Progress

[Matt Gokey <mgokey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I have been a bit of a silent observer lately and have found the flood
of recent message threads interesting at times for sure and I am
planning to respond to many of them soon.  But oftentimes I get the
feeling of we've been here before.   I have been a member of this
mailing list for a relatively short time (yr+?), and have found that the
discussion rarely proceeds through an idea or question in a coherent way
or to a satisfying depth and the same or similar topics surface again
and again.    Please don't get me wrong as I am not trying be critical
of us or our ideas, but am just highlighting an observation.  It seems
that significant sharing of information is rather difficult via the
mailing list.  I personally have found previous Go research in the form
of thesis papers or other studies and published research results more
revealing, however, one cannot have a conversation with a research
paper...

I guess the gist of my message is that it seems little joint progress is
being made.  The introduction of an "OpenGo" architecture was a good
start to a small but enabling component, but I have not heard much about
it lately.  Anyone working with "OpenGo" significantly yet?

Maybe a good question to ask is: who would like to have a meeting of the
minds?  Can we plan a conference of sorts?  We could have speakers,
forums, open discussions, perhaps even play a bit and just meet each
other which may help foster a more collaborative attitude.   A computer
go conference -- not a competetion!  What do you think?  Is there
anything like this already by any chance?  Is it feasible? Is it
desirable?

Matt