[Gretl-users] gretl: two or three things you could do!

[Tavis Barr]

Hi Allin (and everyone).

Sorry for being a bit of a lurker and replying a month late, but I just
had a thought.  What about a session at the Eastern Economic Association
conference (or any other conference) about "Open Source Approaches in
Economics Teaching and Research" or something along those lines?  

I'm planning to attend anyway to present a paper (assuming it gets
accepted); I also have my own separate interest in a discussion on open
source teaching, since I've written an autograded homework system
(http://roster-in-a-box.sf.net) that I'd like to present some time at
some place, and I'm also writing an intermediate micro book under the
Open Publication License (see http://myweb.liu.edu/~tbarr/eco61 for
results so far).  

Another idea is that if we conduct such a session, it would also give
some of us a chance to meet face-to-face at the conference and also to
unofficially discuss GRETL-related stuff.  

If anyone here is thinking about attending anyway, then organizing this
would be easy.  I know it doesn't satisfy the need for "a Gretl
conference," but maybe it would provide us a stepping stone toward one?
And if it's successful at generating interest, it could also be repeated
at other conferences without much difficulty.

Any takers?


Best,
Tavis


On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 20:09 -0400, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I know, everyone in the academic world is busy: there are classes 
> to teach, papers to be written, papers to be refereed, conferences 
> to attend, and so on.
> 
> I'm subject to all these pressures myself, and I spend just about 
> all of my "spare time" coding gretl.  The result is that I'm not 
> able to devote time to various things that, I think, would help us 
> all ("us" being people who think gretl is of value).  Here are 
> three things that I think would be helpful, one of which has 
> already been done, and two of which remain to be done.  If you 
> feel you could contribute in any of these ways, please do!
> 
> 1) Writing articles, or putting up websites, that explicate gretl 
> for people who haven't heard of it.  This has been done.  For 
> example, Tadeusz Kufel has a website that brings gretl to a Polish 
> constituency; Talha Yalta, Ryan J. Smith and J. Wilson Mixon Jr. 
> have published papers that assess gretl; and Lee Adkins has an 
> excellent online guide to econometrics using gretl.
> 
> 2) A Free/Open-Source Software award for gretl: Why haven't we won 
> a prize yet?  The obvious answer is that gretl is a relatively 
> specialized piece of software; it's not something that _most_ 
> desktop users will have a need for, or _most_ sysadmins.  
> 
> But if someone had a a little spare time for research: Who awards 
> such things and how are the nominations assessed?  I'm not the one 
> to say this, but it seems to me that -- leaving aside the famous 
> "LAMP stack" of Linux (kernel), Apache (web server), MySQL 
> (database) and PHP (web scripting language) -- gretl is one of the 
> best conceived and most functional open-source projects in 
> existence.  Of course, this is not just thanks to me and Jack 
> Lucchetti -- it's also due to the careful bug reports and detailed 
> suggestions submitted by many of you over the years.
> 
> So, what about it?  A little recognition in the open-source 
> community at large would be morale-booster for everyone working on 
> gretl.
> 
> 3) A gretl conference?  We have people with more than a casual 
> interest in gretl in at least half-a-dozen (6) countries.  Is 
> there anyone who might be interested in organizing a conference to 
> bring us all together?  My thought is that such an event would not 
> simply bring _us_ together, but might also form a focal point that 
> would bring in other _potentially_ interested people.  For 
> example, graduate students with computing expertise!  The 
> conference agenda could be broader than gretl: it could be, for 
> example, something like "open-source approaches in statistical 
> computing".
> 
> Any takers?
> 
> Allin.
> 
-- 
Tavis Barr <tavis.barr at liu.edu>