Becoming of use?
I was thinking that in the recent past, I've been spending too much of my time just thinking about my fears or writing seethes here. I was thinking about this quote from Knuth today:
"The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole."After the first month here, which was more of a survival effort, I think it is time for me to try to make myself useful in some way. I really don't know what I can do that would be of any benefit to others though, but I should start from somewhere... (any suggestion?). Perhaps having the following quote in mind as the ultimate goal could help:
"Be the change you want to see in the world." -- Ghandi
3 comments:
I have an obvious suggestion (you did ask!) for a way of giving something (however small) back to the world.
As an programmer, engineer and tech-savvy person, you can start an online community to do a beneficial-to-many project. Being a really unimaginative Iranian programmer myself, I can only think about writing free software and other computer-related matters or translating stuff into Farsi as a beneficial thing! Here are some examples:
1. Find someone who wants to learn something that you know and either synchronously or asynchronously teach them about it. Teaching is the best thing one can do with what one's knowledge.
2. Write high-quality guides to many aspects of computer use (or programming, or anything else) in Farsi. This is unfortunately precious rare on the Internet.
3. Translate some of the many, many useful existing resources on the web into Farsi.
4. Group-translate a book (a worthwhile one) into Farsi (or from Farsi, which is quite harder.) A book that is translated by a community can have a high-quality translation and will probably be under an open license. It can be a technical book, or a fiction. However, there are licensing issues with the original author/publisher to be considered.
5. Create a directory of the available online resources about a subject. Many subjects already have such directories, infinitely more don't, yet.
6. Write free software.
7. Orchestrate/organize/participate in a group project to write free software.
8. Any effort to organize or provide managerial facilities to or raise awareness about any group (or individual) doing something useful is also useful and beneficial.
This was my two cents. Nothing revolutionary though.
Wow, Thanks! That was a comprehensive list of possibilities for contributions (and for the lazy person I am, a bit intimidating!).
The bullets that relate to contributions to the Persian speaking community were interesting, although I feel I need to be more aware of what activities are going on within Persian communities, before I start on a translation or something, not to re-do something already done. I think some good directory or website to list the good Persian technical websites, communities or activity groups is the most important thing missing here (or I am unaware of it/them, do you know any?).
All in all, as you have shown, there are many possibilities to start with... I just wished I wasn't as lazy as I am!
Unfortunately, I haven't seen any good Iranian/Persian directory website, but I have to admit that I haven't looked very hard.
There are only a few topic-specific Persian websites that I know of. The two that come to mind are Fexon (movie database) and Shagard.org (computer security community, not what you may call entirely reputable!)
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