[TriEmbed] EE tutorial talks

[Pete Soper]

On 07/27/2015 12:36 AM, Ryan Schuster wrote:
> Pete, that's too bad to hear you won't be there. :(
>
> My big worry is that there won't be enough time for a lot of this.  
> Even skipping the math and only focusing on basics and things that are 
> relevant to embedded systems, there's still a lot of stuff to talk 
> about.  And I don't want to cut into the face-to-face time/other 
> talks/demos.  It sounds like August could be a test run, to see how 
> much we can get through in a meeting.

This is an excellent point. Balance has to be maintained or the meetings 
will be warped away from an embedded development charter, and conveying 
even a sliver of what an EE learns for their degree would be trying to 
shoe horn days into minutes. Bite-size chunks of tutoring lasting a few 
minutes to get across one narrow concept or set of facts at a time would 
have multiple advantages. The water flow/pressure/restriction demo could 
go a long way toward helping folks get a gut feel for I = E/R, for 
example, but any use of the word "integral" during the first session 
might be problematic. :-)

I think one way to view this is to remind us that there have been 
various little tutorials at meetings over the past few years. The only 
thing knew is the effort to systematically cover enough electronics to 
help beginners to make progress and more experienced folks to maintain 
interest. So I think there should be advanced topics too, but narrow, 
short presentations about them.

But finally, we don't want to be rigid and inflexible. So, for example, 
unless I've forgotten a previously planned presentation for the August 
meeting (and I'm sorry to say my brain is itching as if I have), here's 
the agenda so far:
    1) Usual announcements, have a job/need a job, etc
    2) Ryan's water/electrical tutorial
    3) Shane's transistor tutorial
    4) Missing presi here
    5) Open discussion for the rest of the meeting

So Ryan and Shane could share almost an hour, but I think we'd be wise 
to have Kevin share the September meeting with a non-EE tutorial presi 
of some sort so we can maintain balance. Dan Struckman, Kevin, Ryan (and 
others) and I can target later meetings for further tutorials. If we 
feel like this is just not adequate we could consider a special meeting 
or two (e.g. a Wake library in north Raleigh) for the sake of getting 
more tutoring accomplished.

This is all just my two cents in the hopes of us approaching closure 
while remaining relaxed.

-Pete