[myhdl-list] One Engineer at a time. Conference Report Mentorship Network Proposal

[Christopher L. <loz...@fr...>]

It was the last person I spoke to, I think Karl Kaiser, who gave me the 
best advice.  MyHDL will move forward not by selling to the top of the 
organizations, but by starting at the bottom.  Like the evolution of 
linux, we need to get one person at a time to use it.  Support them, and 
get the next person using it. Eventually management will find out it is 
being used on projects, and end up supporting it.

I had thought that the large chip vendors would jump on the board as a 
way to sell to the python market place. Boy was I wrong.  Sure I 
collected 3 cards, one from each of the big 3, but they just are not 
that interested, not until such time as we start to move lots of boards, 
at which point, we no longer really need them.  But will still welcome  
them.

I also thought, it is obvious this is how it should be done, there will 
be lots of interest in consulting.  Boy was I wrong.

The conference  had Cisco talking about 10 gigahertz data transfer 
rates.   This FPGA array stuff still seems to be more about bandwidth, 
then about designing complex algorithms.   One engineer was complaining 
about not enough pin count.  Clearly his abstractions are wrong.

There were a lot of design engineers who walked by and read our poster, 
but had the vacant expression on their faces, like they did not 
understand.  They didn't.

There is strong moral support for MyHDL.   Like the guy who bought a 
board the other day.  Like the guy who said he will have to get his boss 
to spring for a class.  Like the three guys who have now offered to 
connect their boards.  And starting from companies like Tachyon 
simulation software.   And from all the lurkers on this mailing list.

It is a start.  The longest journey begins with a single step.

But we still have to win these guys over one engineer at a time.

I am horrified that I saw all these people at the conference, got back, 
and see not a single new posting on the mailing list.   I am hoping the 
download numbers tell a different story.  What do the mailing list 
subscriptions say?

So here is what I propose.   Let us put together a mentoring network.  I 
do not know about you, but I am always embarrassed to post my problems 
to a general mailing list.  My stupidity is then on the web forever.  
For those who are seriously interested in this stuff, let us assign them 
a mentor.  It goes two ways.  The mentor helps them get up to speed, but 
also the mentor gets a chance to hook them on this technology and draw 
them in.  We hope that they will stay with the technology, and pay it 
forward, by mentoring some other people.

Here is my specific proposal.  Forgive me for using names before 
speaking to these people.  They may well decline to participate.   We 
have the two guys who want to port to their favorite boards.  Three if 
you count Chris Felton.   Thank you.  Most appreciated.  Jan Coombs 
asked me what he could do.  Maybe he would agree to mentor the two 
newbies efforts.  Now he does not know everything, perhaps Chris Felton 
would agree to only support Jan Coombs.  That would minimize Chris's 
time.  We would have a hierachy connecting the newbies to the most 
senior people.   The newbies get support.  The middle guys get respect.  
The senior guys feel that their time is being well leveraged.   We can 
all watch the network grow.  The newbies know they are just two people 
away from the senior guys, and the senior guys know they are supporting 
a broad network with very little time and effort.

How does that sound?  Maybe eventually we can partition the network by 
industry.  The image processing guys over here, the communication guys 
over here.

I think the grass roots approach makes sense.  I think the mentoring 
network makes sense.  Chris Felton is still on track to push out the 
code for the class. Jan Coombs could try it out, and document it, and 
then push it out to his mentees.  Eventually I hope that this approach 
would spread MyHDL in a very grass roots fashion.  Like a prairie fire.

So let me know what you think?  Does anyone else want to be a mentor?  
Does anyone else want mentoring?

And my eyes are on the obligatory Design Automation Conference in June 
in San Diego.  This time I think the banner should say:

The Future of DA is open-source python.
   Understand the paradigm shift today.

More of a marketing message than an engineering message.  We can tell 
the managers that their teams need to understand this paradigm shift.  I 
had so many people ask me why not C?  I should have answered because in 
python we think about things differently, it is a paradigm shift.  We 
are not longer doing functional decomposition into design, simulation, 
verifaction and validation.  We are now building models, reusing class 
libraries, benefiting from polymorphism, multiple inheritance, 
decoration, and for the hard core python guys, acquisition, and 
interfaces.    The different language allows a different paradigm.  
Their organization needs to be educated about this paradigm shift.

I wondered if we should be in the python conferences or in the design 
automation conferences.   Clearly the big money here is in the design 
automation conferences, not in the hackers.  And they do need our help.

This experience has been great for me.  I have made significant progress 
on my chip design these last few days. I had a great time.  I learned a 
lot.  And this is way more interesting than my other job.  I will be 
around for a while.

-- 
Regards
Christopher Lozinski

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Expect a paradigm shift.
http://MyHDL.org