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tangerinpenguin
I think it is probably failing to see the big picture -- or, more specifically, the effect of one's decisions/actions on other people now and on everyone a year from now.
Students have usually (these days) worked on a couple of group projects, but of necessity, the scope is small and the horizon short. So most have not had direct experience with designing for flexibility and (future) backward-compatability; they've thought about it intellectually, but they haven't done it. And there are all sorts of little gotchas there.
Example: Interface design. First cuts are usually too specific. For example, do we really need to commit to a vector specifically in this signature, or will an array or a collection do? Do we know that this flag will always have exactly two values (leading one to use a boolean), or might we need to define an enumeration against the possibility of more values later? Stuff like that.
Example: Fixing a bug that changes an interface without either providing temporary support for the old one (in addition) or fixing all of the call sites. "It works for me" doesn't mean it works for everyone. You might not even know who everyone is. That's why it's important to get interfaces right the first time when possible.
Example: Shortcuts that you aren't going to be able to decipher six months from now, or that depend on unspecified characteristics of this version of the compiler or OS, or that seem "clever" but aren't obvious. Documentation mitigates, but you also need to ask yourself if this hack is really necessary.
(I suppose most of the above could be summed up as "lack of defensive programming", but it's not a lack of that skill so much as not understanding the need for it.)
This isn't limited to just programming, of course. In tech writing, for example, these blinders can lead one to hard-code formatting (instead of using semantic tagging), to hard-code section/chapter/figure names or cross-references, and so on. There'll be plenty of maintenance problems without placing your own land-mines. :-) (Ask me sometime about how renaming a product once made my life miserable...)
2) What have you found most surprising during your
study of Judaism the last few years?
Good question. There may be other things that are bigger, but this is what's coming to mind now: That ritual (or practice) doesn't always have meaning; rather, sometimes we invest it with meaning that it then comes to have.
I used to think that it only really made sense to do ritual in order to derive some sort of meaning or experience from it. So the idea of using mezuzot sounded initially strange to me, and I did it only because we are supposed to. Similarly with some aspects of keeping kosher; I went into this thinking that I'd never have separate dishes and waiting periods, because those are clearly beyond what's required and kind of goofy besides. It's easy to see the inherent meaning of rituals like the Pesach seder (retelling the story); it's harder with mezuzot and dishes and fringes on prayer shawls and whatever.
But you know what? If you take something that doesn't seem to have any inherent meaning, and you do it anyway, it can develop meaning. Lighting candles at the beginning and end of Shabbat marks the boundaries between Shabbat and the rest of the week. Thinking about which dishes to use forces you to think about separation between meat and dairy in a way that, say, eating off of paper plates doesn't. Touching a mezuzah reminds me of the words within -- which, of course, only works if you've read and understood those words at some point. And so on.
I don't think I'm explaining this very well. I expected to take more of a logical approach to ritual -- explain it to me and I'll do it -- and sometimes I've found it works that other way around.
3) What's the biggest thing that's improved about
Pennsic since you first started going?
Project scope. In general, the things we try to do there -- whether it's construction, cooking with a clay oven, adding archery and siege weapons to battles, just plain decadence :-), or whatever -- we are doing to greater extents.
At my first Pennsic (11), almost everyone had nylon tents, with a few commercial canvas tents. No one cooked over open fires; we ate Spaghettios out of the can, or heated them on a Coleman stove if we were being adventurous. Now there are a lot more pavillions and even a few buildings, and kitchens are often more sophisticated.
It's now feasible to do projects that require many days, because we have many days. I went to my first Pennsic on a Thursday night and returned Sunday. Now it's not such a big deal if it takes two days to build an oven and another day or two to bake it in; you've still got a week and change to cook with it. Or we can brew a small-mead at the beginning of Pennsic and drink it at the end. There are classes and workshops that meet every day for a week and produce something big by the end (like the taiko drums this year).
We're doing more and bigger things with combat. At my first Pennsic the only non-fighters in battles were scouts (who were unregulated back then, by the way); now we've added archery, thrown weapons, and even siege weapons. That's pretty nifty, and makes the battles more complex and more interesting.
We've gotten more authentic in a lot of things, and this is a good thing, but authenticity is somewhat orthogonal to what I'm talking about. Even the blatantly-inauthentic (like certain annual parties) has increased in scope, near as I can tell. While I wouldn't necessarily call that an "improvement", it's an observation. :-)
4) How would you recommend the heads of performing groups in the SCA
(e.g. consorts, choirs, acting troupes) balance the obligation to provide
the best show to the audience with the obligation to provide
opportunities to "push boundaries" or "get experience" for their artists
who may not yet be completely up to speed? How does this differ from how
someone like an autocrat mentor or a kingdom officer with lots of "at
large" staff (e.g. the marshallate or heralds or chiurgeonate) should
balance their obligation to provide the best service results to the group
at large with their obligation to provide their junior folks with
opportunities to "push boundaries" or "get experience"?
I think you have to start by planning for different levels of skill, comfort, and boundary-pushing. In a music group, for example, the most basic level of participation is to sing the notes accurately. When someone has that nailed, you can look to basic vocal technique -- breath support, head- vs chest-voice issues, projection, and so on. You can work on other technique issues like articulation and pronunciation. You can work on expression, stage presence, and memorization. And so on. Each person will find some of these easy and some incredibly challenging; your job as director is to help each person be where he needs to be, pushing boundaries in some but not all areas. Your entire choir won't be working on the same issues at the same time; that's fine. The people-management aspects are probably not unlike the career-planning a manager does for his subordinates, each of whom has different needs and a different path.
Now you also have to balance this, but that isn't necessarily as hard as it sounds. You don't have to have everyone in the choir working on expression at the same time, after all; if some have it, some don't, and some are getting it but aren't there yet, the audience will see that some members of the group are better at this than others. But hey -- the audience would have seen that anyway, because people have different levels of natural talent. You can let some people push limits while not pressuring those who aren't ready yet.
Depending on how much you can manipulate the material, you can also give different people parts with different levels of difficulty. This is especially true if you're writing the material yourself. There are arrangements of dance music out there, for example, with one deliberately-very-easy line, so beginners can play that and be challenged while more experienced players play other lines (that they find challenging). I imagine that similar principles apply to theatre. This is less likely to be useful in choral music, because people don't get to choose the easy line by switching to a different flavor of recorder. If you've got a bass-range voice, you're not going to sing the boring alto line. (Well, maybe some people will, but not most. :-) )
How do you balance the need to let people grow against the obligation to put on a good show? I guess I'm arguing for letting individuals grow within the safety of the group. This is different from, say, deciding that the group will tackle a piece of music that's hard for everyone. But you need to do that too -- just don't get wedded to the idea of performing it at a particular event. Do it when it meets your quality standards, not earlier. Never make promises about material you don't have in the can yet.
Solos (and other prominent roles) are a real quagmire. In a volunteer organization especially, there is a strong desire to be "fair". Bob got the solo last time; give it to Fred this time because he wants it and hasn't had a turn. But what do you do if Fred isn't good enough? The obligation to the audience says you don't give the part to Fred; the obligation to Fred may say otherwise, especially if you don't have objective criteria to cite. I'd suggest trying to find other ways for Fred to grow so that he'll eventually be good enough to do the solo. If Fred can see progress and believes he can get it eventually, maybe this will be good enough. If Fred is utterly unable to progress and insists on a solo right now anyway, well, you have a challenging situation on your hands and you have to weigh Fred's ego (and future with your group) against the audience's needs. Damage control may be called for: plan Fred's solo for the supportive local audience instead of the entry in the kingdom's biggest arts exhibition, for instance.
How is it different from autocratting or being an officer? I think there's more variation in these than in many performance groups. For example, if someone wants to become a chronicler, you can start him off assisting you with production, then move him to doing the first-pass editing (that is, he assembles some of the content and you review his work), to maybe serving as a guest editor for one issue, to eventually taking over the job. At any given point the risk to the subscribers is small, because you're still in charge and can step in if needed. Or, with events, say someone aspires to cooking a feast. You can start him out assisting in other kitchens, and then put him in charge of lunch, and then ask him to plan a menu for a feast (teaching him about resources and budget along the way), and then you can supervise him while he implements that feast... again, little risk at each stage, but he grows into a competent cook. You can isolate the risk better in cases like this than you can in a group performance; if one performer screws up it immediately affects the others, but if your assistant chronicler doesn't work out you put in a late night fixing it but no one else need ever know.
5) What's the biggest challenge that one or more of your current cats
have created for you that wasn't true of cats you had in the past, and
how have you dealt with it?
Aside from the cat we had in our dorm room for half a semester (until someone took him home for Thanksgiving), these are my first cats. I think the biggest challenge I've faced is integrating Embla, who came in as an adult stray, with the pre-existing litter-mates, Erik and Baldur. Unfortunately, I have not been all that successful here, and I'm not sure what I should do differently next time. Embla and Baldur seem to get along ok, but Embla has a real problem with Erik (moreso than Erik does with Embla). I try to handle it by making sure that I give all of them individual attention, and occasionally I handle it by pushing Embla off the chair or bed or whatever because Erik was there first and she's trying to pick a fight. It's probably not the optimal solution.
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2. What changes (if any) have you seen in how people treat you now vs. how they treated you before all the weight loss?
3. The genie in the bottle will transport you to your choice of time and place, where you will invisibly and inaudibly follow one person around for 24 hours before popping back to your own time. Whom do you stalk?
4. Now that you don't have to clear it with landlords, what pets are in your future?
5. A world-class chef will prepare the meal of your dreams for you (and let you watch if you like). Tell us what you order.
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