[Mittagsseminar TI] update

[László Kozma <lkozma@zedat.fu-berlin.de>]

Dear theory-group colleagues,

I hope everyone is safe & healthy, and not afflicted with either 
coronavirus or "cabin fever". I am missing the noon seminars and our 
after-lunch coffee discussions.
As the situation slowly unfolds, and given the obvious negatives, I try 
to look at some positive aspects:
- overall slowdown of human activity, good for environment & nature,
- those in lockdown with kids -- time for various activities, and 
strengthening of patience and character for all involved parties,
- opportunity to read and meditate on life, the universe, and everything :)
- opportunity to indulge in all the legitimate and/or misleading 
information about the situation,
- opportunity to look angry at those who wear masks, or at those who 
don't wear masks, depending on our opinion on the matter,
- anything important I missed? How do you manage?

As for the slowly approaching semester, I so far made the following 
preparations:
- XP-PEN drawing tablet (works very nice, good for collaboration too) -- 
there are much fancier ones, this one I bought for around 40 euros,
- xournal and xournalpp on linux -- quite simple and nice software for 
note-taking -- also reasonably configurable,
- idroo.com with a nice zoomable interface, very lightweight, useful for 
research collaboration,
- Skype/Zoom/Jitsi/Webex/... "Can you hear me? Yes? No? Did someone 
enter/leave?". Recording screen/webcam and uploading video?
- any other technical ideas?


I was wondering: assuming there will be no presence-based-activities in 
the semester, do we have any idea how to simulate group research 
activities like the noon seminar or spontaneous discussions? I mean 
teaching is doable and is already shaping up. One-on-one or small group 
meetings are also doable via skype or such, but research may suffer from 
lack of interaction. If it is too demanding to do an actual noon seminar 
online, a modest proposal would be to use some simple 
forum/wiki/whiteboard, where we could put short notes:
"I've read paper ..., it is about ..., my take-away is ....."
Could something like this be useful? Any thoughts/suggestions?

Best regards,
Laszlo