By using the word "just", it gives me the impression that you think it's easy to not get lost. In my experience with other fields, it is easy to get lost, and I would assume that the same is true with machine learning.
I meant it as "This seems like a clear starting point." You're correct that I think it's easy to not get lost with those two starting points.
I'm my experience with other fields, it's easy to get frustrated and give up. Getting lost is quite a bit more rare. You'll have to click through a hundred dense links to understand your first paper in machine learning, as with any other field. If you can trudge through that, you'll be fine. If you can't, you'll at least know what to ask.
Also, are you not curious about how much initiative people have regarding the topics they want to learn?
Update 7/9/17: I propose that Learners individually reach out to Teachers, and set up meetings. It seems like the most practical way of getting started, but I am not sure and am definitely open to other ideas. Other notes:
Update 6/28/17: With 14 people currently interested, it does seem that there's enough to get started. However, I'd like to give it a bit more time and see how much overall interest we get.
Idea: we coordinate to teach each other things via video chat.
So, this seems like something that would be mutually beneficial. To get started, we'd need:
Personally, I'm not sure how much I can offer as far as doing the teaching. I worked as a web developer for 1.5 years and have been teaching myself computer science. I could be helpful to those unfamiliar with those fields, but probably not too much help for those already in the field and looking to grow. But I'm interested in learning about lots of things!
Perhaps a good place to start would be to record in some spreadsheet, a) people who want to teach, b) what topics, and c) who is interested in being a Learner. Getting more specific about who wants to learn what may be overkill, as we all seem to have roughly similar interests. Or maybe it isn't.
If you're interested in being a Learner or a Teacher, please add yourself to this spreadsheet.