I started thinking about video tutorials a few days ago. Videos are cool and more and more people use them. So why not create a couple of them for rsyslog?
The idea is simple and I think it will work equally well for teaching both conceptual topics as well as practical “how to” types of problems. The later probably works even better…
I could investigate, design and build my tutorial in a perfect way. The result would obviously be very useful and perfect – but most probably there never would be any result due to time constraints and priorities. With this on my mind, I created a very first trial tutorial this morning, all in all in less than an hour. It took me some more minutes to get it up on the web site, but this effort will never again be required.
The question this trial shall answer is: is it possible to create something useful (not perfect) in little time? My personal feeling is mixed. I think one notices quickly that the material is not as much organized as you would expect from a talk. Also, some additional slides would definitely have enhanced the usefulness – but also increased production time very much. On the other hand, I think some information is conveyed by the presentation. And, even better, information that you can not obtain with reasonable effort from any other place.
So: is it useful or not? What could improve the usefulness without causing a large increase in production time? Does it make sense to create sub-optimal content but be able to create it as it can quickly be done? If so, which other topics would you like to see covered?
Please have a look at the rsyslog message flow video tutorial and let me know your thoughts!