Since 2020, I organize a book club in irregular time frames. This repository is an attempt to add structure to it and maybe go back to the monthly formats like it was in the beginning.
Notice: the idea is to structure future book clubs after 26.05.2022 older book clubs won't be documented here.
One person prepares a paper with questions about the paper. Those questions are created by carefully reading the paper and highlighting the interesting parts. Then everyone reads the paper on their own, having those questions in mind.
After some preparation period (which shouldn't be too long, as most people read the paper 1-2 days before the meeting), a meeting is organized where the group collectively answers the questions and discusses points that they find interesting but not covered by questions. The idea is to be critical with the paper but also think about impact in their work and interests.
over the years we tried some variations:
when the group was large, we used breakout rooms to split the participants into several groups. This leads to better discussion, as people tend to be more silent the bigger the group is. This variation is currently not applied, as the participation count is not as large as it was.
One time some code exercise was prepared. Everyone gave good feedback about that being interesting, but noone found the time to prepare the exercise to full extend. There were some participants who did the start but not more. For that reason, I rather refrain from creating code exercises, but if someone wants to do some. I'd recommend them to be rather short, such that it can be finished within one evening.
One organizer used multiple choice questions instead of the open questions. I personally prefer open questions, which is why I don't adapt multiple choice questions. However, everyone who organizes a book club can choose freely how to design the questions. I haven't gathered feedback of the whole group to this topic.