General talk about software patterns

["Richard P. Gabriel" <rpg AT dreamsongs.com>]

I don't believe a writers' workshop is the right format for what you plan. 
Later once the proto-patterns are written down and worked over, then a 
writers' workshop can help the folks make sure they are usable by a lot of 
different users / people. Jim Coplien wrote a nice pattern language for 
writers' workshops (which I introduced to the PLoP world), and my book 
(http://dreamsongs.com/Books.html - pdf available there) talks about using 
them for lots of things from literature to software to presentations to 
conferences etc. But it's a big book.

When you get your group together, you should sprinkle in about 10% 
experienced pattern writers so that what gets written down is not silly. Jim 
Coplien (again) has done a process trying to accomplish something like you 
are last Spring in Sweden. It involved a lot of preparation and early writing 
along with coaching by himself and Neil Harrison. The results are ok but will 
get better. You should chat with him.

It might be ok to couch some things as anti-patterns as part of gathering 
information, but later you should fold those into forces and other tradeoff 
discussions in regular patterns.

                        -rpg-

On Jan 12, 2011, at 2:01 PM, Desilets, Alain wrote:

> Hello all,
>  
> This is my very first posting on this list (in fact, I haven’t even read 
> the archives yet, so sorry if my question is already in a FAQ somewhere... 
> if so, just point me to the FAQ).
>  
> I need some advice on how to organize and run a successful patterns 
> workshop. This is in the context of an event that I am planning for June 
> 2011, where I hope to bring together practitioners in the field of 
> Collaborative, Community and Crowdsourced Translation (CT3 for short) and 
> get them to capture the do’s and dont’s they have learned about this new 
> field, in the form of patterns and anti-patterns. I don’t expect any of 
> those people to be familiar with the concept of Design Patterns. Also, I am 
> expecting a mix of 25% of practitioners who have experience with CT3, and 
> 75% of practitioners who have experience with more conventional translation 
> processes, but are highly interested in figuring out how to use CT3 (and 
> may have read some literature and case studies on the topic).
>  
> While I am quite familiar with patterns as a reader, I have never 
> participated in a write workshop, let alone organized and run one, so I 
> definitely need some help. What are the common do’s and dont’s for 
> organizing and running such a workshop? I presume there is a pattern 
> language somewhere that captures that? I so, where can I find it (I looked 
> around but couldn’t find one).
>  
> I did find a couple of description of how Writer workshops work. For 
> example:
>  
> http://www.hillside.net/plop/2011/index.php?nav=activities#writersworkshops
>  
> I have to admit that this is a bit more formal and less collaborative than 
> what I had envisaged. I was picturing something a bit more like a wiki 
> BarnRaising, where people would rapidly generate a list of patterns and 
> collaboratively improve them in a wiki-fashion:
>  
> http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/BarnRaising
>  
> Have pattern writing workshops been held in that fashion also? And if so, 
> what are the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches?
>  
> Thanks
>  
>  
> Alain Désilets
> Agent de recherche | Research Officer
> Institut de technologie de l'information | Institute for Information 
> Technology
> Conseil national de recherches du Canada | National Research Council of 
> Canada
>  
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