Watch the videos and enjoy. You will learn more effectively if
you are actively working on designing/building/maintaining a
distributed system while you study -- so start making something!
(Examples of what you could work on: build a multi-user chat
system, build a data analysis using Hadoop, attempt to
understand Paxos and build your own implementation (note that
Paxos is known for being hard to understand...).) If you are
already taking a college-level class on distributed systems then
watch these videos before or after your lectures to review the
material.
Check out the class project chat servers, and try them out. If
folks start using them, they may become a great way to get
questions anwered. (Or, they will become spam honeypots. We'll
see.)
If you are an instructor and want to use these videos as a part
of your class -- feel free to link to this site and send your
students here to watch. Please do not make your own copies of
the videos or slides, or change them; I like knowing how many
people are using and enjoying the videos, and being able to fix
and improve them at will. If you want to do something that
involves copying this content, send me
an email -- I'm happy to
listen to your ideas.