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diff --git a/2021/meetings.org b/2021/meetings.org index f13ad338..0a29043f 100644 --- a/2021/meetings.org +++ b/2021/meetings.org @@ -18,7 +18,9 @@ - Tech - Figuring out a better streaming workflow (speakers & OBS) - CDN with Nate Sales: mplsCorwin, bandali - - Stand-by until late-April + - maybe also FTP upload for speakers + - Stand-by for now + - Separate from Fosshost - Documenting our infrastructure - bandali and gopar's podcast: bandali, gopar @@ -44,7 +46,7 @@ - Modernise the notes for our EmacsConf meetings - Find a moment to talk with mplsCorwin about FH funding -- EmacsConf +- EmacsConf 2021 - Subtitles/transcripts: sachac, bhavin192 - Calendar, connecting with meetups: sachac, zaeph - Guidebook for streaming: bandali, sachac, zaeph @@ -52,23 +54,1150 @@ - Coming up with a way to coordinate meetings with *all* the organisers of the EmacsConf (rather than the core subset) - Coming up with a calendar for the next edition - Decide whether the live-version of the EmacsConf 2020 can be axed by [2021-06-12 Sat] - - Coming up with different tracks + - Coming up with different tracks (TODO for [2021-08-21 Sat] ) - Meta track (for EmacsVerse stuff) - - Gaming + - Community - Org + - org-roam - Multimedia & Fun - Gaming - Music + - Dev + - Emacs core + - Other emacs stuff + - Research - Beginner’s track (dto & mplsCorwin?) + - We could also use sachac’s list of categories for Emacs news as input + - Live tasks during the conference + - zaeph: + - Doing volume checks when pre-recorded talks go live to do live normalisation + - Maybe bandali could look into easyeffects’s autogain? + +- EmacsConf 2022 and onwards + This entry is mostly for points we cannot address for EmacsConf 2021 (for lack of time), but that we’d still like to track for the future. + - We have plenty of lessons learned in conf.org. :) + - Improving the review process + - Involving the public (i.e. doing it publicly) + - Involving more communities + - Creating a new format for discussions/interviews + - e.g., talking with vimmers (the audacity, I know!) + - Think about funding + - Figuring out the financing of our infras + - bandali is taking care of a lot of our spendings right now; maybe we could dampen this amongst orgas? + - We all lament the fact that we can’t field longer 40-min talks anymore; maybe we could think about options? + - Multiple streams + - Different tracks on different days + - Split org from Emacs? + - Splitting is also a good incentive for both sides of the split to up their game (or to fill the void) + - Having a separate day for beginner- and developer-oriented talks? + - A week-long conference? + - It might be hard to jump from 2-day to full-week. + - It’s hard to have people available across the entire period. + - We should make it easier for other people to edit the conf.org for publishing the schedule; for 2021, sachac and zaeph were able to do it, but we should make it more our functions more robust. + - Add edit-in-place functionality to ikiwiki + - An alternative would be to enable push-via-https, but bandali isn’t enthused by it. + - Move the video-files to one of our FH server. + - We could have an alternate stream for captioned talks + - For 2021, we can just direct people to watching the talks from the talk-page. + - Working with BBB + - We could suggest some improvements to BBB based on our needs. Plenty of FLOSS projects rely on BBB, and I think it’d be fair to make some suggestions to them. + - Possible suggestions: + - Presentation layouts (based the CSS provided by bandali’s FSF colleague) + - Figuring out a better way to collate audio streams (normalisation, codecs) - EmacsVerse - Vet Mailman and exim instance for usergroups: bandali + - Figure out the interactions between (potential) emacsverse.org and emacs.org + - It’s about control domains and sources of truth - Misc - Writing about Emacs: zaeph - mplsCorwin's livestreaming project, working on trimming - Diversity outreach: gopar, sachac, zaeph, mplsCorwin +* EmacsConf 2021: Long-running TODOs + +* December 11, 2021 + +- Check-in: + - Time feels weird; it’s been both short and long since we last saw one another + - bandali + +- zaeph: We’ve talked about a lot of interesting stuff, but I couldn’t make significant points *and* take notes at the same time. The few haphazard notes I’ve written are in the next block. +#+begin_quote +- Async vs live meeting + - How do we keep all the organizers up to speed on what sachac and zaeph are working quasi-synchronously via IRC? + - bandali: Could we have a weekly email keeping everyone up to speed? + - corwin: It should be a 5-min read (not taking more than 15 min to write) allowing orgas who were busy elsewhere to be brought up to speed + +- Assessment of our organisation in the two weeks that followed EmacsConf + - Moving away from weekly minutes with TODOs to near-synchronous communication on IRC with a pad making it difficult to see the log resulted in a net loss of traceability of our projects + - corwin: Maybe it’s not an actual problem right now; yes, better communication would be better, but it can probably wait. + - Solutions: + - Splitting up #emacsconf-org into *thematic* topics like #emacsconf-infra, #emacsconf-post +#+end_quote + +- Summary of changes, written hastily so as to not forget + - As a project grows, it becomes harder and harder for organisers to one-person-army everything; specialisation is a good solution. + - Core-organisers are in charge of the project and are the guarantor of its philosophy; we should keep an initial distinction between volunteers and core-organisers so as to maintain governance. + - Core-organisers should move away from the “I need to keep up with everything”, FOMO-like mentality; instead, they should specialise on *themes* that they enjoy working on and were they can satisfactorily handle the work-load. + - Volunteers are piped to relevant themes/projects relative to their interest; they become the soft-responsibility of the core-organiser in charge of the theme. + - Core-organisers manage their theme with as much flexibility as they want; the only important part is about keeping other core-organisers in the loop (potential solutions: weekly blurb for each theme written by the responsible core-organisers) + - If a core-organiser wants to participate in another theme than the one they’re responsible for, it’s completely fine. + - Weekly core-organisers meetings are phased out in favour of a new regular format where the core-organisers can hang out, check-in and discuss weekly blurbs if need be (≈ 20 min), and then have flexible sessions which can either be casual discussions or longer-term planning that would require brain-storming (like creating a new theme/project, e.g. “how to have another in-person EmacsConf?”). + - IRC has been instrumental to good communication for EmacsConf 2020 & 2021, and it’s only recently proved to be a bit of a burden with the line-backlogs. Splitting the channels according to themes might leverage that issue. + - Only the core-organisers in charge of a particular theme would be expected to keep track of the backlog; other core-organisers or volunteers are not expected to do that. + - We need to adapt our culture of note-taking an documentation to this new model to ensure that all core-organisers can contribute to the effort and benefit from it. + +* November 20, 2021 + +- Check-in: + - sachac: + - Doing good! + - bandali: + - Doing better! + - zaeph: + - Doing good! + +- Dry run, see playbook.org + - DONE Working together via upcoming.org + - DONE Streaming [[https://live0.emacsconf.org/main.webm][main.webm]] + - DONE Streaming [[https://live0.emacsconf.org/main-480p.webm"][main-480p.webm]] + - CXLD Streaming [[https://live0.emacsconf.org/alt.webm"][alt.webm]] + - Doesn’t really work for corwin because of some weird setting problem + - STRT Streaming to YouTube +- Next actions: + - streaming to alternate servers (youtube, toobnix) + - add 2021 link to all the schedule and talk pages so that people know how to watch/participate + +- media.emacsconf.org files will be moved to a mirror eventually + +(A lot of the work in this session was done in another file, which is why we have very little note here. What we’ve done will eventually end up in the wiki.) + +* November 13, 2021 + +- TODOs/agenda: (two weeks to conference!) + - Status review of schedule, possibly follow up with day 2 (lots of missing talks) + - Lunch time is tight, want to end at 5:30 instead? (12:05-12:30 Sat, 12:06-12:40 Sat) + - Lunch time is tight, want to end at 5:30 instead? + - might be late for Leo, let's stick with the current schedule + - Sacha: Publish detailed schedule + - Get in touch with speakers regarding schedule, check-in 30 minutes before + - streaming process: Amin streams whatever room he's in, then switches to the next room? lots of sound checks for Amin, but it'll be fine + - OBS scenes for streaming prerec separately from whatever Amin is actually doing + - Hosting: zaeph to review the talks and think about the introductions + - Start working on list of speakers expected for live Q&A or live presentation? Actually, we'll want all the speakers to check in if available anyway, since we want to mention IRC/etherpad availability + - zaeph: Figured out MPV setup for open captions, yay! Will post the MPV profile so that we can all have fun with it. + + - sachac: Figure out day-of publishing + - Will try to post prerecs on media.emacsconf.org, wiki pages, and YouTube during talk; ToobNix? bandali will send sachac the account information and then sachac can queue things up for publishing + - redirect to proper host if node is too small afterwards + - audio normalized + - Dry run next weekend? + - Rooms + - Streaming + - Script for low-res, YouTube + - Check-in + - Alternate stream? + - Alternate stream + - bandali will test things around with dragestil + - test Etherpad template: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/emacsconf-2021-test + - conference schedule updater + - are we going to use honorifics like Dr.? zaeph - no +- Tech-checks + - We’ve got two extra volunteers + - Considering that none of the speakers but one wanted to do tech-check so far +- Other notes + - Sacha: checked IRC scripts, everything still seems fine + - https://github.com/emacsconf/emacsconf-el - zaeph to try + - TODO bandali: figure out how to deal with the back behaviour! + - xdg-open actually works in opening an URL without a preceding one + - MOSTLY-DONE :) + - Profiles for captions + - Figure out day-of publishing + - We should articulate the process on the pre-rec with updating the talk-pages on the wiki. + - On captions + - We’ve captioned most of the org talks on Saturday, yay! + - Considering how many recordings + - On talks we’ve already received + - Frownies might get re-submitted. + - Lunch time is tight, want to end at 5:30 instead? (12:05-12:30 Sat, 12:06-12:40 Sat) + - We’ll keep it to 5:30pm latest, since it gets quite late for. + - Handling check-ins for speakers + - sachac and zaeph + - 30 min before is less stressful for us + - 4-5 rooms need to be created on BBB + +- Summary of actions + - sachac: + - Publish schedule to the public wiki + - zaeph can take this information afterwards to figure out what to email to the speakers + - Figure out workflow for publishing prerecs on the day of the presentation + - It’ll be nice to have one command and have everything happen in the background + - Doublecheck ffmpeg commands for low-res, YouTube restreams + - Scrape pronunciations and pronouns from wiki pages / email, put them into conf.org (:PRONOUNS: and :PRONUNCIATIONS:) + - zaeph will take care of updating :PRONUNCIATIONS: when he receives email + - Modify scripts to msg bandali and zaeph with check-in info, include pronouns and pronunciation + - zaeph: + - Draft e-mail to ask speakers to check schedule, check again day of the conference if live, check in 30 minutes before their session, collect emergency contact information + - Re: ICE; figure out a workflow for storing/accessing the data (GPG, etc.) + - Draft general announcement e-mail for schedule, ICS + - Include MPV profile in conf.org so that bandali and dragestil can try it out + - Next week: Keep answering emails, Update talk pages/conf.org with extra info, Review talks, think about introductions + - Create BBBB rooms A, B, C, D for check-ins, and share rights with bandali and sachac + - bandali: + - send sachac Toobnix credentials which is tied to the one with EmacsConf + - look into BBB layout options from FSF colleague, and test how robust it is + - As long as it doesn’t do anything crazy (like covering the video), it’s fine + - coordinate with alternate streamers + - Figure out if chat.emacsconf.org can support URL-append to connect to #emacsconf-org for speakers + - corwin: + - OBS chores + - update graphics for 2021 + - save out a "clean" set of scenes + - Create a 6 sec video + - Test Push to IceCast + - Dig logs from Bandali from bouncer + - If he had to do a talk for EmacsConf, a clever idea he had would be ‘Using org-mode to create an impromptu talk, and do a head-first recording approach’ + +* November 6, 2021 +- Check-ins + - zaeph is dealing with TZ change + +- TODOs: + - Everyone: + - [X] Get working on contribute.md by Tue-Wed + - Non-exhaustive list of tasks to mention (relevant for this year): + 1. Editing captions or writing new ones + 2. Helping with tech-checks + 3. Looking at the schedule, and if there’s something they particularly like, they could run get ready for a prolonged Q&A session + - bandali: + - [X] ASAP: Give SSH access to sachac on ftp-upload@emacsconf.org + - Ping corwin to get another distro installed on vm02 (possibly Trisquel or Alpine) + - [X] Look into making TLS/SSL optional + - sachac: Right now, the configuration for the ftp server forces it. + - bandali is looking into FTP for resume, no worries about being able to see filenames (not allowed to download files) + - probably no risk from other people maliciously "resuming" other people's files + - ideas for the future: + - can have speaker accounts for FTP (... maybe if Amin gets the hang of automating e-mails =) ) + - region servers to upload to, maybe as part of CDN project + - TODO enable continuation for FTP + - Fosshost: Drop an application for another storage-server for the prerecs + - zaeph: + - [X] ASAP: Email designated volunteers + - Create BBB accounts for new tech-checkers + - Publicise contribute.md on r/emacs when it’s published + - Make a pinned comment on the program announcement asking for volunteers, linking to contribute.md, and maybe keeping it up to date by editing it to reflect current needs + - corwin: + - Record a 6-second video ad + - Go through the script together +- sachac: Status update: 9 prerecs received + - 7 talks captioned + - Emacs News Highlights + - NonGNU ELPA Update + - telega.el and the Emacs community on Telegram + - Creating technical API documentation and presentations using org-babel, restclient, and org-treeslide (thanks bhavin!) + - The use of Org mode syntax outside of GNU/Emacs - checked with speaker + - How Emacs made me appreciate software freedom + - Moldable Emacs, a step towards sustainable software - checked with speaker + - 2 more talks waiting for captions from bhavin: + - Using Org-Mode For Recording Continuous Professional Development + - Emacs with Nyxt: extend your editor with the power of a Lisp browser + - Compressed with q=56 script from last year, uploaded to front:/var/www/media.emacsconf.org/2021/protected , see private wiki for password + - Things to consider: + - Broadcast with open captions or direct people who need closed + captions to the wiki page? Spam #emacsconf-accessible with + caption text? + - Sample: https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/news/ + - Compression okay? Do we need to dial it back? + - Plan for handling compression for the talks coming in this weekend; can we run it on the VM? + - Audio normalization? + - Low-res version? + - More proof-reading welcome + - Start thinking about workflow for publishing talks, maybe even concurrently with the stream + - No reason not to make them public right away, so if we want them to be available on something else in addition to emacsconf.org and Youtube (Toobnix?), we can plan ahead +- TODO bandali also, icecast fallback override possibility so that bandali might be + able to use ffmpeg to broadcast directly to icecast while handling + continuity? Does anyone want to experiment with that? +- does anyone want to write an ICS to Org thing that can handle + schedule updates, maybe taking advantage of icalendar? +- pronouns/website/sponsor info can probably be an e-mail to speakers +- e-mail to send on the deadline (tomorrow) + - reminder to send it + - let's use a carrot approach, not stick (10 talks have already been submitted, yay, and most of them have been captioned!); we're actually okay with dealing with prerecs or live on the day of the event + - nudge script submission esp. close to the deadline to help with captions +- publishing the schedule with the times, ICS; maybe Nov 14? + - probably can do even with the uncertainty +- 10 minutes hard to do live (or record); 15 min next time? +- maybe postpone letting people plan for live presentation until a little bit later +- future: shorter CFP, longer prep period + +#+begin_example +Hello, ____! + +,* TODO [#A] Send pre-recording to EmacsConf + +Lots of speakers have already submitted their talks for EmacsConf +2021, and we've even be able to caption them. Yay! Here are some of +the presentations that have already come in: + + - Emacs News Highlights + - NonGNU ELPA Update + - telega.el and the Emacs community on Telegram + - Creating technical API documentation and presentations using org-babel, restclient, and org-treeslide + - The use of Org mode syntax outside of GNU/Emacs + - How Emacs made me appreciate software freedom + - Moldable Emacs, a step towards sustainable software + +We're looking forward to getting your presentation. If you send it in +as soon as you can, we can add it to the queue for captioning. We'd +like to stream as many talks with captions to make things more +accessible, and the text makes it easier to search too. Also, sending +the prerecorded video will make the conference day less stressful for +everyone. =) If you need extra time to get your prerecorded video, no +worries, we'll figure it out somehow. Please try to do it as soon as +you can! + +,* TODO Send page information (name pronunciation, pronouns, homepage, contact, sponsor links) + +We'd also like to add some standard information to the talk +information page to make it easier for people to talk about your talk, +find more information, contact you, or support you. + +Name pronunciation: +Pronouns: +Homepage: +Preferred contact info: +Links for sponsoring/supporting (if any): + +For example, Sacha's is: + +Name pronunciation: SA-sha CHEW-ah +Pronouns: she/her +Homepage: https://sachachua.com +Preferred contact info: sacha@sachachua.com +Links for sponsoring/supporting (if any): + +,* TODO Plan tech check if you're doing live Q&A + +Also, if you are planning to do live Q&A and you've already done the +tech check at test.bigbluebutton.org, we can set up a tech check call +with an organizer or volunteer. Sometimes there are technical issues +with sharing desktops or hearing audio, so it's good to get it sorted +out as soon as possible. Please check _____ for some options for a +live tech check and reach out to someone who's available when you are. +We hope to get more volunteers for tech checks, so if you can't find +someone whose availability matches yours, please e-mail us at _____ +and we'll try to find something that works. + +,* Also, sneak preview of talks =) + +As a thank-you for working on a talk for EmacsConf, here's a sneak +preview of the talks that have been submitted so far. Please don't +share it widely. If you want to refer to other people's talks in +yours, it's a good time to check out related talks! + +(TODO - info not in here) + +Thank you so much! + +Amin +#+end_example + +--- +TODO Sneak preview e-mail for people who have already submitted + + +--- +- Also do we want to give speakers early access to each other's talks? + - OK, ask them not to share yet +- ffmpeg installed on FTP upload +- TODO bandali to check compressed video and see if we want to change the settings +- TODO: Sacha - Make Etherpad template for speakers? Actually, e-mail might be easier to copy and paste from + - Name pronunciation + - Pronouns + - Links + - Homepage, socials + - Sponsor +- TODO: Sacha - send bandali Bcc list for nudge e-mails +- How many people did we do live tech checks last year? +- zaeph will not be very available. +- TODO maybe seabass? zaeph will e-mail. +- publicize contribute page to the mailing list? and stress the need for tech checkers +- TODO sachac: add current captioning results +- Future: bake it into the submission process (when will be a good time over the next 1-2 months) +- If we don't have enough people to do the tech checks, Leo will step up and maybe do some kind of office hours thing +- Process: + 1. E-mail the volunteers + 2. Update the table on the page + 3. If anyone wants to get started now, you can e-mail us +- BBB slide presentation feature broken, may be related to LetsEncrypt, can't leave messages on the screen; probably won't need it for EmacsConf +- DECISION Yes, broadcast open captions; published videos can be CC +- TODO zaeph will come up with the MPV settings for displaying open captions +- EmacsConf: friendly and relaxed =) + +- Summary + - #A zaeph: Set up tech check information, e-mail volunteers + - #A zaeph: Finish draft of e-mail for tomorrow or the day after + - zaeph: Figure out mpv settings + - bandali: Check video settings, see if we need to tweak compression/audio + - sachac: Keep captioning + +* October 30, 2021 meeting + +- Check-ins + - sachac: + - Using Emacs itself to record her talk, and has even managed to get a spectrum analyser right into it! + - [[https://github.com/sachac/subed-waveform][sachac/subed-waveform: Minor mode for displaying the waveform for the current subtitle in an Emacs subed-mode buffer]] + - bandali: + - Busy with the emails and around GNU in general + - Almost finished with a paper building on parts of his MA dissertation + - Last week’s presentation went well despite some minor hiccups + - It was a *long* session, so a 5-min break can be glossed over + - zaeph: + - All is well! A lot of swimming and fun experimentations! + - corwin: + - Pretty rested! + - Lots of stuff brewing with Fosshost + +- FTP: + - sachac: Where can I find the recordings? + - If we get talks early, we might get started on the subtitling + - bandali: Tried to setup the 2nd upload server + - Couldn’t get it to work; the same configuration on front0 for testing was working, but not onl + - The FSF sysadmins gave us access to a session/server which we might use as replacement + - sachac: Where can we keep the talks on front0? + - Reasoning: + - Last year, one of the issue that th epeople who had missed a talk wished they could have watched it + - Whilst the prerec is playing on the stream, we could put in a public directory to be able to watch it + - It’d be amazing if we could get the recordings ASAP this year, since most of them will be prerecs + - People need to be uploading files to the very server that we will be storing them on. + - Discussion: + - bandali: The main VMs that we have (live0 and front0) are fairly small, 20-25GB each. What we’ve been doing for the past couple EmacsConf has been to upload to a server provided Computer Science of the University of Waterloo + - Options: + - Fosshost + - corwin: Disk-space comes super-cheap to Fosshost, which means that it might be a good option. + - Could become our primary source (vs. CS Club which we use currently) + - CS Club (University of Waterloo); we might not have it eternally + - At the moment, it is our primary source + - We can still use it as a mirror + - audio-video.gnu.org (FSF) + - yang’s 2 mirrors in Europe + - Other options that we might consider for other editions: + - Justification: + - corwin: The footprint of EmacsConf will always grow as long as we maintain older publications for posterity, even if the grow is fairly linear. + - Linode block storage + - 1$/month for 10 GB + - corwin’s favourite provider + - Meta: + - Having 3 ISP is better than having 2 + - From a growth perspective, it’s good to have some cash outlay to help people understand that we have a need for money + - This also appeared with the android-app + - Other considerations + - Using emacsconf.org for redirections + - bandali: Someone set up two mirrors for us in Europe; it’d be nice to have mirror-resolve/-rotator that we could put in front to do the redirecting + - sachac: That would put more sysad work on bandali, though + - How do we handle the private→public publishing of the recording? + 1. Upload all the files to the public server + 2. chmod o-r on all the talks + 3. When a talk goes live: chmod o+r + - Handling redirections à la CDN + - bandali: + - We might want to add A records pointing to all the servers that we’re using as mirrors (in a round-robin fashion) + - GNU might have solutions + +- Asking new domains to the FSF sysadmins, especially on .emacs.org + - Have we considered having a .gnu.org domain linking to emacs.org? + - conf.emacs.org could be very nice for visibility. + - corwin: Could we do the same with orgmode.org? + - Imagine if the org-mode website had a featured talk from the EmacsConf! + - corwin: Once the relationship exists between emacs.org and orgmode.org, a lot of bridges can be built between the communities with mutual benefits + +- Alternate streams & Rebroadcasts + - APAC: + - sachac: As the prerecs come in, we can touch base with dragestil re: APAC event + - Other streamers: + - sachac: These next few weeks are also the best time to onboard alternate streamers + - corwin: Our must important work right now is bringing more talents/newcommers, and get them to the level where they feel technically-competent and empowered to help us further. + +- How to get new organisers involved as well they could be with the project? + - Doing tech-checks is a pretty good and easy to get started with volunteers. + - sachac: When we activate the other volunteers, what should we be asking them to consider? *Ordered by priority*, and which we should mention on the ~contribute.md~: + 1. Editing captions or writing new ones + 2. Helping with tech-checks + 3. Looking at the schedule, and if there’s something they particularly like, they could run get ready for a prolonged Q&A session + - sachac: We might have a ~contribute.md~ page similar to the prepare.md page + - We should link from /2021 to /2021/contribute.md. + - Also, other people who could come across it rather than just our current volunteers. + - corwin: ~contribute.md~ is the invitation, and the ~prepare.md~ is the directions to the party. + - How do we publicise this contribue.md? + - zaeph: Could we publicise contribute.md on r/emacs + - corwin: Yes! It’s a great piece of promotion to do. + - bandali: It might make sense to mention contribute.md to speakers + - Our next email to speakers should link to contribute.md + +- Tech-checks + - Getting organisers on board with tech-checks + - Which new volunteers could be bring along on this project? + - acdw (AM) + - dragestil (APAC) + - bhavin192 (APAC) + - seabass (EU) + - zleap (EU) + - ullbeking (?) + - zaeph (EU) + - corwin (AM) + - ??? + - bandali (AM) + - Putting the finishing touches on the checklist + #+begin_quote + - Would you please share your pronouns? + - Can you tell us how to pronounce your name? + - Can you speak and be heard? Is there echo? + - Can you hear the organizer (me)? + - Can you share your screen? Is the screen readable? + - If you plan to show your keystrokes, is that display visible? + - If you want to share your webcam (optional), can you enable it? Is it visible? Will there likely be distractions in the background? + - Can you view the collaborative pad? Will you be comfortable reviewing questions on your own (perhaps by keeping it open beside your shared window), or will you need a volunteer to relay questions to you? + - Can you share contact information (ex: phone number) so that we can get in touch with you in case of technical issues or scheduling changes? + - Do you need help finding your way around IRC so that you can check into `#emacsconf-org`? What is your IRC nickname? + #+end_quote + +- What to mention in our closing remarks + - Acknowledging volunteers + - Inviting other volunteers + - Alternate streams / Multiple tracks + + +* October 23, 2021 meeting + +- TODO + - bandali: + - Look into creating a Mastodon account + - Options: qoto.org, mastodon.sdf.org + - Keep working on the FTP deployment and setting up the VM + - zaeph: + - Pin post to r/emacs for the program + - Everyone: + - Add our social media to emacsconf.org/contact + - Think about the phrasing of some of our personal questions for the tech-checks + +* October 16, 2021 meeting + +- TODO from last time + - zaeph: + - Send email to the 12 people in the org block on day-1-afternoon + - Take charge of the TODOs (changing to WAITING_FOR_CONFIRMS) + - <2021-10-13 Wed>: Pin post to r/emacs + - bandali (& potentially seabass): + - Draft the email for submitting the schedule and send it out to -submit + - Publish the schedule + - SOFT DEADLINE: <2021-10-13 Wed> + - Setup FTP server + - Find a minimal web-based ftp server + - Might be a great use for vm01, actually! + +- Agenda + - /Glitter/ for EmacsConf + - Thinking about organisation principles like the bus-factor: how do we address it in a way that is not merely putting people on a pedestal? + +- Check-ins + - corwin + - Had a pretty rough work-week. :( + - sachac + - Taking care of kiddo! + - bandali + - Has already managed to <Backspace> in BBB. :o) + - zaeph + - Passed the first round of technical interviews + +- Considerations for EmacsConf 2021 and future editions + - sachac might not always be able to take care of the conf-days check-in + +- Coming up with a date for the publishing the schedule + - bandali: Has a draft, and would like to send it to us by tomorrow + - We don’t seem to have any blocker right now when it comes to publishing the schedule, except perhaps for the posters. + - We have + - We’ve elected to publish the schedule on [2021-10-20 Wed]. + - Do we want to to only publish the program, or do we want to publish the program & the schedule at the same time? + - corwin: More publications is usually good if we have unique and exciting things to share in each one + - ‘Here’s all the talks we’ve accepted so far’ + - sachac: Publishing the program early might get people curious about the topics, potentially leading to great questions + +- Glitter for EmacsConf + - We have three posters to review this year: one by zleap, one LaTeX-based, and one from alphapapa + - We don’t know what are the permissions on those posters, though. + - sachac: We could make social-media-friendly posters for publicising the conf. + - Where to publicise the conf? + - bandali: We could and should create a Mastodon + - zaeph: I can take care of r/emacs sticky-posts. + - We have Twitter: official account, and potentially sachac’s + - We can also [[https://nitter.net/emacsconf][EmacsConf (@emacsconf) | nitter]] + - Where to let things happen organically + - corwin can take care of Facebook; sachac has made the Emacs page public again + - lobste.rs… but we might let people do it themselves (or maybe ask zaeph’s contacts) + - HackerNews… But considering how unlucky bandali and zaeph are in getting visibility, we might as well let people take care of it (potentially with more karma) + - Since our program is fairly advanced (i.e. we don’t have a ‘What is an Emac?’ talk or anything along those lines), publicising on some broad-audience platforms might create expectations that won’t be met + - Main platforms for us: + - r/emacs + - Usergroups + - Emacs News + - IRC + - HackerNews + - Subsidiary platforms + - lobste.rs + - Twitter + - Facebook + +- On the legitimacy of adding our socials to emacsconf.org/contact + - We’re a little on the fence with publicising a Facebook page on this page, but we can probably label it accordingly (‘This page contains non-free JS’) + - We could also link to alternative platforms which are more respectful of people. + - …Or, we could say ‘go on this platform, and search for this page’ whilst raising awareness about non-free JS + - corwin: ‘The real reason why we’d want to put the links to social on the page is that people are aware of the energy that exist around the stuff that we’re doing. Demonstrating that energy is a way to get people excited about Emacs. + +- When to do tech-checks: after/before the soft-deadline for pre-recs + - sachac: We don’t have to wait for the soft deadline + - sachac: ‘[Speakers] + - We can redirect people to [[https://test.bigbluebutton.org/][BigBlueButton - Open Source Web Conferencing]] to test their system. + - Questions for the tech-checks (not published yet) + #+begin_quote + - $questions_about_pronouns + - We can track them in conf.org. + - Can you tell us how to pronounce your name? + # Questions after that point are copied from last year. + - Can you speak and be heard? Is there echo? + - Can you hear the organizer? + - Can you share your screen? Is the screen readable? + - If you plan to show your keystrokes, is that display visible? + - If you want to share your webcam (optional), can you enable it? Is it visible? Will there likely be distractions in the background? + - Can you view the collaborative pad? Will you be comfortable reviewing questions on your own (perhaps by keeping it open beside your shared window), or will you need a volunteer to relay questions to you? + - Can you share contact information (ex: phone number) so that we can get in touch with you in case of technical issues or scheduling changes? + - Do you need help finding your way around IRC so that you can check into `#emacsconf-org`? What is your IRC nickname? + #+end_quote + +- Public debrief for EmacsConf 2021: yay or nay? + - We already did this informally at the end of day-2 of EmacsConf 2020 + - We also started this process of debrieffing and having weekly meetings to review our process last year, but we did it privately. + - corwin: ‘The debrief on what happened in 2021’ should be done with a fair amount of gap with ‘What should be done in 2022?’ + - Is there a bit of a burnout going on with the weekly meetings? + - corwin: We’ve been meeting every week for a year + - …But it’s a lesson learnt, not a ‘oops’. + - Switching to a monthly meeting during the down-time (Dec-May) might alleviate this. + +- FTP server + - bandali: Been digging into various FTP servers implementations, and has been chatting with the FSF team; what they use is vsftpd; checked their local configuration, but bandali doesn’t know enough about it to deploy it right now. + - In short: did the learning, and will work towards setting up. + +- Process for editing the talks + - Changing the schedule should be done via conf.org + - Talk descriptions can be manually edited by the speakers via ikiwiki. + +- Generating XML programme + - seabass: Tried to implement this in ~schedule.org~; had got stuck with evaluating in the org-babel format + - sachac: you can define a new block without the results none arguments + - seabass can send a draft to the list + - sachac: Not neccessary to use many Emacs packages; ~(require 's)~ and ~(require 'cl-lib)~ + +- Follow-up email to speakers + - When to send it + - We should probably delay sending the program until we’ve sent this follow-up, since we’ll need speakers to review their apges + - We can probably give them a week to do so + - Tentative calendar: + [2021-10-20 Wed] Send follow-up + [2021-10-27 Wed] Edits to talk pages should be finished + [2021-10-30 Sat] Publishing the program + + - Content + - Announce tech-checks + - Ask people to try BBB via [[https://test.bigbluebutton.org/][BBB test page]] + - sachac: ‘If you would like to do live, please check your setup, and then email us to let us know that if tha passed, or if you need additional help; therefore, we should help from people who should go live, and if we don’t hear from the people who said they would do a live talk, we should follow-up with them’ + - Ask speakers to review their talk page and edit them manually (with ikiwiki, info at [[https://emacsconf.org/edit/][EmacsConf - Editing the EmacsConf wiki]], directing people to #emacsconf (not -org) for peer-help) if they want to edit their talk-page before the conference + - ‘We’d like to publish the program as soon as possible, and your talk-pages will be featured on it, so please take care of this by $date’ + - ‘We’re thinking of publishing by $date, so it’d be great if you could review it by then (no pressure!)’ + + +* October 9, 2021 meeting + +- TODO + - bandali: + - Send the follow-ups + - Special care for 40: Ask for doing their talk on Sunday rather than Saturday + - zaeph: + - Take care of the replies from the follow-ups bandali + - Remove sticky from r/emacs + - sachac: + - Going to wait for bandali to finish submitting the de-anonymised versions to front0 + +- Check-ins: + - bandali: + - Doing pretty okay, and catching up on sleep + - Trying to get on top of things + - corwin: + - Doing good; been busy + - sachac: + - Doing okay! Taking care of kiddo. + - zaeph: + - Still prepping for interviews; made it through the first step. + +- TODO for the session + - DONE When do we publish the schedule? + - Do we need to wait for the org-research block to reply? We’ve only bumped them slightly, so it’s probably not necessary. + - …No. + +- Clarifying the streaming setup + - bandali is considering doing the streaming on his own again this year. + - The setup from 2020 was a little /crude/, which is why we’re revising the OBS model we had in 2019. + - The plan is to do like what was done in 2019, since bandali’s setup is now more powerful and shouldn’t have the same problems as last time. + - bandali: We can keep our use of OBS fairly minimal, and consider it as /glitter on top/ + - We should specify what would constitute that /glitter/ + - Maybe we could get alphapapa to help us on this? + - We could get one of the newer orgas working on this, since there is no playbook to be learnt on that one. :) + - We’re going to stick to Linode; bump it up right before the event, and bump it down right after + +- Task force for the /glitter/ (in order of interest/availability) + - alphapapa + - zleap + - seabass + - corwin + - zaeph + +- Could we be using the other FH server (vm01) for other stuff? + - We could have found a use for it, but it squeezed between our fingers; or we could have returned it to FH + - Based on the original request that we’d filed for FH, we were supposed to use it to process the talks. + - Maybe we could deploy it in time for this year? + +- Capacity update for bbb + - 42/200 GB taken + - Might be filled by ≈<2022-04-09 Sat> + +* October 2, 2021 meeting + +- TODO + - bandali: + - Decomission the private repo from last year + - Reaching out to jwiegley for new Emacs update + - Get in touch with corwin for the streaming setup + +- Scheduling with sachac + - Questions raised by sachac after studying the anonymised talks + - Do we want to publish it? + - If we publish it, how precise do we want it to be? + - Do we want to think about dropping talks? + - Time exceptions + - Those are the ones we’ve either bumped down + + - Do we post this draft schedule, or do we say that all the people who help us with the scheduling? + - bandali does have an informal list of people involved + - bandali (but he’ll excuse himself since he anonymised + - zaeph + - dbremner + - sachac + - seabass + - acw (Chase) + - corwin + - We’ll probably need to think about which responsibilities we hand over to new orgas, since some of them might be tough (like asking candidates to reduce the size/scope of their talks, or shepherding some of the talks which we don’t think are ready yet) + + - Talk-specific considerations for exceptions + - 21: Resolved + - We might want to ask the candidate to record two versions, since the topic is very interesting, but it’s going to be quite tough to fit in the whole 40-min presentation that the candidate intended to + - Since the candidate mentions that there were two-parts, it might make more sense to trim one of the parts + - We could also offer 30-min, but that’d need to reduce the duration of 04 (M-x forever) + - We’ve resolved it by cutting the opening remarks on that day + - 40: + - 34 & 13: + - We need to get the candidates talking + - That’s not a blocker for accepting them, but we still + - 01: + - Maybe we could get the candidate to mention the reMarkable tablet, since it’s more aligned with our FLOSS goals? + - We’re not enthused with + - 02: + - Maybe make it clearer that this is the son + + - Potential talks we’re still waiting to hear from + - jwiegley’s dev update + + - Broadcasting with subtitles? + - [[https://wiki.c3subtitles.de/en:styleguide][Guide for subtitling talks]] + - We will push for big talks to have subtitles + - We can speakers to provide scripts if they’ve used one; otherwise, we can use whichever technique fits best (YouTube captioning; hand-editing them) + + - bandali has fired up emacsconf-private-2021 for sharing conf.org + - We’ll keep pre-recs info on it, for example. + + - Report on anonymising the proposals + - bandali: It wasn’t *too* bad; removing the names, the GH links was easy, but it’s definitely not a process + - sachac: Maybe something we can automatise next year! *maniacal laugh* + + - Content for the follow-up email: + - Talk is accepted + - Specify which time duration we are accepting (can be automatised?) + - Double-checking availability + - Pre-rec deadline: [2021-10-31 Sun] or [2021-11-07 Sun] latest + - Gentle incentive to submit early so that we can get them captioned + - Please start your talk with your name so that we can now how to pronounce it! + - ‘If you happen to have a script for your talk, please submit it as well!’ + - After you’ve finished your pre-rec, feel free to record a longer one that we can direct people to + - Tell people that there will be a page for them on emacsconf.org + - We should ask them for their pronouns which we will include on that page + - …But let’s not aim for sending them the actual URL to the page, since they might be subject to change + + - Content that we’ve consider for the follow-up email + - Nudge to write blog-posts about + + - Extra stuff to do on tech-checks + - Re-asking how to pronounce their names + + - How to introduce people + - Let zaeph do it + - Come up with Englishised IPA for the names of everyone (which zaeph would take care of) + - Actually, it could be zaeph’s entire role + + - For EmacsConf’s 2022: + - We might want to track talks according to IDs + - Submission could be sub-01-$title.org + +Notes from Paul: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +There is a free software camp coming up that could be useful to signpost people from there to emacs conf to learn about e-macs +https://camp.fsci.in/ +p;us the free software foundation europe +Youth Hacking For Freedom +If you like coding, tinkering, and having fun with software and if you are up for a challenge, we have something exciting for you: "Youth Hacking 4 Freedom" (YH4F), the FSFE's hacking competition for young people from Europe! +https://yh4f.org/ +Which again could be somewhere to promote emacs / emacs conf +#+END_QUOTE + + +* September 25, 2021 meeting +- TODO + - bandali & corwin: + - Figure out the streaming setup + - Who should be streaming? + - Experiment with tooling? + - Jitsi? + - RTMP webcamps via BBB? + - corwin: + - Come up with a list of topics for the next EmacsConf 2021 + - Based on sachac’s blog + - sachac: ‘There's some elisp in my emacs-news/index.org that has a list of the categories I usually use’ + - Think about interesting topics to have in a talkshow format for the next EmacsConf + - Also make a list of highly-political topics and what could be problematic about them + - zaeph: + - Think about personal talks and meta-talks for EmacsConf 2021 + - Everyone + - Think about adapting the format based on the number of talks we’ll be fielding + - Come up with a protocol / condition tree + +- Check-in + - zaeph: + - Didn’t do as well in the last checkpoint with his mock-interviews; but hopeful for the next one in 8 days! + - Did a quick presentation of what he’s been doing to prepare for his interviews + - bandali: + - Doing pretty okay! Busy week at work again with some not-too-interesting busyworkprevious names of JAMI + - Also been working on ERC patches + - seabass: + - Was here 3 weeks ago, and he’s back with us now! + - Has been working on: [[https://github.com/spdx/spdx-spec][spdx/spdx-spec: The SPDX specification in MarkDown and HTML formats.]] + - Suggested reconsidering the work that has been done last spring on getting text/org accepted as a valid mimetype + - We egged seabass on to make a short user-story talk, especially since he got involved in all this with the last EmacsConf + - corwin: + - Probably going to join us later + - sachac: + - Busy with kiddo today; might not be able to make it + +- News + - zaeph: Became co-maint for crdt.el with qhong +- Office hour + - bandali had one on Tuesday + - …Nobody did show up, though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ + - Wasn’t expecting much, but got time to answer emails + - bandali wil have the last one for this year next Tuesday +- Technical aspects of the streaming setup for the conference + - bandali and corwin haven’t been able to meet to discuss + - bandali thought about this, and would rather do the streaming himself (sticking with what worked) + - rtmp server w/ jitsi might be finnicky, and we don’t probably don’t want to risk + - If the server doing the mirroring goes down, we might not be able to + - Should we change our policy with regards to backup streaming services (YouTube, peertube?) + - It’s technically possibly for us to bounce streams and use the servers of non-free platforms to do most of the leg-work, but we don’t think it’s enough to change our policy + - Should we ask FH to provide more facility for the live streaming? +- Doing more with FH: + - sachac: Should we ask FH to handle the hosting of our conferences rather than the platforms we currently use? + - Currently, we use linode for streaming and uwaterloo (via bandali) for initial video upload +- List of tracks or topics for EmacsConf 2021 + - Considering our timing with the CFP closure, it’s not necessary for us to think about it right now +- Figuring out what do to during down-times + - Panels + - zaeph is slightly more confident in the format after having thought about it + - We’re quite excited about this, but there are + - sachac: We’re okay for 10am-pm at 75% load +- Intervention with emacs-devel? +- How to deal with private info for emergency contact + - We’ve figured a good workflow that will allow us all to access the files and keep it encrypted +- Closing the CFP + - Should we send an email to warn people? + - It might be a good idea to officially announce the closing of the CFP, but focussing on the thanking. It might also give some extra energy to those who were waiting to submit to hurry up. + +* September 18, 2021 meeting + +- Carry-over from last time: + - Next actions from last time + - zaeph: + - DONE Look into polling for views to turn into a cron + - bandali took care of it! + - Send email to Jeremy Friesen, and maybe schedule a meeting + - Also Cc: emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org + - Try to find a date that North-American folks can attend too + - CXLD Draft the email for publicising office hour + - DONE Make a PR for adding EmacsConf to [[https://confs.tech/?online=online#][Tech conferences in 2021 and 2022 | Confs.tech]] + - PR here: [[https://github.com/tech-conferences/confs.tech][tech-conferences/confs.tech: List of tech conferences: JavaScript / Design - CSS - UX / Ruby - iOS - Android - PHP - Data - Devops and more.]] + - Done by seabass: thanks! + - Everyone: + - CXLD <2021-09-01 Wed>: Review zaeph’s email proposal for publicising the office hour + - Come up with an exhaustive list of topics/tracks for the next edition + - Find the first TODO this document under [[#ongoing-projects][file:~/emacsconf.org::#ongoing-projects]] + + - TODO + - Review the ongoing projects because some projects ought to be updated + - Review the schedule for office hours + - Would sachac want some help with the scheduling? + - Could we maybe document a little more how sachac does it so that other orgas could help (or someone new to recruit)? + - Reviewing office hours + - Do we give up for this year and focus on the next one? + +- Check-in + - bandali + - Had to deal with [[https://planet.gnu.org/][Planet GNU]] going down, which took a couple of days but was a lot of stress + - Has also been working on ERC, since emacs-28 is going to be cut soon + - zaeph + - Still working on his interview + - sachac + - Managed to make it! + - corwin + - Managed to make it! + +- On the office hours + - Discussion + - zaeph: Has problems keeping up with the commitment, and is feeling locked with regards to publicising them without due funnelling down + - bandali has been participating to some of corwin’s office hours and has been having fun with it, even though it was mostly people from #emacs@libera.chat + - sachac: We already have a healthy number of submissions, so it might not be necessary? + - bandali: It might still be worth it to publicise the office hours on r/emacs, but to present them more as a conversation between friends + - zaeph: This feel closer to workshops, though (i.e., not just 1-on-1) + - zaeph: So, do we consider the office hours format worth reforming, or should we explore workshops for next year? + - Proposals + - We could have weekly/bi-weekly workshops with one of us managing the room so that people could come talk to us about anything, and we’d nudge people towards writing proposals or contacting us for help (since they will know us a little more) + - Should we cancel the office hours + - Should we make a meta-presentation about office hours during EmacsConf 2021 + - Why we were thinking they could be useful + - How we did the few of them? + - What plans do we have for the future (e.g. workshop)? + +- Handling the end of the CFP + - Extending the CFP by 1 week? <2021-10-07 Thu> + - Not necessarily a good idea because it ends up rushing us + - corwin: We should check stats from last year, and see how many submissions we get in the last week of the CFP (as it is currently shceduled) + - sachac: It’s also fine if it’s a one-day conference + - Come up with an exhaustive list of topics/tracks for the next edition + +- Hosting and handling responsibilities according to the number of talks we need to manage + +- EmacsConf 2022 + - We should pro + + + +* September 4, 2021 meeting + +- Next actions from last time + - zaeph: + - Look into polling for views to turn into a cron + - Send email to Jeremy Friesen, and maybe schedule a meeting + - Also Cc: emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org + - Try to find a date that North-American folks can attend too + - Draft the email for publicising office hour + - DONE Make a PR for adding EmacsConf to [[https://confs.tech/?online=online#][Tech conferences in 2021 and 2022 | Confs.tech]] + - PR here: [[https://github.com/tech-conferences/confs.tech][tech-conferences/confs.tech: List of tech conferences: JavaScript / Design - CSS - UX / Ruby - iOS - Android - PHP - Data - Devops and more.]] + - Done by seabass: thanks! + - Everyone: + - <2021-09-01 Wed>: Review zaeph’s email proposal for publicising the office hour + - Come up with an exhaustive list of topics/tracks for the next edition + - Find the first TODO this document under [[#ongoing-projects][file:~/emacsconf.org::#ongoing-projects]] + +- TODO + - Review the ongoing projects because some projects ought to be updated + - Review the schedule for office hours + - Would sachac want some help with the scheduling? + - Could we maybe documenta little more how sachac does it so that other orgas could help (or someone new to recruit)? + +* August 28, 2021 meeting + +- Check-in + - bandali + - Had a lovely time at the cottage + - sacha + - Doing good, as usual and ever! + - zaeph + - Doing /swimmingly/ well (or, as sachac is pointing out, /mostly/ well considering the ear cloggage) + - corwin + - Sleepy, but joined us eventually! :) + - seabass + - We’ve decided to invite seabass to our closed-door session since he’s shown an interest in helping us with the organisation + +- Polling number of visits to the CFP page + + - zaeph will take care of this + #+begin_src bash + cat /var/log/nginx/access.log{,.1} | awk '/0[56]\/Aug\/2021/ {print $1}' | sort | wc -l # total visits + + cat /var/log/nginx/access.log{,.1} | awk '/0[56]\/Aug\/2021/ {print $1}' | sort | uniq | wc -l # unique visitors + #+end_src + +- zaeph joining the r/emacs moderation team + - zaeph summarised the situation that has happened in r/emacs with regards to alleged over-moderation, especially on dissension with social justice topics + - We might want to have a discussion on the validity of platforming such discussion; some people like to discuss those topics and use them to deploy their pedagogy; opposite to that, we might think that not platforming those discussions would be for the best. + - Regardless of what r/emacs elects to do in the future, we should consider it as an experimentation for what EmacsConf could do with regards to platforming controversial topics + - We especially encountered the topic when we had RMS’s talk in EmacsConf 2020 + - sachac: + #+begin_quote + Last time, we were leaning towards moderating questions for potentially challenging talks + Hard to evaluate "arguing in bad faith" + Since the greatest conflicts are from opposing values, deeply held + #+end_quote + - Using off-topic tag to maybe not platform them immediately, or tag them accordingly? + - sachac: + #+begin_quote + It might be hard to get the behavior in, but maybe we can get some friendlies to model it. + And the tag can be added later + So by whoever's helping with the pad + And encouraging contact info for followup might also be doable with modeling + #+end_quote + +- Finding people to help us with + - zaeph found [[https://takeonrules.com/about/resume/][Jeremy Friesen]] who might be an interesting person to reach out to help us with gender diversity, considering their experience in inclusion of women in corporate software development circles. + - sachac: Diversity extra challenging this year due to disproportionate effect of COVID-related changes on women and minorities + - zaeph will reach out and see what can be done + +- Office hours + - corwin is having a stellar time with, but zaeph mostly has people showing up to listen in + - It’s a little bit against the spirit of the office hour + - We might still ask those people to bring over people we’re trying to help with this outreach program + - Publicising + - emacsconf-discuss & emacs-tangents@gnu.org + - r/emacs (and with zaeph as a mod, no need to bug anyone for pinning topics anymore! :) ) + - Twitter account (via our account or via the FSF’s; see below) + - Asking the FSF to include it in their monthly newsletter, or just tweet it out + - [[https://confs.tech/?online=online#][Tech conferences in 2021 and 2022 | Confs.tech]] + - ---------------------------------------- + - Fediverse presence + - seabass could put together a proposal for getting a Mastodon community + - It might not be a crucial thing to do now + - corwin’s feedback on his session + - The first sessions where mostly corwin sitting alone in the room. + - alphapapa joined and had a long, enthusiastic discussion. + - We need to have another look at the schedule for the ofice hours, especially now that bandali is back from his break + +- Podcast update + - bandali has to get in touch with gopar to see if they’re willing and able to take them up again + - bandali wants to get back to it, since a few episodes have already + +- Review process for the proposals + - Follow-up from last session: Should we find a time for processing the first batch of proposals that we already have? + - We’ve received 7 proposals so far + - seabass mentioned getting beginners involved in the review process, but zaeph voiced concern about how hard that crowd would be to find, and that it would take quite a bit of energy out of orgas to organise and structure this + - How could we best reach out to this crowd if you’re not much of an Emacs user to begin with? + - Approaching another Lisp community could be a good idea + - zaeph did a collective /mea culpa/ with regards to the 2nd improvement meeting that we were supposed to have + - There were two big topics that would have warranted more scrutiny for us + - Even though we were not able to implement some of the recommendations or to have some of the discussions that we wanted to have for EmacsConf 2021, we’ll still be able to cover those topics with as much time and focus as we want for EmacsConf 2022. In the meantime, however, and provided that we’ve got the people to do it, we can still look into pragmatic solution that wouldn’t require too much time and which would maximise the number of people from different communities coming to help us. + - seabass: You don’t need to be 100% unbiassed to get good viersity; what about going through the regular review process with 90% of the scheduled time, and taking the last 10% randomly. + - We had a long discussion about the benefits of open-door policies with regards to conferences, especially with seabass and corwin + +- We need to think about satellite sessions + - Possible locations + - Australia? + - From last year + - Boston + +- ERG resuming + - zaeph talked about what the session will be about: catching up + +* August 14, 2021 meeting + +- Important next actions from last time for today [2021-07-29 Thu 20:30] (UTC): + - CFP + - All done last week! + - Office hours + - Find other timeslots where we’d be available for office hours (tentative for now; no commitment, just feeling the water) + +- Check-in + - bandali + - Doing good! Atg a rainy time at the camping, but had a good time overall + - corwin (no longer mplsCorwin thanks to the Freenode exodus!) + - Has been putting a lot of work with FOSSHost + - Managed to get some work done on dungeon-mode + - Put some work on orgvm to update org via the web-browser (on corwin’s SourceHut) + - [[https://git.sr.ht/~mplscorwin/orgvm][~mplscorwin/orgvm - sourcehut git]] (do you want this published on the wiki, corwin?) + - This particular exploration was informed by corwin’s discovery of comic-chat which made him explore the NodeJS implementation + - sachac + - Managed to join us! + +- Quick thoughts on involving the public in the review process for the proposals + - sachac: Maybe put anonymized proposals on a wiki page, unless there's anything that's kinda iffy? + +- CFP + - Numbers for the CFP (via the nginx logs) + - Total visits: 100k + - Unique visitors 12k + - Pretty large numbers altogether! + - We should probably run this regularly (bi-weekly) to quantify /when/ people are participating + - Nudging people in directions that we want (sachac) + - In a couple of weeks? + +- Office hours + - Figuring out a schedule with every orgas (or users?) who want to get involved) + - Right now, we need to find a second slot that would be friendly to East Asia and Oceania + - Availabilities + - bandali will be away from <2021-08-21 Sat> to <2021-08-24 Tue> + - zaeph is available all summer + - Even if nobody shows up to the early office hours, there’s no rush: they’ll be running until the end of the CFP, and orgas can work on the office hours or on EmacsConf during them. :) + +- Alternative method for helping people: assisting during the recording + - Orgas could attend the recording of the presentations and ask questions to the presenter (which may or may not be included + +- TODO Next actions + - Everyone + - Come up with an exhaustive list of topics/tracks for the next edition + - Find the first TODO this document under [[#ongoing-projects][file:~/emacsconf.org::#ongoing-projects]] + - corwin + - Tue and Fri night (CST) TBC + +- Long running next actions: + - Project-based: + - bbb: + - BBB experimentations: + - See if increasing the RAM results in less CPU usage + - Gauge how much the number of present users affect the resources + - Working with the swap + - Decreasing the swapiness of the kernel might help + - Test RW speed (elsewhere than ~/tmp/~) + - Check if we can change the ffmpeg prioritisation for BBB (so as to get recordings out sooner, or to manage them ourselves) + - Does bbb spawn a ffmpeg process that we can investigate? + - Misc: + - Look into GLT21 to see if they have specifications/doc for their streaming + - We might want to discuss the podcast during the next session + - People-based: + - zaeph: + - Email Emacs NYC (and Cc sachac and bandali) to ask them if they’d be interested in hosting their sessions on our BBB instance (on FH) + - Organisers to content: + - admin@emacsnyc.org (goes to both Eric & Zach) + - Do the same with Emacs ATX? + - Do the same with M-x Research + - bandali: + - Prepare the announcement email for the Improvement Meeting™ + - Wiki updates for references to freenode + - Check if there is anything important on live0 that would need archiving (besides the raw EmacsConf2020 ಠ_ಠ) + - Listing the specs for the non-FH servers (very quick) + - Wipe the private-repo + * July 24, 2021 meeting - Check-in @@ -357,7 +1486,7 @@ - Wipe the private-repo * June 5, 2021 meeting - + - Next actions from last time - Project-based: - bbb: @@ -1048,7 +2177,8 @@ - mplsCorwin: Talk with Nate Sales - We want to talk with Nate Sales about CDN stuff - mplsCorwin will be asking Nate Sales to come again on [2021-05-01 Sat] - + - Also to be used for FTP uploads + - mplsCorwin update on FH - mplsCorwin is mentioning that we might get another server to handle - Depending on the location @@ -2225,3 +3355,415 @@ rganising the names on that page in a more relevant fashion? pad, for e-mailing out? - Braindumps welcome =) - Week after: public meeting/recording +* Some notes from the debrief after last year's conference +Proceedings: + +** On tech +*** Observations +- BBB worked better than last year's Jitsi. It was nice to be able to set up several moderators and have consistent URLs. This year's Jitsi + seemed more polished than last year's Jitsi, so maybe they've resolved their technical issues, but it was still nice to have a reliable host. +- amin generally happy. Leo ran into technical difficulties with BBB, also some speakers may have had Internet connectivity issues or BBB issues +- gstreamer seemed to hold up fine; might want to figure out how to switch scenes or send only the BBB audio + - amin: Very nice, happy about that, gstreamer not as harsh on laptop. +- low-res stream was handy, and running the ffmpeg command on live0 was fine + - amin: Super happy about that +- Audio check with a decibel meter was great (sachac) +- ffmpeg splitting had an i-frame issue when using -c:v copy: + https://superuser.com/a/704118 and + https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking#Seekingwhiledoingacodeccopy + - https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/7XrMLmwLBQ0mp2RQ8S6l - technical + notes, looks like we can adjust -ss to the keyframes that happen + every 4 seconds in the captured stream +- karl: BBB doesn't audio-level as well as other platforms. bandali + was loud, zaeph is not as loud, need to manually adjust. Other web + conference platforms handle it better. + - zaeph: BBB seems to aggressively add gain. Video fairly + low-quality when viewing both webcam and screensharing, probably + lost a lot of pixels. Recording quality is not that great, big + quality difference compared to prerecs. + - Might need to be more active shifting between webcam+screenshare and just screenshare. + - OBS can stream with picture-in-picture, maybe, but a burden for live presenters if there are too many technical hoops + - Cheese etc. can display their webcam while they're sharing their desktop + - BBB didn't handle multi-monitor sharing desktops well - one of the presenters couldn't share just one monitor's desktop + - Bit wasteful use of screen real estate. Jitsi might do it better. + - Focusing on speaker webcam during Q&A might help. +*** Improving +- Can test improvements throughout the year instead of waiting for next conference +- System audio out isn't captured by BBB. Maybe presenters can set up a virtual audio loopback device and test during the tech check? +- Play intermission audio from Emacs, naturally ;) +- Normalize audio for prerecs? + - We could also use a compressor on all the ones which are 'voice-only' (i.e. not those with music/video in them) +- Re: decibel meter, it might have been even better to use PulseEffects which would have allowed bandali to apply auto-gain and a limiter to the sound output of selected apps on his sytems (mpv & FF for BBB). ( https://github.com/wwmm/pulseeffects ) + - In my experience, it very rarely misbehave. + - It could also save us the trouble of applying gain to the talks which happened live. +- Make sure I've copied the right low res command line into my notes, and test it again +- Start streaming even earlier if possible, so that there's plenty of room to stress out about mirroring, update the status page, etc.=) +- Write a script to curl the total live viewers across streams. + - I prototyped something during the breaks, but gave up halfway because making it with scrapy would have been much faster than what I'd been doing. + - live0.emacsconf.org tracked peak viewers, so it was fine to not worry too much about it +- Find a better solution for streamers to toggle mute/unmute for BBB and the stream + - As a temporary backup, I visualised the stream's audio spectrum to make sure that, when bandali was speaking, I could see speech waveforms on the stream. + - mpv --config=no --quiet --vo=tct --lavfi-complex='[aid1]asplit[ao][a1];[a1]showwaves=mode=cline:colors=white:rate=25[vo]' "https://live0.emacsconf.org/main.webm" --mute +- Have an easy command to show local time. + - On GNU/Linux: + - watch TZ=America/New_York date + - http://www.tmzns.com/ looks nice but it doesn't understand "UTC" as a time-zone and you need to find a matching city +- If we find a way to publicly serve the icecast dump, I wonder if we can make it quickly viewable with offsets on the day of, like with videojs-offset, so that people can access quick replays of talks they've missed +- It might be interesting to have an overlay of time - talk title - speaker name - info page etc., maybe on the bottom of the stream. That way, people tuning in mid-stream can see what's playing. People would need to plan for that in their recording. +** On emails +*** Observations +- bandali struggled a bit getting all the speakers in the Bcc, always seeming to forget some of them. +*** Improving +- Create lists. +- Have one source of truth (in the private wiki), and use that to prepopulate the emails. + - TODO sacha: export uniquified list for copying, also do mail merge (maybe based on https://github.com/jkitchin/jmax/blob/master/mail-merge.el ) + - index.org doesn't contain all the e-mail addresses at the moment. Maybe an org-capture for grabbing the initial submission from the e-mail might be nice in the future. +** On time-keeping +*** Observations +- We managed to stay on schedule throughout the entire conference with minor adjustments. + - This was totally surprising because I expected the schedule to be + penciled in, given our experience last year with dropped talks and + technical issues. + - Come to think of it, automatically scheduling all the sessions + with some nifty Org code worked great for both planning (do we + have enough time for the talks?) and timing on the day of the + talk. In 2019, we relied on playing pre-recorded talks with no + live Q&A in order to manage our time, playing them ahead when we + needed to cover technical issues and sticking all the rest at the + end of the conference when we reached the end of the time. In + 2020, we actually followed a plan instead of adjusting on the fly, + and it was great! +- Check-ins were done sufficiently in advance (we said 15 minutes, but + ~30 min before was nice). +- Problems with check-in were minimal due to prior tech-checks with + the speakers. Thanks to all the people who helped with tech checks, + and to Amin's repeated nudges to do tech checks! +- Small adjustments were pushed when needed. +- The pre-recorded talks had set durations, which removed variables. +- zaeph watched time like a hawk. +- zaeph even called people thanks to the emergency contact information + we collected during the tech-checks. + - Karl is curious: how often did you call people via phone? + - 5 phonecalls total. +- We allowed for 3 minutes of buffer between talks, which let us juuuuust squeeze in the talks with a little bit of overtime. +*** Remarks +- Time-keeping on D1 was good, but on D2, it was great. +*** Improving +- More buffer might have been nice for questions, but then we would + have had to say no to talks. Switching between talks was smoother + last year because bandali used OBS to stream prerecorded videos, so + he could join the other conference room while the prerecorded video + was playing. But OBS killed his laptop, so that's why he used + gstreamer. Maybe we can look into a way for gstreamer or another + tool to stream a file while bandali joins the next room? Then we + don't have the echo test showing up in the stream, and bandali can + more smoothly give the go-ahead off-camera. +- People had strong fear-of-missing-out despite the heads-up about + prerecorded presentations. If we have the opportunity to do so, it + might be good to build in more breaks. +- We can make a list of pre-recs and their durations to avoid bugging + Amin all the time. It was challenging for Amin to deal with late + pre-rec submissions, but maybe he can stash the submissions on the + shared server, or have a shell script that can list all the + filenames and times and copy them to a file on the server. He made + me a list of prerecs that I could use to quickly check which talks + were actually available, so it just needed duration to be perfect. +- I wonder what an Org command for quickly adjusting timestamps could look like... What would that interface be? + - Don't we have a way to shift <...>--<...> timestamps by min ? + - Oh, we recalculate the timestamps for all talks based on + MIN_TIME properties, actually, so I'm thinking more along the + lines of an interactive command that lets me say that [talk] + actually started at [time] and then it adjusts all the talks and + republishes the schedule files and pushes them. I already have + something that goes off the FIXED_TIME property, so I think it's + more like a matter of kicking it off with fewer keystrokes and + making it part of the talk transition process. And maybe + something that sets a QA_START property for the timestamp of the + Q&A. +** On starting early + Observations Starting early caused frustration for some people + who had written down the times. We had disclaimers, but of + course people skipped right over them. =) Explanation Our + opening remarks were designed to buffer technical problems, but + we didn't have any. Well, I was stressing over the 480p thing, + but that wasn't worth holding up the talks. Remarks It's better + to be early than late during those events. (Well, maybe... + People regret missing out on talks they were looking forward + to, but we also don't want to run way past our time.) Improving + The problem was addressed live by prepending all the times with + ~; we could do the same next year. Since we were great at + keeping time this year, we might do away with with the + buffering time at the onset. *knocks on wood* +** On accessibility +*** Observations +- jcorneli and dto did an amazing job of describing the talks. +- jcorneli and dto had to sign off at times, and despite calls for volunteers in #emacsconf, nobody took over. +*** Improving +- Get more volunteers on-board beforehand. +- (possibly) ask volunteers to commit to various morning/afternoon + shifts ahead of time so that there is always at least one planned + volunteer, but preferably two "on duty". I.e. a simple schedule for + volunteers. + - I said I was probably mostly available for day 1, but day 2 might + be a bit tougher. I can make sure people are more comfortable with + checking in people in case kid stuff comes up +- I recommend breaking things into two-hour shifts, the transcribing + is a bit brain-heavy and kind of burned me out. +- Choosing particular time blocks would make it a bit easier to + coordinate "interruption free" times with family/housemates. (This + was a big factor for me on Sunday afternoon, multiple kids and dog + plus other people. Next time I'll probably commit to transcribing + more on Saturday and then Sunday morning, and see if we can find + someone besides me for Sunday afternoon) + - Hah, there are no real interruption-free times with a 4-year-old +- Get OK from jcorneli, dto, and other volunteers to add the + timestamped logs as possible descriptive text for the videos as + temporary subtitles while there are no proper transcripts. + - (ok from dto) +- have opportunities for different levels of time sensitivity of + commitments (e.g. stuff people who can just drop in sometimes can + usually learn to do pretty easily and that helps). +- A green-room could be fun, inviting speakers a "quiet" place to + talk about things before they "happen", answering questions, even + FAQs for speakers on a priority then becomes both a thanks and an + easy starter voluntering opportunity with obvious perks built in. + - I thought about having speakers check into a green room so that + the audio alert from it could be always available, but I thought + that having them check in directly to their room would be less of + a hassle than two successive echo checks. It was nice to have + zaeph join me as I checked in some people. +- Cuttings streams as point-in-time markers collectievly assembled + could provide a path to CI/CD flows toward speach-to-text during the + event, or at least faster and eventually less manually after. + - The pad had timestamps with some formatting differences, so I was + able to pull them out and set them as properties. I ended up + manually reviewing the stream to see where to set the timestamps + anyway, since that felt like it might be easier. It mostly worked + except for the part where I accidentally included the prerec that + followed one of zaeph's talks. =) Maybe if we displayed a clear + timestamp at the start of the stream and then had some code that + would take that timestamp and calculate the correct offset for any + timestamps from the file... Yeah, that could work. + - So, like, a step in the check-in process that tells Emacs "All + right, this talk has started" (or "Oops, this talk started at X + time and I was distracted"), and it announces it to IRC and + stores the timestamp, and maaaaabye even spits out the ffmpeg + command to extract the previous talk out of the Icecast dump +** On the pad + Observations The pad was opened by many people. I believe we + peaked at 145. On top of being opened, many people used the + pad. People appreciated being able to immediately access links + and notes from previous talks publicvoit kept the pad up to + date and super clean. It probably was quite exhausting to do + all this by himself, even though he had some help from ??? (b- + something, I've closed the query in IRC. :( ) Karl was the only + person who contributed to the time-stamp logging. As long as + Karl is at the event, that's perfectly fine but I had to leave + earlier because of time-zone shift and exhaustion. Clearing pad + colours periodically helped speakers focus The Q4: Q3: Q2: Q1: + template that evolved by the end of the conference was really + handy, since experienced volunteers could keep adding slots and + people could add in the convenient blank spots. Might be handy + to keep a copy of the boilerplate ready for pasting in. The pad + got zapped once, and the Wikimedia Etherpad didn't have an easy + way to restore to a certain point aside from copying and + pasting. If there's another pad with good revision history + management, that might be worth checking. Winding back a few + minutes and cutting/pasting the contents back to the current + pad, worked okay in a pinch but probably isn't ideal. Karl + agrees: restoring content once for the whole event with ~140 + people reading/contributing is actually much better than + anticipated. However, when there is a better alternative: let's + switch. Reverse-chronological order worked better than + chronological order for typing things in. I don't know if + chronological order might be manageable if we have a Q1: Q2: + Q3: Q4: template so that people aren't accidentally pressing + enter in the middle of someone else's question. Also, + chronological might require more scrolling on the presenter's + part, and the questions move when people type things above + them. Karl: I don't see any advantage with + reverse-chronological order but several disadvantages: People + had hard time to add a new itemize-item at the top: I had to + fix many questions that were normal paragraphs. This cancels + out the main reason we had for starting the reverse order IMHO. + Everybody had to learn not to use the "normal" order of things + people are doing all the time: from top to bottom. Most + speakers on day one started with the topmost question for + answering as well. Karl: If the majority thinks, this is worth + the effort, let's continue with that. Otherwise, my guess would + be that having a few Q1, Q2, Q3 (in order), people will be fine + adding questions. I think some IRC questions fell through the + cracks. For people only posting questions on IRC, we would need + to teach them to prepend them with something like "Q:" or + similar. Otherwise, IRC is hard to skim for questions among the + chitchat. +** On the topic of the talks +*** Observations +- Plenty of topics. +- Varied topics. +- People enjoyed the more personal talks. + - shoshin's talks. + - Pierce Wang's talk. + - My user/developer story. + - People liked the face-to-face. + - I'm so happy about that! I think people's stories are an important part of humanizing Emacs, and I'm glad we made space for those talks. +- People liked the sequence of talks, too, which meant the time that we spent fiddling around with the flow of the talks worked out. +- Even though it was tough for speakers to squeeze their talks into even smaller timeframes than they asked for, I think it worked out well that people got a taste of lots of different topics + Q&A time afterwards. I'm glad we were able to accept all the talks. As Karl pointed out before, most conference committees have to make tough decisions about which talks to accept and which talks to reject. If we can figure out a way to make it happen time-wise, I'd like to make our role more of accepting as much as we can, and then sorting and shaping talks so that they flow well together. +*** Questions +- Should we develop the idea of tracks? + - This year, we had an org-mode track which allowed people interested in org-mode to tune in at a precise time, and have many topics that could interest them in quick succession. + - Parallel tracks split organizer attention and result in high fear-of-missing-out; not sure we could have pulled it off this year, but maybe with more practice? I think it would be super-cool to have workshops if volunteers wanted to do them, like an Emacs Lisp workshop or an Org workshop where people can just drop in and ask questions or show stuff. Gotta have people, though. + - dto: I like the workshop idea + - Karl would love to see a switcher-track since approx. 97% of all people I work with are using vim and still do think that it's just about editing. Furthermore, a switcher-track overlaps with the newbie-track - so it's probably a matter of track-name marketing ;-) +*** Improving +- Finding more use for the alt-stream. + - ~30 people, 10% of the stream, like I thought! =) Didn't have the brainspace to pull it off on the first day, and narrowly had enough brainspace to do it on the second day. Might be able to do it more easily next time, now that I've remembered my laptop has a mute shortcut. That was only an issue because wasamasa couldn't play a game full-screen while looking at the Etherpad. Other speakers would have been able to look at the Etherpad on their own, so I wouldn't need to read things out to them and can stay muted for the whole time. It also tied me up attention-wise, so it was great that zaeph could handle checkins too (and I appreciated how he could drop in and say stuff). If I get bbb-recorder or some other virtual framebuffer-based streamer working next time, I might be able to run the alternate stream with less attention. + - Wouldn't it be amazing if next year we nailed the implementation of alternate streams and were able to pack in tons of talks, maybe with 10 minute summaries on the main stream and then extended demo/Q&A on the alternate streams... +** On coordination +*** Observations +Stellar coordination on #emacsconf-org. +*** Improving +- We lost contact with mplsCorwin during his talk because the rtmp stream was one-way. + - We should have told him to keep an IRC window opened. + - Phoning him did the trick, but it was definitely more stressful for the speaker than just casually looking at the IRC window. + - I had the wrong channel open and wasn't watching the right screen. Thanks so much for the call Leo! The personal touch, like a call from an organizer when things aren't going right, can be huge. +** On tech-checks +*** Observations +- We had a check-list to make sure that we weren't forgetting anything. +- Asking for emergency contact info was a great idea. + - It saved our butts many times this year. =) =) +*** Improving +- Filling a table with all the info we gather (pre-rec or live: Q&A: live or pad/IRC, contact information, IRCnick) + - Our private repo was a good start, but we didn't prepare enough for the format. + - I like formalized processes, even when their steps might seem a little pedantic. Often there are complexities that we have the opportunity to prepare better for "between the lines" given such orginization. Maybe tech check is an easy place to start? IDK. I'm going to be trying to take this approach to everthing now, having hit upon it over the course of the conference at. al. Can we have too much org? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ +- It was nice being able to add things to the tech checklist, such as making sure speakers knew how to check in via IRC. +- Karl would like to be able to use a BBB room for tech-check so that we could share the load on those checks. +** On asking for pre-recs +*** Observations +- We pushed speakers to send us more pre-recs this year. +- As a result, we received more pre-recs (% ? I'd eyeball it at 60%) +- Speakers mentioned struggling with recording. Maybe we can provide more explicit help: here are the settings for recording with OBS, here's a tutorial for video editing, here's an ffmpeg example for stitching images/videos+audio together and converting them to the right encoding +*** Questions +- Pre-recs are nice for us, but aren't we losing a bit of interaction with the public? + - Especially if we're having more tracks in the future like org-mode, it's nice to have the ability to react to what was said before you (cf. the talks on org-roam) + - We encouraged interactions between talk topics by asking speakers to coordinate beforehand, and I think everyone took us up on our suggestions. Tech demonstrations are always a little nerve-wracking, so it's nice to have everything smoothly running. (And it's hard to properly focus on someone else's presentation when you're worrying about yours and whether it'll still work... =) ) +- If pre-recs have a negative impact on interaction with the public, do we feel capable of handling more live presentations? + - Some moments during the conference were particularly stressful: on the one hand, I couldn't take a pause for 3h straight on D2 because of the late check-ins. On the other hand, some other moments were particularly calm. I believe we've gained some valuable experience on this, and we might be better at this the next time. + - We can stress a little less about checkins knowing that we can either check people in during the playing of their prerec or say that the Q&A for them will be deferred, or by asking people to check in even earlier if they can. It would be nice to get their IRC nick during the tech check, so we can check if they're around. +- Short prerecs worked better than expected. Short prerec + live Q&A. 40-minute prerec talks are a little harder to stay engaged with +** On animation/hosting +*** Observations +- My style of animation seems to have gone well with the public + - Self-deprecating humour. + - Making fun of tech-problems. +** On check-ins +*** Observations +- Check-ins were done efficiently. +- Protocols helped us streamline the process so that 1) we didn't forget anything, and 2) we could get things done quickly. Final protocol: + - Say hello, thank them + - Check if people's mics/screensharing work + - Check screen readability + - Check live talk vs prerec preference, live Q&A vs IRC/pad, and whether they want to read the pad themselves or have Amin read questions to them + - Let them know that they can answer questions in any order and skip questions if they want + - Tell them Amin will join and then give them the go-ahead + - Remind people about personal information (especially Org) + - Coach people to start their segment by saying their name and a quick intro to their talk (so that Amin doesn't have to stress out about remembering pronunciations) + - Give them a brief heads-up shortly before Amin joins + - Start recording when Amin joins + - Track timestamp of start + - Announce topic in IRC + - Leave + - TODO: automate scheduling, announcement, publishing previous talk, etc. +- I like the ERC commands I made for sending people URLs and telling Amin who's ready where. =) They're in emacsconf-2020-private/index.org. +** On live Q&A +*** Observations + Check-in involved asking speakers if they wanted to do a live Q&A. +*** Improving +- Our tech-check should include if speakers want to do a live Q&A +- Letting speakers know that they're almost out of time + - bandali suggested warning them via BBB whilst keeping his mic muted to the stream + - Problem: Speaker are startled and look like they're hearing voices :o) + - A bell? A chime? Something instrumental? If BBB webcam video is visible, Amin can hold up a sign. + - fun video of time-boxing Ig Nobel talks you need to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAnVNXaa5oA +- sachac had a great idea of writing it in the pad, so that the speakers may know that they only have one minute/one question left. + - Yup, especially since most people were able to watch the pad for their own questions, and the ones who didn't were getting questions from Amin. +** On publishing the recordings +*** Observations +- Figuring out the timestamps and splitting up the bulk recording into individual talks/Q&A takes time +- We can satisfy the initial "Aaaaah! I want more!" by posting the + prerecs. If Amin keeps all of the day 1 prerecs in one folder, he + can just mv them into a public folder, and add any last-minute ones + as they come in. If we want to be super-fancy, maybe we can even + move them one at a time after each talk. although I think Amin likes + keeping them on that uwaterloo server, so it would be one more thing + he has to do. +- Slicing is actually pretty fast and can be done on a partial copy of + the stream, so we might be able to do it in the future. We can + quietly replace them with higher-quality versions if we want to. ** + Improving +** On publishing the Q&A logs (brought up by bhavin192) +*** Observations +- Some of the logs have lots of '+1' which are a tad useless now. +- We've mostly plopped whatever was in the pad in the relevant section on emacsconf.org. +*** Improving +- Process the logs to remove the extra stuff. + - It's definitely not a hgih-priority item, and I'd much rather have us on publishing the recordings as we have this year. (zaeph) +- Rethink the format. + - Go for a newspaper style. + - Questions in bold. + - Answer below with the name of the speaker prepended. +** On live viewership + ** Observations +- We peaked at ~400 viewers during RMS talks. + - dto: wow! + - Last year peak viewers = ~270 +- D1 averaged at ~340 viewers. (eyeballing) +- D2 averaged at ~250 viewers. (eyeballing) +** On asking feedback +*** Observations +- Viewers gave us quite a lot of feedback in the Other Pad™. +*** Questions +- How are we going to ask speakers for feedback? Etherpad/email + - Form to fill send via email? + - FOSS online form? + - (Off-topic: Do we have news from the Emacs Developer Survey?) + - I think the number-crunching from the Emacs Survey will take a while +** On having talks which could be construed as 'commercial product pitches' +*** Observations +- gmj`` on #emacsconf brought up the fact that Rainer König's talk + could have been associated to his Udemy course on org-mode (which + requires a fee). + - His Org talks are actually also available on Youtube for free. I + would have had no problem with Mickey Petersen plugging Mastering + Emacs update, too. +*** Remarks +- There's a general aversion to 'paying for stuff' in FOSS because it's often conflated with non-FOSS practices. + - This sentiment is problematic because it makes it hard for developers and community-figures to sustain themselves financially. + - FOSS has always allowed people to get paid for it; F doesn't mean $, but freedom. Also, it looks like the sentiment is shifting - more people are looking for ways to support the people who work on the stuff they like + - The systems of donations and patronage are the most widely accepted, but they're also the poorest in terms of results. + - Donations disproportionally favour prominent members of the community. + - The 'buy me a coffee' attitude downplays the amount of effort that goes into writing and maintaining software. + - A better solution for developers is project- or milestone-based financial goals: 'To develop feature X, it's going to take Y amount of money.' + - The idea is developed in https://sustainoss.org/ + - To quote François Élie, an influent FOSS advocate in France: + - Free/libre software is free once it has been paid for. + - Having a service industry around FOSS is what allows plenty of non-dev actors (educators, tech-writers, etc.) to sustain themselves. +*** Improving +- Develop arguments to use with people who conflate 'paid services' with 'non-FOSS practices'. +- Anticipate those problems by asking speakers how they sustain themselves in the FOSS world during the CFP. + - What would we do with the information? +** On the CFP +*** Observations +- People appreciated the nudge to talk to people who might be having imposter syndrome +*** Questions +- Do we want submissions to be anonymized next year? I think it adds quite a bit of load on the volunteer handling the incoming submissions. +- Do we want to experiment with the accept-as-much-as-possible approach next year as well? +** On BBB +*** Observations +- Audio quality was all over the place. + - BBB aggressively adds gain to participants, but it doesn't seem to be doing it in an intelligent way. +*** Remarks +*** Improving +- Prefer pre-recs? + - Has problems, cf. previous point on pre-recs. +- Find other tools? |