Hi all,
I forgot in the last post to say that I wouldn’t start today (May 23) because I’m still wading through survey answers. My intent is to start on May 30, but it is taking me long enough to go through the pseudo-registrations that I fear it will be the first Saturday in June before I’m ready.
Here’s where things stand. I’ve largely gone through around 800 so far. I’m surprised to report that the adjective I’d most use for this rag-tag collection of people is “charming” — it is really interesting seeing where people are coming from (mathematically, intellectually, geographically).
I’m hoping to start setting up groups, in the “Algebraic Geometry Syndicate” discord server, in bits and pieces, starting with the groups that are already built. I will let you know when I think I have placed *everyone* who said they wanted to be involved at a level higher than “include me on mass emails” into some sort of group. (There are some people who said they didn’t want to be involved, yet also asked to be in groups — I’ll figure out what to do on the fly.) I’ll also let you know when I’m ready to announce the first lecture (so don’t count on it being May 30). If you haven’t heard from me (at least indirectly) when I said everyone interested was put into a preliminary group (and you thought you told me you were interested), *then* let me know.
I’m going to give the lectures using zoom webinars, which I think allow 1000 participants. This plausibly won’t be enough at the start, so I’m a bit nervous; but I’m going to put the lectures on youtube anyway, so possibly even at the start, the number of people watching live will be safely within the number allowed. (I don’t think this will be a long-term problem.)
I think at least one person can’t access discord in their country. This probably doesn’t matter much to them in particular, but if this affects other people who want to be in a group to discuss things, let me know, and possibly we can figure something out.
As I’m getting things ready to go, I’ll probably keep posting every few days to let you know where things are, even though these will be less substantive posts.
Math 216: Foundations of Algebraic Geometry 
May 23, 2020 at 7:56 pm
Even if they aren’t the most substantiative, these update posts are reassuring and appreciated, from me at least.
May 29, 2020 at 5:55 pm
Thanks! I’ll keep doing them then. (In fact, I just did one now because of your comment…)
May 24, 2020 at 1:01 pm
How to get ourselves added to the discord server? Do we need to mail Prof. Lazowski (from Columbia University) or is there any alternative?
May 29, 2020 at 5:55 pm
I’m hoping that in the next week, everyone interested will get an invite. It won’t happen all at once, so don’t be alarmed if your friend gets an invite and you don’t at the same time.
May 24, 2020 at 3:26 pm
1) I do believe you were planning to do this anyway, but it would be good to save the webinar chat and put it up somewhere after each lecture so that near-universal potential doubts, errors spotted and corrected within the chat, etc are stored for everyone to see when they watch the video on YouTube. Linking to the chat in the video description would be great.
2) Also, again, you’re probably planning to do this already but if you make the main channels of the Discord server available to the “mass-email” registrants via a link, they will have a very ready resource to ask one or two doubts they may have in the specific context of this course, if they need it. This could be very helpful in “keeping the door open” if they later realize that they’d like to change their level of participation to asking doubts here and there and such things but cannot be assigned to a group.
3) I’d actually put background in algebraic geometry and main interests at the top for grouping people (this is actually a response to your previous post, I hope you don’t mind if I put it here). I’m personally interested in geometric and low dimensional topology right now, and would love to talk to people approaching algebraic geometry with that perspective. If I were put in a group with people interested in hardcore algebraic geometry, I’m not sure if I would have the right kind of context and motivational subtext in my conversations with them.
May 26, 2020 at 12:28 am
To clarify, I was stressing on adding main interests to the top of the criteria in point 3, along with background.
May 29, 2020 at 6:00 pm
Thanks! All of this is sensible. Responses:
1) Possibly, chat might happen in a different way (say, on discord, within smaller groups), in which case it could still be kept. One thing I want to be sure of is that people don’t feel afraid of asking a question for fear of then realizing that it is “stupid”.
2) Yes indeed — and I’ll also let people who initially didn’t want to be on that list to also have the option too. Probably later after the “fully active” people are in groups on the server, I’ll put up some google form (to make it easier on me) where people could put in a request, and I could bulk-process them.
3) That’s what I’m hoping to do. The challenging thing is that the number of people is large enough that it’s time-consuming to figure out matches. Right now, I’m starting with the self-made groups, and moving on to the “most obvious” groups, and then later (I’m not there yet) will work through the rest, which will undoubtedly require re-doing of some earlier decisions.
May 26, 2020 at 8:04 am
I know that this is hugely daunting from an administrative perspective, so know that what you are doing is hugely appreciated! Please let me know if there’s any way I can help, even if it’s just slogging through some spreadsheets.
May 29, 2020 at 6:01 pm
Thanks! That’s actually very much appreciated, and I may well take you up on this.
May 29, 2020 at 1:32 pm
I’m assuming that the course is not starting tomorrow May 30 since there have been no recent updates, but I wanted to check?
May 29, 2020 at 6:01 pm
That’s right! See the next post for more.