path: root/2022/volunteer.md

[[!meta title="Volunteer"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2022 Sacha Chua"]]

Want to help make EmacsConf awesomer and learn a lot along the way?
Volunteering is a great way to meet fellow Emacs geeks, tinker around
with interesting packages and scripts, and develop your skills.

Here are some of the roles that you might be able to help with. Roles
have different responsibilities, and a person can have multiple roles.
You can help out with one or more of the things here, or you can
suggest your own ways of making EmacsConf better.

# A few roles you can help with

If you don't see something you want to help with here,
[e-mail emacsconf-org@gnu.org](mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org?subject=Volunteering
for EmacsConf 2022) and let us know about the skills you have and the
skills you want to develop!

## Captioner

Do you like working with text? Do you want early access to the
pre-recorded talks? Help make EmacsConf videos easier to understand
and search by captioning them! 

Here's what people said about how most of the EmacsConf talks were
streamed with captions during the conference itself:

- "I really appreciate the approach of doing things prerecorded and
  having captions."
- "The captions for this conference have has an impressive amount of
  work put into them."
- "++ to all that stuff. Great job on the captions, and the
  demonstrated functionality is very impressive."
- "At first, I thought the captions would be unnecessary, but over
  time, understanding the accents for various individuals has been
  challenging, so the captions helped."

Most of the captioning work will begin once speakers submit their
pre-recorded videos. If you like, you can warm up by
[captioning previous talks.](https://emacsconf.org/help_with_main_captions/)
You can use any captioning tool you want. There's even
[one for Emacs](https://github.com/sachac/subed). Check out these
[captioning tips](https://emacsconf.org/captioning/). You can start by
editing autogenerated captions, or you can write captions from scratch
if you want. You can work with timing, or you can send us plain text
and we'll get them aligned with the videos. Videos range from 10
minutes to 40 minutes and typically take 2-6x the video time to
caption once you've gotten the hang of it. Partial work is also
helpful, so feel free to contribute whatever you want, whenever you want.

To volunteer as a captioner,
[e-mail emacsconf-org@gnu.org](mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org?subject=Volunteering
to caption) and we'll help you get set up.

## Internet Relay Chat monitor

Do you like the buzz of fast-flowing discussions? Do you want to make
sure that questions and interesting points don't get lost? Volunteer
to copy stuff from the EmacsConf IRC channels to the Etherpad so that
speakers and hosts can find them.

To volunteer as an Internet Relay Chat monitor,
[let us know your availability at emacsconf-org@gnu.org](mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org?subject=Volunteering
as an IRC monitor) and we'll schedule you in.

## Pad scribe

Do you like taking notes? Volunteer to summarize interesting points
and links from the EmacsConf talks and Q&A sessions to the Etherpad so
that people can review them afterwards. 

To volunteer as a pad scribe monitor, 
[let us know your availability at emacsconf-org@gnu.org](mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org?subject=Volunteering
as a pad scribe) and we'll schedule you in.

## Infrastructure and video

Do you have an arcane cookbook filed with `ffmpeg` incantations? Is
OBS your jam? Are you comfortable with the command-line? Do you
Ansible all your servers? Do you like tweaking CSS rules to make
things look good? (You don't have to say yes to all of these things -
that would be quite a full stack!) We could use your help!

To volunteer for infrastructure and video,
[e-mail emacsconf-org@gnu.org](mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org?subject=Volunteering
for) and we'll help you get set up.

# Got other ideas?

[We'd love to hear from you!](mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org)