Mastering the Lightning Network reading group session #2

[GBKS]

Date: 2021-07-27
Time: 10:00am
Timezone: PDT (US west coast)
Duration: 1h
UTCTime: 2021-07-27 17:00 UTC

Agenda

This is a weekly call to read through the book Mastering the Lightning Network by Antonopoulos, Osuntokun, and Pickhardt. In each session, we will recap and discuss an agreed-upon section. See this page for the full schedule.

In this session, we will discuss the How the Lightning Network Works page, which covers the basics of what happens under the hood when opening channels and transacting.

The call will be recorded with everyones permission.

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[thunderbiscuit]

I wanted to ask if the recordings were something people found useful. I think there are definite benefits to having "learning" sessions like these not recorded, as in people feel more free to open their cameras, speak up and ask what they might consider "beginner" questions and whatnot. The idea of having a meeting that you simply needed to be there to be part of also has upside.

Of course I imagine the other side of this is that the recordings allow people to go and listen in after the fact, but I was wondering if there was real demand for this or if it was simply recorded by default. These types of informal meetings are not well structured, have a lot of brainstorming in them, and so I assume provide a rather low signal-to-noise ratio. Will people go back and listen in to learn? Just wanted to open up the discussion on this. I am ok with recording, but I do think there might be more upside to not. Just my 2 sats.

[Bosch-0]

I tend to agree with @thunderbiscuit on not recording these. Noobs may be less likely to speak up if they know it is being recorded. Maybe it would be better to distill the areas that people seemed to struggle with the most and add them to some kind of discussion on GH.

[sbddesign]

For our Atlanta Mastering LN sessions, we do not record because we want people to feel comfortable asking beginner questions. It's a technique we learned from the BitDevs with their Socratic Seminars -- it's about fostering an environment where people feel comfortable having open discussion.

I feel like there are a lot of LN videos out there people can watch, and even more will be created in the future. There is a difference between an educational video, which should be planned and designed in a way to communicate effectively, versus a group learning environment, which should feel open, safe, unplanned, and unmonitored.

[GBKS]

On the larger topic of participation and comfort, Alexa shared a few thoughts with me:

• Specifically mentioning that pseudonymous participation is OK (no video, fake name)
• Give a few minutes at the beginning to write down questions in a shared doc (then people don't need to try to find the right moment to ask, non-native speakers might be more comfortable, etc)
• Maybe we can learn from the format of silent meetings (see here and here)?

Looking at "Views" statistics on our YouTube channel, the video from the last Lightning reading session got relatively many views. By this one statistic, there is good interest. Not sure if that means much, since it was the first session which I assume gets more attention than consecutive ones, and the numbers are pretty low overall.

One more thought on the comfort level of people, I think it's difficult to assume to know how people feel. Maybe a bit of "talking to our users" could clarify this. Maybe people uncomfortable asking questions would prefer watching recordings and then posting questions in Slack under fake names? People share endless videos of themselves doing goofy dances on TikTok, so is there really a lot of hesitation around asking a question? I have no idea and could logically find arguments for both directions. But please do what you think is appropriate and if that means no recordings then let's do that.

I tested copying the page content from Github into a Google Doc and it transferred perfectly. As @johnsBeharry had suggested, we could this to make it easier to annotate and comment on specific parts of the content.

Looking forward to it.

[sbddesign]

On the larger topic of participation and comfort, Alexa shared a few thoughts with me:

@GBKS I think Alexa has some good ideas here. Having people contribute questions in advance would ensure we are focusing our discussion around the topics people actually need help with. It would also help the discussion be a little more structured which could make the video more "watchable" for others later should it continue to be recorded.

[GBKS]

Thanks to all for joining. Here is the recording on BitcoinTV and YouTube.

[sbddesign]

General Notes from the Call

Meeting Format

We arrived at a general consensus to divide the call into a recorded portion and non recorded portion.

• People have the option to submit questions in advance of the call via a Google Drive document.
• The first portion of the call will be recorded where someone will lead the group through the content and questions.
• 45 minutes in, recording should be stopped and the conversation is opened up for free discussion.

Presentation

• I presented on chapter 3. See Presentation
• We wrapped up at this slide talking about unlocking scripts and smart contracts.

Next Week

• We will resume here.
• Topic will include closing channels, invoices, and how payments are routed through the network.