Education/Projects/ProcessingForTheWeb/BostonWorkshop
Boston Processing.js Workshop
The Processing for the Web project, is a Mozilla Education initiative led by Seneca College, and aimed at finishing the Processing.js port, as well as showcasing and improving HTML5 and other open web technologies in Mozilla Firefox.
The Boston Workshop is the first face-to-face meetup of the various people in orbit around this project.
Goals
- Open a dialog between the Processing, Open Web, and Mozilla communities. Identify ways to build stronger bonds, and increase collaboration.
- Bring the Processing.js community together
- Improve Processing.js
- Improve Graphics on the web: use Processing.js on Mozilla as a way to identify and fix js/graphics performance issues, share best-practice info for building web graphics libraries and using canvas, etc.
Attendees
- David Humphrey (Seneca/Processing.js/Mozilla http://vocamus.net/dave)
- Corban Brook (Processing.js/University of Waterloo)
- Al MacDonald (Processing.js/Bocoup)
- Andor Salga (Seneca Student)
- Anna Sobiepanek (Seneca Student)
- Mickael Medel (Seneca Student)
- Matthew Lam (Seneca Student)
- Daniel Hodgin (Seneca Student)
- Scott Downe (Seneca Student)
- Joe Drew (Mozilla)
- Chris Blizzard (Mozilla)
- Jeff Muizelaar (Mozilla)
- Boris Zbarsky (Mozilla)
- Ben Fry (Processing)
- Doug Schepers (W3C/SVG) -- invited, unconfirmed
Please add your name/info, or names of others I've left off this list.
Schedule
NOTE: I've been trying to figure out how to make the best use of our people and time together. It's a really mixed group, and people don't know each other, etc. Please make suggestions, corrections so as to help us achieve our goals.
Friday Afternoon
- People arriving by plane from Toronto get in to Boston ~14:50.
- Check-in to hotel
- Head to Bocoup for some time with Boris on performance
- Casual Dinner with core people somewhere near Bocoup (Seneca/Mozilla/Processing people), chance to get to know one another before Saturday.
Q: Sarah/Blizzard: is this dinner something Mozilla can fund? Q: Boaz: where should we go? Do we need to reserve?
Friday Evening
Panel Discussion at Bocoup (open to public?) on Processing, Processing.js, Web Graphics. Get Fry/Reas/Resig/Al/Corban/Joe/Blizzard/etc. to have a chat, and ask questions about where Processing came from, where it's going, What processing.js is trying to do, how it fits into the open web and web graphics. I'm thinking of this format vs. a pure keynote so people don't have to prepare so much.
Q: Al/Boaz - can you invite people to this? What time? 7:00 pm?
Saturday Morning (9:00 to noon?)
Spend the morning as a group discussing, demoing, and looking at various things. Get various people to give short talks (no slides, ad hoc) to bring the group up to speed. Some ideas include:
- Fry on Processing past, present, future. What is Processing hoping to become going forward, what does the web mean for Processing, etc.
- Blizzard on how Processing.js might fit into the open web
- Dave on state of Processing.js project
- Al on cool things he and others are doing with Processing.js (demos)
- Corban on Processing.js internals
- General discussion on how to leverage more of the open web, html5, etc. in processing.js (building pjs libraries, integration with jQuery, etc.)
- Andor on WebGL and Processing.js
- Lessons learned using canvas/html5 to port Processing.js: what was hard? what was slow? etc.
- Future of Processing.js post 1.0
- Dave on Mozilla Foundation sponsored Processing.js contest
- etc.
Please add your ideas to this list.
Saturday Lunch
- Pizza or something else simple at Bocoup?
- Get Joe/Jeff to lead a discussion of where the web is at, js
performance, gfx present/future, canvas/webgl, etc.
- Students and Processing.js developers to brainstorm about ideas for canvas and how to make things like building Processing.js easier for web developers in future
Q: Sarah/Blizzard/Boaz: can you guys pay for and organize this lunch?
Saturday Afternoon (1:00 pm to whenever)
Have a few break-out hackfests going on, with guided topics people can get involved in, for example:
- Performance testing and improvements - work with Mozilla to js- or canvas-bound code, profiling, file bugs on Firefox, etc.
- Making more demos with Processing.js
- Work on porting existing Processing code, especially looking for things that break our parser, things that are slow, things that don't work, etc.
- Improving html5, js integration with Processing.js
- WebGL and Canvas hacking in Processing.js code (looking for
improvements or tricks)
- Writing tests, docs
Saturday Evening
Dinner + something fun for whoever wants to join.
Q: Al/Boaz: ides on where/what?
Saturday (all day minus travel)
Anyone still around and interested (Dave/Corban/Seneca people/anyone else), meet at Bocoup to hack on things that came-up on Saturday. This will mean more performance work, testing, demos, whatever.
Schedule Questions
1) Do we want to have another talk on the Saturday night?
Performance Work
Examples of Processing.js that seem to be canvas and/or js bound (cf. Minefield vs. Chrome):
Useful Links
Event
- Hotel - http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/bosso-courtyard-boston-south-boston/
- Bocoup - http://loft.bocoup.com/
Technical
- Processing.js GIT repo - http://github.com/annasob/processing-js/tree/0.8
- Processing Java download - http://processing.org/download/