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@@ -57,3 +57,334 @@ Currently trying it, and also in-process of switching from Nix to Guix.
 - Reproducible development environment: <https://github.com/abcdw/rde>
 - Using Org-roam to demo how to config a Nix layer(?)
   - custom.el conflicts with Nix(?)
+
+# Transcript
+
+00:00:00.399 --> 00:00:36.399
+My name is Corwin Brust and I will be
+talking about getting started with Emacs
+today. I have been an Emacs user for a
+long time. First of all, thanks and a
+huge welcome to the conference from me
+and and on behalf and back to the other
+people that have been helping to
+organize. It's been amazing just to be
+involved with that and just, kind of,
+see backstage.
+
+00:00:36.399 --> 00:01:33.759
+So I've used a lot of different editors
+in my time. That's about 25 years as a
+professional software engineer. And most
+of that time I've been using Emacs. I'll
+talk a little bit in a minute (if I can
+ever find my slides) about how I got
+into Emacs, but I think if you've used
+Emacs and a lot of other editors for a
+long time, something that you notice
+right away is that you get good with it
+in a way that stays meaningful. You
+learn new things. Those things stick
+with you. You learn how to make it do
+new tricks and then keep doing those
+tricks.
+
+00:01:33.759 --> 00:02:17.200
+I want to mention that this
+conference--oops, this talk isn't about
+how to adjust your configuration
+specifically. I don't have a bunch of
+good code samples in here. There are
+other great talks at the conference,
+particularly Andrew's, that I looked at,
+that looked like they might be more
+aimed at that "hey, I'm just getting
+started with Emacs, what are some things
+to try to make it more comfortable for
+me starting?" This is about how to think
+about the problem space. Hopefully, a
+good warm up as we start thinking about
+some of the lightning talks a little
+later on.
+
+00:02:17.200 --> 00:02:29.680
+I'm just gonna quickly make sure I can
+see my IRC buffer in case I run into
+time. I didn't get my stopwatch started
+for this one. So all right, let's dive
+in.
+
+00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:53.519
+We assume that we want to install
+packages and maybe configure some
+features. This is particularly from the
+perspective of where we're working with
+a bunch of people on a team and we want
+to get something done. Some of us
+probably already have mature Emacs
+workflows. Others are installing it for
+the first time.
+
+00:02:53.519 --> 00:03:35.840
+So the first question is, you know, in
+that context: what's the value
+proposition? Why should I mess with my
+machine, my mature Emacs configuration,
+and impose my ideas over the way
+somebody else is learning Emacs? Well,
+it can be.. I'm off my slides here a
+little bit. It can be a little bit
+tricky to learn Emacs. One thing that
+helps us a lot is if people that we're
+working with can tell us, kinda,
+keystroke for keystroke at times, what
+to do and explain what everything is
+doing. Using the same packages can
+really help us working together on a
+project.
+
+00:03:35.840 --> 00:04:54.840
+Speaking from my personal experience, it
+took me decades to get to the point
+where I was excited to program in Emacs
+Lisp. I've programmed in a lot of
+programming languages, but Lisp wasn't
+on my list. I looked at my config that I
+was copy-pasting around from generation
+after generation of .emacs file or
+recrafting it from hand and from
+Internet searches, to get the things
+that I needed when I would quickly go
+install Emacs at some new job or
+contract, and be able to to quickly get
+through that workflow that caused me to
+install the program. You know, just
+little simple one-liners that that got
+committed to memory over decades
+eventually just led me to a sort of "hey
+what's going on here." And I credit Jeff
+Goff, my good friend who died earlier in
+2020, for my lifelong love of Emacs.
+Perhaps EriK and I will talk about that
+a little bit more in another talk we
+have scheduled, but Jeff was a huge
+influence on us in a number of ways and
+a huge contributor to the Raku
+programming language which is very cool.
+
+00:04:54.840 --> 00:06:23.380
+So, understanding how to make a good
+decision about splitting up
+configuration in a way to share it
+across people with really different uses
+of Emacs... That's actually a
+complicated topic and I want to sort of
+back off and stare at it for a second. I
+think Emacs is about people, so that
+means it's about community. And
+community means we're going to invite
+disagreement. In fact, that disagreement
+isn't necessarily a road-block to our
+project. In fact, some of the work that
+a community project can invite us to do
+is to get closer to each other by
+inviting those disagreements, by
+learning from them--learning from
+different people's styles and from how
+they argue, and thinking about why they
+have that perspective and what technical
+benefits that perhaps radical point of
+view might carry away. Some people are
+really aggressive arguers, and others
+are very passive and really couch their
+ideas in distancing terms, to say, "well
+probably, this is a good idea" or
+"please double check me." Those don't
+always necessarily indicate how certain
+a person is, because we're different. We
+have different ways of communicating
+ideas like certainty or excitement.
+
+00:06:24.560 --> 00:07:29.039
+When we think about a bunch of really
+diverse programmers approaching Emacs,
+probably one of our our first really big
+challenges is just to pick what we're
+going to go after. There are a lot of
+existing kit installs and things like
+this. My argument is that you could
+actually get pretty far just trading
+files around. Maybe the more valuable
+conversation to have is making the hard
+decisions about, well, "should we have
+vertical completion," should that be the
+out of the box, and the people that want
+the traditional splayed out over a
+single line completion for example in
+the mode line, those people are going to
+add a line of config to their own setup?
+
+00:07:29.039 --> 00:08:16.240
+The way to get there? I mean, how do we
+find out what works? We don't want to
+slow down the people that are super
+productive with Emacs by asking them to
+completely break their workflows and
+make it easier for new folks. At the
+same time, we do want to make sure those
+new people are excited by Emacs and not
+turned off by having to learn the entire
+jungle of Emacs history in the form of
+its unique technical stylings for things
+like frames, buffers, and other unique
+Emacs viewpoints on important interface
+concepts, especially.
+
+00:08:16.240 --> 00:09:04.800
+The encouragement here is to keep the
+initialization for a project team
+together as a crucible. Rather than
+necessarily following our defaults of
+finding the simplest configuration that
+generally work and letting people
+customize it, what if we tried to look
+for fairly specific configurations that
+we'll expect essentially all of our
+developers to be using, at least when
+they submit bug reports. In particular,
+with this, I think that degree of
+experimentation can drive back into the
+Emacs development process. In the
+development mailing list...
+
+00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:15.120
+I'm hoping I'll get a timing cue here.
+
+00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:50.720
+In the context of Emacs development as a
+greater entity, we see some of these
+struggles. Should we change this
+default? Sometimes we can have the sense
+that defaults in Emacs will never
+change. The conversation is too
+difficult. I think one thing that can
+help us get there is evidence that says,
+"hey my 30- to 40-person project is
+using this set of bindings and here's
+what we learned about brand new Emacs
+users trying to come in and get work
+done with that." (Amin: Yeah you still
+have a couple more minutes)
+
+00:09:50.720 --> 00:10:02.000
+Oh, beautiful. Okay, great. I will try
+to get through my last few slides that i
+cut in my last walkthrough, but I think
+i'm going quicker today, thank you. Thank
+you.
+
+00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:43.040
+So let's just recap real quick: in
+theory, Emacs works out of the box. That
+means we're free to experiment. We can
+throw it all away and start over. As an
+organizational principle... I don't know
+what I was thinking on that slide,
+excuse me. Bringing it back around to
+the free and open source software
+community, our goal is to enable users
+to unlock their computers, to do as much
+with them as possible.
+
+00:10:43.040 --> 00:10:57.920
+That's the context to take with project
+initialization, but sometimes it could
+make sense to put some gloves on. I've
+thrown up on the screen here just a
+couple of other ideas, ways to maybe
+think outside of the box.
+
+00:10:57.920 --> 00:11:29.120
+As you're putting together project nets,
+my words of encouragement are to
+experiment with it, try different
+things, and think really specifically
+about how different the development
+users might be from each other as you
+define standards for configuring the
+user environment of Emacs specifically
+for developing on a project. That's
+pretty much my talk.
+
+00:11:29.120 --> 00:11:32.959
+If there's any time, I would take a
+couple questions.
+
+00:11:32.959 --> 00:11:53.839
+(Amin: Thank you for your awesome talk, Corwin.
+I think we have one or two minutes for a
+few questions. Do you have the pad open
+or would you like me to read the
+questions for you?)
+
+00:11:53.839 --> 00:12:03.519
+Oh, I managed to close the pad and I am
+trying to open it again. All right,
+there it opened.
+
+00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:09.360
+Bringing it onto a screen where I can
+see it. Will you read me the first
+question while I drag windows around,
+please?
+
+00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:15.600
+(Amin: Sure. It says, "do you use Emacs
+as a community building tool?")
+
+00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:19.760
+Do I use Emacs as a community building
+tool, or how do I?
+
+00:12:19.760 --> 00:12:22.182
+(Amin: It just says do you.) 
+
+00:12:22.182 --> 00:13:14.639
+Yes, absolutely. I think Emacs is an
+ambassador to the GNU tool chain. I
+think that in the fullness of time, we
+will see an Emacs that makes and that
+makes iOS and Android and other
+closed-source tools dream. That's why
+they mock us and call Emacs an operating
+system. It's because it could be, if we
+cared for it to be. It's quite a
+threatening product from the perspective
+of how many problem spaces it can
+address, how many types of users it can
+satisfy, the things that we can do to
+make it robust in those environments. I
+mean, we're always thinking about the
+weak points, but is Emacs a community
+building tool? Heck yeah.
+
+00:13:14.639 --> 00:13:26.880
+(Amin: There's like one or two more
+questions. I think they're more
+long-form so it might be better if you
+took them off stream so you could keep
+the schedule on time.)
+
+00:13:26.880 --> 00:13:33.360
+I would love to take those questions
+offline. I will respond to you in
+writing if we don't get to it in a
+breakout room.
+
+00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:38.000
+Thanks so much for joining us. I can't
+wait to see the rest of the conference.
+See you there!
+
+00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:42.800
+(Amin: Awesome. Thank you again so much, Corwin.)