Hi everyone,

Here’s where things are on Tuesday.

For a bit, I’m not looking at recent submissions of the first “registration” form (although I’ll get back to it at some point). Tomorrow at some point I’ll take a second look at the results of the second survey, and then take a break from that too.

I’m now making the groups, and it’s taken a bit of sleuthing to connect peoples’ opinions to each other.

About the groups, and your level of commitment — to be clear, you’re not signing anything in blood — do what you can, and if you find yourself with less (or more!) time and energy than expected, you can always change change what you do. But I think being in a group might be a good thing, even if you’re just checking in every so often. Also, the groups will be flexible.

What will happen with the groups? I’m not exactly sure. I have some ideas of what I might want, but (like the discord server) you should just use it how you see fit, and then things should work well.

People have made a number of good or interesting suggestions. For example: there could be a group of Russian-speakers (ie those Russian speakers who want to be in such a group, and are not already in such a group). It could make chatting easier. I’m not sure who would want this, so I’m not going to do it in this first iteration, but I’m happy to move things around. (I can see a number of languages for which there are sufficient fluent speakers that this might apply to.)

The flip side is: if you are nervous about your english, don’t be — just do your best and see what happens, and we can always move things around. (And if you are a native English speaker maybe this will give you a chance to practice another language…)

Coauthor seems to be coming together too, thanks to Siddharth Mahendraker. My best bet at this point is that we’ll use it with the understanding that it might break — no promises.

I’m expecting the first lecture to be ready for this Saturday, but I’m only about 80% sure — the field marshals/shepherds are not in place yet, and I’d want to be certain that Coauthor will work before starting. So I’m not willing to commit yet. I don’t want to just be telling you on a couple of day’s notice, so I think I should just punt for another week — so now the first lecture would be slated for Saturday June 20.

I haven’t set up the “location” yet, but it will be livestreamed on youtube (good for most people), as well as zoom (for people who can’t access youtube in particular), with chat and discussions hopefully on coauthor, but otherwise on discord.

There are many small things for which I need to or would like to reply individually. There are others where I don’t really need to, and thus won’t, because of the need to prioritize use of time — please don’t be offended (it doesn’t mean I don’t love you).

Okay, this missive finds me tired late at night again, so I’ll sign off here…