end, that gives me a sense of purpose to help build a community.
In general, it looks like we will have a whole list of ideas we will come up with as a group. After we solicit enough ideas, maybe we can prune the list down to help identify what are the one or two things we want to focus on achieving as a cohort and focus our efforts?
Appreciate the thoughts from so many persons at all levels. My thought is very simple. This forum should become the “go-to” resource for those seeking help. This goal can be achieved by tolerating newbie questions without RTFM retorts, publishing projects/data (a la Kaggle as suggested by @JoydeepG or Hackster.io with some limitations) or opportunities for collaborative efforts (where the scope may overwhelm individuals).
Above all, we should avail the opportunity to push the envelope (just one TinyML at a time?). Now that we are learning the framework, I’m sure letting others know what we’re up to will open up the possibilities for many extended applications. As an example, JHU undertook the daily compilation of COVID-19 data and now we thousands (sic) of different applications (including ML, Wolfram, R, SciPy, etc.) directly from that mother lode.
On that note, one of the things that we were thinking of doing was a Q&A session where anyone can ask questions and Laurence, Pete and I along with the staff can respond to them.
I feel this might give people, especially learners, an opportunity to connect and ask questions about various topics. What do folks think about this idea? Any suggestions or ideas along this?
" Laurence was suggesting that we do a Q&A session. We encourage people to post their questions and Laurence, Pete and I would take turns to help answer questions people have. What do you all think of this idea?"
This is a great idea indeed @vjreddi J. For the Q&A if you, Laurence and Pete can provide a basic template/outline, so from the beginning, the question categories can be streamlined and over a period of time, it would work as a hub and all new members can get their answers without involving anyone.
I also think, unlike other forums, if there is a youtube/similar video channel can be attached with this forum with some practical video demos like, ‘How to unpack the Kit’, ‘How to set up the Kit’ etc, it will be very valuable to the users.
Joydeep, can you help me understand a bit more about the template you have in mind here? This is exactly what I’ve been wondering about … how do we do this effectively? Over time, you can imagine that we bring in more people (not just Laurence, Pete and me). You folks should be sure to check-out the TinyML talks:
There are a host of videos here, which I think are great – once you are on board with material and know the lay of the TinyML field. But as @baqwas says, we want this to be a place where no one says RTFM!
Yea, that’s a good point! Some of these videos will be available in the edX course, but you are right that it would be great if we can also make them available outside of the edX context. This shouldn’t be hard and something wet an do after Course 3 kicks off. Just adding @brian_plancher on this thread about it.
To your exact point @JoydeepG, @petewarden has made a lot of video content and uploaded it to YouTube to help people along with understanding many things related to TinyML. For instance, one of my favorite videos is this one from Pete:
Hi @vjreddi, sorry for the delayed response. Well about the template, what I am thinking:: the 3 series course (EDX) content has answered lots of questions already (Covering from Beginning to Moderate to Expert). But those course content and videos are not easy to browse.( I mean, they are sequential and a newcomer can NOT and should NOT jump anywhere, he/she should start from the basic and build into next level.) So if that content material and concepts(like quantization concept, KWS, VWW and what are those, why it is required, etc)can be formed in the form Q&A and post in the forum section then lots of ground are going to be covered.
On top of that based on the Q&A materials students can form their questions and can post on the forum and those can be covered in the the Q&A sessions (Video) section to clarify more.
This is a great resource section. But I feel we can improve here as well. Like, there are lots of videos and just from the video title it is not possible to understand it’s content and some of them are almost hour long. At the same time, the title may be very interesting, but to understand the content some background knowledge is required, which is not very apparent from the title alone. So if the videos also can be catalogued and bullet point/snipped can be provided based on it’s content, it will be very helpful. Just a thought!
Another point, I feel (of course it is my personal opinion and you are the best judge), if the videos are not long enough (not more than 5-7 mins), it becomes very easy to grasp the content and attention span remains intact!
Hmm… that’s a very good point! One thing @brian_plancher and I plan to do soon after course 3 kicks off is release a general syllabus for the material. Ideally, we could take that syllabus and create a markup book/wiki page so that people can add variants or thoughts to it. That would be cool, not sure if we have the bandwidth to do that but it would be great if the community that took the course could help chip in … something to think about!
(Feb 23) and I am sure, by getting involved as one of the moderators of this forum, I will be able to learn more as well.
