Seren yr Wythnos | Star of the Week

Welsh General / Questions
#89

:slight_smile:

And I’ll be less and less talkative about sêr as I’ll probably “know” them less and less.

But let’s try this week to remain within my style anyway … :slight_smile:

@Deborah-SSi
SSi newswoman who always manages to pick just the right news for the weekly newsletter. Reading her newsletters you’ll never remain uninfurmed. You’ll know (mostly) everything you need and her letters are always put together that way that you just have to peer into the forum after reading them and see/read more. Even when I sometimes somehow thought (according to forum activities) there’s not much to report she (to my surprise) always managed to put together great amount of information which are not just informative but also pleasant to read. The news are always put together in kind and warming style praising people for what they did, acheaved and encouraging others to get involved too

Polyglot with capital P in deed. Once I’ve spoken with Dee via Skype and we talked about languages (among all the other things) and I was impressed. It seamed to me she’d really like to know each and every language of this world. At that time she told me she’s tried some Turkish but who knows if there’s not the next few languages in the queue to try already. Her passion for Esperanto is remarcable and I know she’d be happy if more people would speak that language again. And her passion for Welsh! I never thought about her as a learner especially when I heard her speaking. I always thought she’s a native welsh speaker :slight_smile:

SSiW online Eisteddfod organizer who did huge amount of work (according to what I’ve read on the forum Eisteddfod thread) this year too despite her health difficulties and the fact that she couldn’t be as engaged into the whole event as she was previous years. I’ve participated in the event only this year with small (not too good) entry but I felt like I’m a part of something great thanks to Dee aswell.

I know Dee from the forum and newsletter she puts together every week and I met her at the Bootcamp twice so I can’t say I know her very well, but she was always inspiration to me. I was more then happy when I saw her for the first time in Llandysul during our visit there. I still remember how she called my name and I looked puzzled and surprised who might know me there except of fellow bootcampers. She saw my surprised look and said “It’s me, Dee, Tatjana.” and I was thankful to this world I see her there as it was just short time after her medical treatment we visited there. Dee you will never know how happy I really was to see you and I was even happier when you visited us at Noson Lawen and took part too. I didn’t have much chance to talk with Dee but the amount of time we spent in the conversation is more then precious to me. As @AnthonyCusack is, I’m thankful nad happy too that she accepted me into her circle of FB friends.

Dee, you’re real star of SSi with your warmth, passion for language and kind attitude toward each and everyone of us, always willing to help and encourage those who need to be encouraged.

I salute you! You are :sun_with_face: and :star2: of SSi!

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#90

I appreciate Dee for the superb work for the newsletter, organizing the SSiW Eisteddfod, for being always a friendly, supportive friend on the forum but I always remember her how I visited Wales for the first time, in 2010 with my daughter and a friend, Dee was the first Welsh speaker I met. She arranged to meet us in the Mochyn Du. Speaking with her was like speaking to a long known friend ( I still feel embarrassed, because I couldn’t stick to Welsh but switched to English).
The second was Aran and at last I met @dafyddyfelin. They all were so helpful and patient with me and they made me keep on learning Welsh.
So diolch o galon i ti, Dee, the first person who addressed me in Welsh.

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#91

The first thing you will notice about Dee is her warm, sparkling smile, because that is how she greets everyone she meets.

Dee is one of the gentlest and most compassionate people I know. She cares about people and in return, people care about her. She is kind, thoughtful, unselfish and always friendly.

Her enthusiasm and loyalty towards SSiW and all its members knows no bounds. She has worked so hard over the years to help wherever and whenever she can to make this forum a better place.

I admire Dee greatly. She has the kind of strength we all wish we had and never fails to bring happiness to your day whenever you see her, despite her own worries and challenges.

Diolch, Dee am bopeth ti wedi ei wneud ac yn parhau i wneud i SSiW. Ti wirioneddol yn seren aur. XXX

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#92

Diolch Dee, for everything you do supporting SSIW, Welsh in general and people in general! You are clearly one of those multiply-wonderful people who make the world a better place! I hope we’ll meet one of these days…

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#93

I have gone through several emotions reading this comments - from bursting out laughing at @hewrop’s comment on the Twister game (I never realised how much it stuck in your mind!), to feeling a bit teary and embarrassed at some of the other comments.

I also laughed reading @aran’s comment on Danielle’s internal mail at the BBC which I’d totally forgotten about. I can’t remember exactly how it came about now, but she was couchsurfing in my Cardiff flat at the time so she had no choice but to hear me practising my SSiW lessons in the evening and she did pick up a few words herself.

I seem to have been born with a love of languages and other cultures, so it was something very natural to me to immerse myself in the Welsh language and culture since I arrived here. I couldn’t imagine living here and not doing so. I was just ever so glad to find SSiW and be able to make my dream of becoming a Welsh speaker a reality. I know I would have got there in the end, as I am a determined sort of person underneath, but it would have been so much slower, and nowhere near as much fun! Getting to know the Fab Four, plus loads of SSiWers, has made my life in Wales even more special.

So thank you for all the comments. It’s lovely to know that you appreciate things like the newsletter and the Online Eisteddfod, and if they in any way contribute to your enjoyment of your Welsh learning, then it’s all really worthwhile.

And I hope to meet as many of you as possible, either on bootcamp, at the SSiW birthday party, at a National Eisteddfod sometime, or to welcome you to Llandysul if you’d like to stay with me through AirBnB and have a holiday speaking Welsh.

Diolch yn fawr!

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#94

@Deborah-SSi was the person I thanked in the “Diolch” thread this week (link to Diolch thread) so I won’t repeat it all here, except to say that Dee totally deserves to be Seren yr Wythnos! Thanks again for all you do, Dee!

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#95

Although I have only met Dee briefly, I must echo the sentiments about her enthusiasm and general loveliness. And thank you, Dee for all those reminders about updating the forum about meetups - organisation was never my strong suit and without a doubt, you have kept the Cacen meetups in the public eye. Thank you Dee.

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#96

I’d like to thank everyone who has a hand in the running of SSIW for their dedication to the Welsh language and Welsh culture and for offering the opportunity to people around the world to share their obvious joy in simply being Welsh. Your work should be recognised at a national level at least.

Diolch yn fawr i chi.

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#97

Well done - you’ve got through another week! It’s Friday! :slight_smile: :star2:

Seren yr Wythnos #5

:star: :star2: Spenny :star2: :star:

Spenny (or @ianspencer as he’s more properly and less commonly known) isn’t on the forum all that often these days - which makes him a particularly good example of how I’d like this thread to recognise all the people in the SSiW ecosystem - especially the ones you might otherwise not have known about their contributions.

Now, it would be easy to choose Spenny as Seren yr Wythnos for his courage in facing up to the very first ever Bootcamp with only about 10 sessions under his belt - and for surviving the week by miming ‘sunny’ and ‘hat’ any time he wanted to say ‘syniad da’…

Or we could choose him for his long-standing friendliness and consistent, calm support and advice - Catrin and I have always enjoyed catching up with Spenny when he’s over in Gwynedd, and it was an absolute delight to see him again recently at the Llandrindod reunion of The Magnificent Saith (our first Bootcampers).

But, no, it’s going to have to be Seren yr Wythnos to Spenny for…

Actually Making SSiW Possible

Yes, I’ll explain.

Back in the day, when we had about one or two thousand learners, and Course 1 and the beginning of Course 2, all of which were free, we also had quite a few people telling us we ought to be charging for the course.

Spenny was one of the clearest of those voices (I’ll never forget his ‘banging head against wall in despair’ tone when I told him we were going to charge £95 for the week for our first Bootcamp!).

But we had a problem.

We didn’t like the idea of charging lots of money for SSiW - it was clear it was working, but we want to help build a successful future for the Welsh language, and that doesn’t mean turning people away because they can’t afford to learn.

So the only pattern that looked okay to us was a very low monthly subscription - but then surely that meant people would subscribe, download the Course 2 lessons, and then realise that they were subscribing for nothing, feel a bit silly, and cancel the subscription?

We needed something that would be new and valuable every month, or every week.

And then I got an email from Spenny.

It went something like this:

‘These recordings you make. Would you like me to build a tool that would put them all into a database, so that you could take less time stitching them up into lessons? And then you’d be able to pull bits of them out at random for revision purposes…’

And that was the beginning of the Spennyware - a gigantically brilliant software tool which is the base of everything we’ve done - donated, for free, by a superb software engineer (the guy who literally wrote the book on C++) just to say ‘thank you’.

It made the daily practice sessions possible - and that made the subscription approach possible - and that lead a few years later to the point where Ifan and I are full-time, and the Spennyware has grown via the Jennyware (more later) into the SSiBorg, and started moving online, and opening up all sorts of interesting new possibilities (more later!).

If I had to choose one moment when the fate of SSiW genuinely rested in the balance, I think I’d choose the moment Spenny sent me that email, and landed himself with a moderately enormous software project on the side.

Heaven alone knows how much we would have needed to find if we’d tried to get something like that done on the open market - far, far more than we could ever have afforded.

So, you lovely folks of SSiW - if you’ve ever used any of our lessons (and not entirely hated the process!) now would be a good time to say thank you to Spenny… :slight_smile:

Seren yr Wythnos #1

:star: :star2: Iestyn ap Dafydd :star2: :star:

Seren yr Wythnos #2

:star: :star2: Catrin Lliar Jones :star2: :star:

Seren yr Wythnos #3

:star: :star2: Cat Dafydd :star2: :star:

Seren yr Wythnos #4

:star: :star2: Dee McCarney :star2: :star:

Seren yr Wythnos #5

:star: :star2: Spenny :star2: :star:

Seren yr Wythnos #6

:star: :star2: Jeff Lewis :star2: :star:

Seren yr Wythnos #7

:star: :star2: Ifan Baines :star2: :star:

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#98

Diolch yn fawr Spenny @ianspencer ! :gift: :dizzy:

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#99

@ianspencer Diolch yn fawr iawn! :slight_smile: :star2:

(In addition to saying thank you, It’s fun learning some of the SSiW backstory and details from these Seren yr Wythnos posts!)

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#100

Ooh, a new star - I’m going to have to try and remember that one! :dizzy:

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#101

Diolch yn fawr iawn @ianspencer from one of the many people who have benefited/are benefitting from what you helped make possible

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#102

I’m always happy to take a pat on the back but my software involvement came before that though. Aran had his own webserver - I think it was one of his many bright ideas. There was some complicated backstory to that too. Anyway, it was creakier than a creaky thing and just as Aran was getting the forum going and it was turning into something special, it fell into a sad heap of nothingness and Aran couldn’t get it sorted.

There then followed a mad afternoon of “let’s do something” (sort of Let’s Make a Musical! without the music or entertainment value). I was working at home at the time, so decided to get stuck in. Aran had come across the cloud server system he still uses (good choice but a “brave” early adopter decision) and we grabbed the old forum, rebuilt it and went back live in about 3 hours. I think Aran has erased that painful day from his memory - I don’t blame him. If I recall correctly, it was easier for me to do it because I had broadband as opposed to a Welsh piece of twine purporting to be a network connection. I don’t think we really knew each other then, not sure we had met at that point (the first time we did meet he still didn’t trust me enough to reveal he lived in a pig sty!).

I remember a bit more about the charging. There was quite a lively debate behind the scenes (mainly Aran trying to work out how to extract money from the project to support a family without anyone having to pay anything to anybody), but the idea of a voluntary subscription in part came out of an experience I had had with Radio Paradise(https://www.radioparadise.com/) - an early American Internet radio station which I enjoyed listening to. We had a similar debate there, and as I was very anti-advertising, I encouraged looking at other ideas, and the guy who ran it gave the voluntary subscription a punt. He’s still going. Also from the software world, back in the 90s I was involved in forums (on CompuServe, before the Internet was a twinkle in most people’s eye) and there I worked with Borland. I learnt that the people who came onto the forum could be very heated and yet with the right approach you could get them off the ceiling, and the key to that was getting the community to do the policing and create a positive atmosphere. The other thing I learnt from the American community I was involved in was the concept of “don’t return the favour, pass it on.” I think that is the ethos that has permeated SSiW - the people who need help are not the people who have helped you, but the next generation.

Yes, the money for the bootcamp. “Er, Aran, so that covers the room and accommodation. What about the travel expenses to get there?” (Quizzical look then dawning realisation)." What about something for you and Iestyn’s time" (ditto!). I guess it was at that point it dawned on Aran that Bootcamps might be a real thing rather than a fraudulent misrepresentation of his educational abilities.

I am proud of doing my bit for SSiW, and though I’ve moved on in many different ways, I feel I’ve already had my reward from the warmth I still feel from my good friends I’ve made here.

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#103

Oh, yes, I kind of conflated the ease of movement from Spennyware->Jennyware->SSiBorg!

Must be a memory thing…:wink:

[Add to Seren yr Wythnos post: Spenny saved our hides more times than I can remember (apparently) when actual stuff like servers needed to be working].

Happy days, weren’t they?! Looking forward to see you (plural!) up here some time… :slight_smile:

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#104

Oh, there was another reason for the software. Aran had all the lessons recorded and digitised in one long file which took about 20 minutes to load up into Audacity (panad amser) and then all you had was a waveform squiggle to guess where on earth the mistake to be corrected might be. Then there was creating the replacement, and trying to slip it in without destroying the whole lesson, export out to MP3, upload and so on. A single edit could take an hour or more if Aran could remember what he was doing when he started. Impractical and unmaintainable. All that and dealing with forum requests to clarify what the response to something was because the dogs were having a fight in the background on the recording or the chickens were on the move again (frightened by Catrin’s sneezing probably). Still, Aran didn’t worry about this as Iestyn & Cat were doing it sitting in the sink of a campervan while on a grand European tour so he had the easy bit.

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#105

Oh, God, yes.

I had genuinely forgotten about that.

I kind of remember ‘the time before Spennyware’ as a permanent dance in fire and brimstone, but the actual details of the pain have happily faded… :slight_smile:

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#106

Hi, Spenny! Nice to see you (figuratively speaking). Thank you for being who you are and at the right time and place to help make SSiW what it is now!

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#107

Amazing amazing story!!! I barely managed to sign up to the newsletter, so how you did that I doubt I’ll ever understand!!! Diolch yn fawr!!!

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#108

It was after meeting Spenny at the first bootcamp that I became really aware of his software genius. That was when I joined the ranks of those who crunched the raw voice files of the Fab Four into the lessons we all got to know and love. Despite a life-long involvement with IT, I was a little intimidated by Spennyware at first. I had to follow a detailed induction before I was set free on the actual voice files. Like all powerful software, its complexity demanded a fair bit of operator skill but once I’d mastered it, I became quite slick. :smile: I was really impressed by how efficiently it worked. I had some insight later into how it formed the basis of “Jennyware” or Spennyware 2.1 as it might systematically be called :slight_smile: (but that might become clear later).

It was great to meet Spenny again and his wife-to-be-now-wife, Anna at our Mag 7 reunion a few weeks ago.

Diolch yn fawr, cyfaill. :smile:

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