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# The Emacs Buddy initiative
Andrea (<mailto:andrea-dev@hotmail.com>)

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Emacs is a cryptic marvel of usefulness: who else can help you solve
its riddles if not a buddy?

The Emacs Buddy initiative [0] aims to help you find somebody that can
support you in your Emacs exploration.

No matter if this is the first (or second?) time you start Emacs or if
it is decades you use it: everyone hits a wall behind which there is
progress. More often than not somebody else (sometimes a younger
sometimes an older one but always with a different context) can help
us move past those walls towards new discovery.

So come and listen about how to stand on the shoulders of your Emacs
 buddies!

In this short talk I will give an idea of how to request a buddy, how
to become a buddy yourself and how the initiative worked out so far!

[0] <https://github.com/ag91/emacs-buddy>

# Discussion

## Notes and feedback

- I am totally into emacs buddy!!
- noticed the program name in Andrea's Emacs window title? ;-)
  - "This Text Editor is just Too Cool :)" in the fram title
- The "Buddy System" has already helped me with Emacs and Gnus. Thank you Andrea!
  - oh, you are welcome danisanti :D Hope you keep sending encrypted mails: thanks for the GPG exercise :)
- This buddy system is a great idea, by the way. I could see how this might really benefit people trying to learn more or spread their skills
- I think the usergroups page on the EmacsWiki is fairly well maintained.. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Usergroups



## Questions

-   Q: OFF TOPIC and not a question but a remark: hotmail.com is
    constantly blocking more and more smaller email servers (for valid
    but also dubious reasons) and many administrators are frustrated
    enough not to try to get off Microsoft's blocklist any more. So
    your email address might not be reachable by a substantial set of
    people especially people who do not use the big email players such
    as Google.
    -   A: oh what do you suggest? I can use/make a different one
        -   Karl: I'd recommend not to use Microsoft email servers in
            general as I've realized in too many situations that admins
            gave up fighting Microsoft. For example, my Mastodon
            instance can not be used any more by people using hotmail
            for that reason. Sometimes, admins do have to pay real money
            in order to get unblocked by Microsoft. This is a pattern
            I'd not support myself. YMMV.
            -   The worst part: users of Hotmail do not realize this
                until they really need to contact a company or a person
                who got blocked.
        -   Ah didn't know that, I will look into it then. Thanks!
        -   Have a look at e.g. mailbox.org (using renewables),
            migadu.com (partly), posteo.de (if you don't require an own
            domain...)
            -   For people who focus on mobile apps and webmailers,
                protonmail might be a good idea. They are Swiss-based
                and focus on a very high level of privacy and security.
                AFAIR IMAP is only for payed plans and for for the free
                plan.
        -   interesting, thanks!
- Hi Andrea-- great talk. I hope your idea can scale. Are you looking at other models such as mentorship networks etc. What are your thoughts on real-time collaboration? Also, should this buddy network be a slack or discord channel? Would that help?
  - I will just scale it up if necessary pulling more people as facilitators in case
- Hi, just missed the talk, but as a beginner who just enjoys tinkering with emacs, I herewith warn you that I might reach out to you :-)
- Q: would you consider creating a IRC channel for your buddy initiative?
  - A: I didn't think about it: how would that be? I was thinking email/calls was more personal ;)
  - a permanent IRC is great for me
  - email and calls are good too
  - for IRC there already is #emacs
    - #emacs is a pretty big channel.  I can see where having a dedicated channel would make sense.
  - something like jitsi might be good if you want that. I think you can protect them w/ code to keep weirdos out?
  - email is more personal and it doesn't need to be connected all the time to get an answer
  - yeah, async vs. sync communication styles.
  - FWIW, to create a channel simply /join #the-channel
- quiliro: I want to be a mentor and also would like to be mentored
  - A: just drop me an email and we can get on from there
  - dto: hey `none can you pm me your email? i could do some mentoring sessions this year for sure

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