Hi everyone,

I’m pretty ready for Saturday’s pseudolecture, and I think I’m another step towards having things work smoothly. I’ll first tell you where things are, and then ask for advice on the things where I think I need the most advice. (All sentences below should be prefaced “I think…”)

I have zoom set up for Saturday, and will give links to those who really can’t easily use youtube by Thursday. So if you haven’t heard from me by Friday, please send me an email.

I don’t see yet how to have a link for youtube live ready in advance, as I can only connect to youtube from zoom once the meeting launches. (I have some workarounds in mind to try next week, but want to see if something easy works.) You have the AGITTOC youtube channel link (somewhere — I’ll repost it soon), and I am hoping it will just appear there. I will also start the livestream early (at least 15 minutes early), and then get the link, and post it in the #AGITTOC announce stream on zulip.

Notability/dropbox. I think this should work now. There is already an existing link for the slides for Saturday (which I may have posted somewhere, but will in any case post soon). Shortly beforehand, I will copy in my prepared slides (intended for me to write on) for Saturday into that file, and so they should be visible to you.

Where people “watch” the talk and discuss, and also Q+A: I’d intended last week for people to watch and discuss in their zulip groupoids, although some did so on youtube or even (I think) dropbox. Dividing up into groupoids may not be necessary — I propose having a single new channel for the 2nd pseudolecture, and everyone can watch there instead. And after the hour, for the informal Q+A, I will turn off the recording (so people feel more comfortable with questions), and then I will go to that zulip channel, and answer questions from there, with shepherds also calling out questions that are interesting (as they can during the pseudolecture itself). I will try to repeat the questions before answering them, and the shepherds will do their best to remind me. (I am hoping that the 20-second delay between youtube and zulip will not be noticeable…) Could that work? (I couldn’t think of a perfect solution, although there were a number of good ideas — we can try something different the week after if need be.)

I hope the discussions are going well (the ones I’ve seen are great, but of course I don’t see the conversations that are not happening).

I am hoping that in the next day or so, it will be clearer which working groups are working well, and which ones are quiet, and which ones should be recombined. I also am hoping the shepherds will also hear from you the answers to the meta-questions on the “problem set”, as well as which problems you did, and your related thoughts. (They can pass them to me on Thursday night, perhaps.) So please write to your shepherd and let them know!

Recent arrivals: I think everyone who signed up as of a few days ago should have gotten an invitation to zulip (although not necessarily to a working group). If you haven’t (and you didn’t just sign up!), just let me know (after checking your spamfolder). If you are on zulip, feel free to join a working group that you know about, if they are happy to have you. Let me know if you do that (if you remember — not really essential) so we have a better idea of what different groups are up to.

Last but not least: I’ve been holding off putting new people into working groups, basically because it takes a lot of time (and doing it randomly means the groups are less likely to work well — even with the nonrandom assignments so far there is great variation in how the groups are doing).