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-rw-r--r--blog/2022-10-16.md44
-rw-r--r--blog/2022-10-23.md67
-rw-r--r--blog/2022-10-30.md51
-rw-r--r--blog/2022-11-07.md51
-rw-r--r--blog/2023-08-14-cfp-progress.md141
-rw-r--r--blog/2023-09-25-draft-schedule.md33
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diff --git a/blog/2022-10-16.md b/blog/2022-10-16.md
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+[[!date "2022-10-16"]]
+[[!meta title="Speakers confirmed, Etherpad, watch pages, shifts"]]
+
+Hello, folks! Here's the weekly update on what's happening backstage
+for EmacsConf 2022 in case you notice something that you want to help
+out with. =)
+
+- All the speakers have confirmed that they've gotten the acceptance
+ e-mails. Many speakers have confirmed that the schedule works for
+ them after I reshuffled a few talks for better availability. I've
+ posted the schedule at <https://emacsconf.org/2022/talks/> . We'll
+ announce the schedule on the emacsconf-discuss mailing, Reddit, and
+ various places this week.
+
+- zaeph has been working on the ffmpeg incantations for preprocessing
+ the videos that will be submitted soon. bandali is working on
+ getting the FTP and web-based uploads sorted out so that speakers
+ can submit their videos.
+
+- I created some watch pages to support viewing different tracks:
+ <https://emacsconf.org/2022/watch/> . The livestreams won't work yet
+ and it would be nice to figure out something that can dynamically
+ display info for recent/current/upcoming talks, but it's a start.
+
+- We set up a self-hosted Etherpad (ex:
+ <https://pad.emacsconf.org/2022-journalism>) with an easy way to
+ redirect to using Wikimedia in case we run into scaling issues. I've
+ added it to our Ansible playbook
+ (git@git.emacsconf.org:pub/emacsconf-ansible) and I'm looking
+ forward to incorporating Ry P.'s improvements. Karl Voit gave
+ feedback on the first draft of the template.
+
+- vetrivln volunteered for some of the dev hosting shifts, Karl Voit
+ volunteered for some of the gen pad shifts, and FlowyCoder
+ volunteered for some of the gen check-in shifts. Thanks!
+
+Next week, we hope to:
+
+- Announce the EmacsConf 2022 schedule in the usual places (got any wording/JS/CSS suggestions?)
+- Finalize the upload instructions so that speakers can start submitting their files
+- Put together volunteer training materials
+- Set up per-speaker BBB rooms and friendly URLs
+
+Sacha
diff --git a/blog/2022-10-23.md b/blog/2022-10-23.md
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+[[!date "2022-10-23T18:07:00Z"]]
+[[!meta title="Backstage, captions, streaming, and more"]]
+
+Hello, folks! Here's the weekly update on what's happening backstage
+for EmacsConf 2022 in case you notice something that you want to help
+out with. =)
+
+- We've e-mailed the speakers instructions for uploading their files
+ through either a web browser or an FTP client, and three speakers
+ have already done so! Those talks are now available in the backstage
+ area (<https://media.emacsconf.org/2022/backstage/>), along with the
+ first set of edited captions (thanks Jai Vetrivelan!). If you don't
+ have the username and password for the backstage area and you would
+ like to access it, please e-mail me and I'll send you the details.
+- We've created a BBB room for each speaker's live Q&A session. The
+ URLs are in conf.org in the private repository if you need them.
+- We've drafted some documentation for different volunteer roles. If
+ you'd like to volunteer as a captioner, check-in person (hmm,
+ reception?), Etherpad scribe, IRC monitor, or host, please check out
+ the appropriate link and let me know if I need to add anything to
+ the docs:
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/volunteer/caption>
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/volunteer/irc>
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/volunteer/pad>
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/volunteer/checkin>
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/volunteer/host>
+- Thanks to David O'Toole for signing up for some IRC shifts! If you
+ would like to volunteer for a shift, check out
+ <https://emacsconf.org/2022/organizers-notebook/#shifts> .
+- We've updated our streaming configuration for the General and
+ Development tracks, and have started testing them using mpv and the
+ watch pages. Videos aren't currently streaming, but you can check
+ out the layout of the watch pages at:
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/watch/gen/>
+ - <https://live.emacsconf.org/2022/watch/gen/>
+ - <https://emacsconf.org/2022/watch/dev/>
+ - <https://live.emacsconf.org/2022/watch/dev/>
+ These pages could probably be a lot prettier and easier to use. If you have some ideas
+ for improving them or if you'd like to work on the HTML/CSS/JS, we'd
+ love your help!
+- There are now Q&A waiting rooms with friendly URLs so that it's
+ easier for people to join the live Q&A when the host decides it's
+ okay to let everyone in. They're linked on the watch pages (along
+ with the pads) and they'll be linked from the talk pages once we're
+ ready to share them.
+- zaeph has been busy tweaking the ffmpeg workflow for reencoding and
+ normalizing videos. Thanks to Ry P. for sharing the
+ res.emacsconf.org server with us - we've been using it for all the
+ processing that our laptops can't handle.
+- We experimented with using the OpenAI Whisper speech-to-text toolkit
+ to create the auto-generated captions that captioning volunteers can
+ edit. Looks promising! If you'd like to compare the performance
+ between small, medium, and large models, you can look at the VTT
+ files for the sqlite talk in the backstage area. I've also added
+ support for tab-separated values (like Audacity label exports) and a
+ subed-convert command to subed.el, which might give us a more
+ concise format to work with. I'll work on getting word-level timing
+ data so that our captioning workflow can be even easier.
+
+Next week, we hope to:
+
+- improve the prerec and captioning workflows
+- get more captions underway
+
+Lots of good stuff happening!
+
+Sacha
diff --git a/blog/2022-10-30.md b/blog/2022-10-30.md
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+[[!meta title="Captions, tech checks, intros, OBS"]]
+
+Hello, everyone! Here's the weekly update on what's happening backstage
+for EmacsConf 2022 in case you notice something that you want to help
+out with. =)
+
+- Help wanted - Captioning: There are three talks open for captioning
+ in <https://media.emacsconf.org/2022/backstage/> , so feel free to
+ e-mail me if you'd like to reserve one. I've tweaked the captioning
+ process a little bit so that I can reflow the transcripts into
+ shorter subtitles before people edit the captions, so editing is
+ easier to do because you don't have to split along the way. (If
+ you're curious about the technical stuff, I switched to manually
+ splitting the text using emacsconf-reflow from emacsconf-el and then
+ the using aeneas for forced alignment, because I couldn't figure out
+ how to get torchaudio unstuck sometimes.)
+
+ If you don't have the username and password for the backstage area
+ and you would like to access it, please e-mail me and I'll send you
+ the details.
+
+- Help wanted - tech checks: For sessions with live Q&A, we'd like to
+ set up tech-checks with speakers to make sure that their setup works
+ well with BigBlueButton. A rough outline of the process is in the
+ tech-checking protocol heading at
+ <https://emacsconf.org/2022/organizers-notebook/#tech-checks> . If you
+ would like to help with tech-checks, please e-mail us with your
+ general availability (including timezones) and preferred public
+ contact information so that we can include you on the list at
+ <https://emacsconf.org/2022/prepare/#tech-check> and in the e-mail to
+ speakers.
+
+- Help wanted - intro/intermission slides, OBS overlay, ??: It might
+ be interesting to design something to show right before and right
+ after a talk so that people can see the title, speaker name, talk
+ page URL, Q&A info, pad URL, pronouns, etc. Ideally we'd be able to
+ generate a whole bunch of these from the talk data, so maybe SVG or
+ a TikZ picture? If this is your jam, let us know.
+
+- OBS in the cloud: We've been able to figure out how to stream both
+ streams using OBS, VNC, and PulseAudio on Ry P.'s virtual server, so
+ it's even more likely that we're going to pull off two tracks this
+ year. Yay!
+
+- Tom Purl has joined as a captioning volunteer. Hi Tom!
+
+This week we hope to get lots of talks submitted, processed, and on
+the way to being captioned. We're also planning to make the captioning
+workflow even better, and to improve the OBS streaming workflow. Whee!
+
+Sacha <sacha@sachachua.com>
diff --git a/blog/2022-11-07.md b/blog/2022-11-07.md
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+[[!date "2022-10-16"]]
+[[!meta title="Captions, dry run, workflow improvements"]]
+
+Hi everyone!
+
+Here's what's been happening backstage.
+
+- Speakers have been submitting their videos, hooray! I added a
+ schedule to the backstage page at
+ <https://media.emacsconf.org/2022/backstage/> so that people can see
+ how the schedule's coming along. We expect more talks to come in the
+ next two weeks. Not panicking yet. =)
+
+- Thanks to all the people who've been working on captions so far!
+ Bhavin, Andrea, and Ramin did the captions for their talks, and Jai
+ captioned Bala's talk. Tom, Bhavin, and Hannah are currently working
+ on captions. There are three more talks backstage if anyone wants to
+ work on them.
+
+- I just posted some notes on how I reflow and edit subtitles in case
+ they're helpful:
+ <https://media.emacsconf.org/2022/backstage/editing-captions.html>
+ It's also linked from the backstage page under More info: editing
+ captions.
+
+- We added the Emacs development updates talk from John Wiegley and
+ updated the times of other talks based on messages from the
+ speakers.
+
+- We did a dry run of the OBS streaming setup with Leo, Amin, and
+ Corwin. I think we're on track to being able to broadcast two
+ streams this year.
+
+- IRC announcements, BBB redirection, and media file publishing can
+ now all automatically happen when the talk status changes,
+ simplifying our work during the conference. Video playback and Q&A
+ browser windows can happen automatically if streaming from
+ res.emacsconf.org. I want to get the publishing workflow all
+ smoothed out too, so that talks and transcripts can be more easily
+ published to the wiki pages during the conference.
+
+Plans for this week:
+
+- More videos and captions!
+- I plan to work on talk page publishing so that it happens smoothly during the conference
+- Leo's going to review the videos submitted so far and prepare intros for them
+- Might be a good idea to reach out to speakers for tech checks and bios
+
+EmacsConf is a little less than four weeks away. Stuff is happening!
+
+Sacha
diff --git a/blog/2023-08-14-cfp-progress.md b/blog/2023-08-14-cfp-progress.md
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+[[!date "2023-08-14"]]
+[[!meta title="EmacsConf 2023 CFP progress report (8 talks accepted so far, 1 to review, 6 todo)"]]
+
+The end of the EmacsConf 2023 call for participation is one month away
+(Sept 14; <https://emacsconf.org/2023/cfp/>). Whee! So far, we&rsquo;ve sent
+early acceptances to the following talks and added them to the program
+on the wiki (<https://emacsconf.org/2023/talks>):
+
+<table>
+<colgroup>
+<col class="org-right">
+<col class="org-left">
+<col class="org-left">
+</colgroup>
+<tbody>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">Duration</td>
+<td class="org-left">Title</td>
+<td class="org-left">Speaker</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">10</td>
+<td class="org-left">An Org-Mode based text adventure game for learning the basics of Emacs, inside Emacs, written in Emacs Lisp</td>
+<td class="org-left">Chung-hong Chan</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">20</td>
+<td class="org-left">Authoring and presenting university courses with Emacs and a full libre software stack</td>
+<td class="org-left">James Howell</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">20</td>
+<td class="org-left">Org-Mode workflow: informal reference tracking</td>
+<td class="org-left">Christopher Howard</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">20</td>
+<td class="org-left">GNU Emacs for electronics, note-taking, and as lightweight IDE</td>
+<td class="org-left">Anand Tamariya</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">10</td>
+<td class="org-left">A modern Emacs look-and-feel without pain</td>
+<td class="org-left">Pedro A. Aranda</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">10</td>
+<td class="org-left">Writing a language server in OCaml for Emacs, fun, and profit</td>
+<td class="org-left">Austin Theriault</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">20</td>
+<td class="org-left">LLM clients in Emacs, functionality and standardization</td>
+<td class="org-left">Andrew Hyatt</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">10</td>
+<td class="org-left">The many ways to browse Hacker News from Emacs</td>
+<td class="org-left">Mickael Kerjean</td>
+</tr>
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+There&rsquo;s one talk that&rsquo;s waiting for feedback on the emacsconf-submit
+before we send the early acceptance in about a week:
+
+<table>
+
+
+<colgroup>
+<col class="org-right">
+
+<col class="org-left">
+
+<col class="org-left">
+</colgroup>
+<tbody>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">Duration</td>
+<td class="org-left">Title</td>
+<td class="org-left">Speaker</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-right">20</td>
+<td class="org-left">one.el: the static site generator for Emacs Lisp Programmers</td>
+<td class="org-left">Tony Aldon</td>
+</tr>
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+There are several talk proposals that are in progress (need to
+coordinate, don&rsquo;t have speaker releases / full details / etc.):
+
+<table>
+
+
+<colgroup>
+<col class="org-left">
+
+<col class="org-left">
+</colgroup>
+<tbody>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">Title</td>
+<td class="org-left">Speaker</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">Emacs MultiMedia System (EMMS)</td>
+<td class="org-left">Yoni Rabkin</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">Emacs development updates</td>
+<td class="org-left">John Wiegley</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">Watch Over Our Folders</td>
+<td class="org-left">Bastien Guerry</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">Emacs community information sharing?</td>
+<td class="org-left">Jake B</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">Emacs saves the Web</td>
+<td class="org-left">Yuchen Pei</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="org-left">How to build an Emacs 2: Revenge of the Lem</td>
+<td class="org-left">Fermin</td>
+</tr>
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+This time last year, we had 2 proposals, with most of the proposals
+coming in at the end of the CFP. This was usually when we started
+panicking about not having lots of proposals, but I think we can skip
+stressing about it this year. <laugh> Even with the program as it is
+now, we&rsquo;d already have a pretty fun EmacsConf. Can&rsquo;t wait to see what
+it&rsquo;ll look like when more people get their proposals in!
+
+Sacha
diff --git a/blog/2023-09-25-draft-schedule.md b/blog/2023-09-25-draft-schedule.md
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+[[!date "2023-09-25"]]
+[[!meta title="EmacsConf 2023 progress report: 44 talks accepted, schedule being drafted"]]
+
+The EmacsConf 2023 call for participation period has wrapped up,
+hooray! We&rsquo;ve accepted 44 talks and posted them at
+<https://emacsconf.org/2023/talks/>, with 1 more penciled in (woof -
+Watch Over Our Folders). This is about ~12 hours of talks. If we were
+to have 5 minutes buffer in between talks, it would be 15 hours and a
+pretty cramped conference. I think we can pull off a two-track
+conference again this year. Shall we give it a try? =) We can set up a
+schedule for the different roles as we get closer to the conference.
+
+I started drafting a schedule at
+<https://emacsconf.org/2023/organizers-notebook/#draft-schedule> .
+Thoughts on the order/grouping of talks? If the schedule looks all
+right, I can send this draft to all the speakers in case they have any
+requests regarding time preferences, other talk Q&A sessions that they
+want to attend live, etc.
+
+Next steps:
+
+- Schedule: We&rsquo;ll e-mail the draft schedule to speakers so that they
+ can get a sense of where they are in the schedule, see if they
+ really want to make it to a conflicting session&rsquo;s Q&A live
+ (they&rsquo;ll have early access to the videos), etc.
+- Infrastructure:
+ - Dust off and document infrastructure, processes
+ - Sort out access to media.emacsconf.org so that we can get the upload service up and running
+- Draft brief intros for talks, keeping in mind that we&rsquo;re going to say them out loud
+- Speakers will work on videos, and we can help with nudges/coordination if needed
+
+Sacha
+