All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to my talk.
We'll be talking today about Emacs journalism
and what that means.
First of all, I'd like to thank the EmacsConf organizers.
Thank you very much, Sacha, for being very patient with me.
Let's get right into it. So who's this talk for?
First of all, it's for anyone
who wants to learn about workflows
and how you can work with Emacs
to basically do anything you want.
And it's for all levels of Emacs lovers.
So I'll keep it accessible.
Why this talk? So first of all,
I want to share a lot of Emacs.
I also wanted to learn about workflows myself.
So what better way than to talk about them
to be able to learn? And we could maybe learn a thing
or two about collaboration and using Emacs to that motive.
I think it's useful to try and figure out who am I?
Why am I having this talk? I'm a journalist based
in Hong Kong and a documentary filmmaker. So that means
that I have interviews quite often.
I'm dealing with texts and subtitles,
which I have to transcribe.
And I'm also dealing with a lot of research.
So that means going through a lot of documents and a lot of,
well, skimming through documents
to be able to have something to write.
And I also use Emacs since basically one year ago,
I started using it full time
to have a great detriment of my productivity.
So we'll be talking about, we'll be talking about, well,
basically, my workflow for Emacs
and how I went about having an Emacs workflow.
So what is best when you're thinking about your own workflow
and some things to think about journalism
and about using these kinds of tools
in combination for this? So where do we all start?
Let's start with a simple-ish definition
of what is a workflow. A workflow is
any sequence of actions or tools you use to accomplish that.
So it doesn't have to be through text processing,
though obviously being a text-oriented community,
it will most likely be partially text.
But it's just about how we accomplish a task
and which tools and mindsets we go into it with.
For example, let's talk about my old workflow.
That workflow was basically just Google Drive
using proprietary tools like Notion, Google Drive, Office,
Storyboarder, and for communication, WeChat.
If I could forgive all the privacy concerns of WeChat,
I wouldn't, but I still wouldn't forgive
the terribly buggy interface, and I hate it.
So there are certain tools that you have to use
and you have to modify your workflow
or just adapt your workflow to the tools
that you have to use. So for me, unfortunately,
that means having to use WeChat. You compartmentalize it
and set it aside, try not to think about it too hard.
And this is the part that hurts the most, right?
You're thinking about your workflow,
you're thinking about, all right,
I have this thing that works, I don't think about it.
And all of a sudden, oh, I'm not happy
with what I have right now. So let's get into,
let's get into how, oops. So let's get into how and why
we're not happy with our workflows.
Because obviously, it's quite nice
to not have to think about things.
But once you've thought about it,
and once you're not happy with how it works,
I think it's quite useful to think about
why we're not happy about it.
A huge part of what Emacs is being conscious of, well,
how do we find our workflows?
How do we find what we want to do? And for me, obviously,
the best way to find that is to write it down
and to try and tailor my tools to it.
This is what I came up with.
I want to be able to manage my accounting,
to manage collaboration. So: working on files
alongside my colleagues, communication,
so that's planning out and managing meetings,
managing teammates, managing tasks, information gathering.
So that's what I was saying, going through documents,
going through all these lists of tasks and all of these,
not lists of tasks, all of these, well, basically,
scientific papers, notes, references and wikis, media.
So I want to be able to have a music player,
a podcast player, a movie player. That's outside of work,
but it's still one of the tasks that I do. Media processing,
so this is where my job kind of gets into it a bit more.
So I want to be able to take notes
on the media that I watch,
to transcribe the interviews
and even the conversations that I have,
to be able to later on have an easier time.
Photo editing, video editing, so unfortunately,
Emacs isn't quite quite oriented to that.
Graphic design, color grading, storyboarding.
And so obviously, you go into it a bit more.
So managing to do scheduling tasks, interviews,
preparing shot lists, tracking time,
setting daily work goals, setting priorities,
independent tasks, publishing,
so publishing stuff for my work on my work CMS,
publishing stuff on my personal CMS,
although that's not happened yet. I've been kind of busy.
Security and privacy, so making sure
that everything that I use respects my data and respects me.
Unfortunately, not the case, but you take what you can.
Text processing. So that's journaling,
writing down articles, my personal wiki, my work wiki,
which I use to document, well, for example,
several projects that I have currently.
So I basically have my work wiki that I'm trying
to fill out where I'll be able
to basically go into it later on
and have my thoughts written down.
And programming, which I'm not very good at.
Some people might have noticed
that this looks a lot like [literate] programming.
If you go into my config file,
I have something kind of similar.
I was planning on having a bit more time
for this presentation and making it stick to that.
But you'll see basically the mess that is my Emacs config.
But it kind of sticks to the same thoughts, right?
Text processing, web browsing, finances,
that's my accounting, media and research.
So my BibTeX... Here be dragons.
Terrible, terrible config
that I've stolen from plenty of people.
So basically, that's how Emacs fits into this.
So this is where I talk about literate configs
and how that's helped me. Obviously, I've extolled
the virtue of literate configs
to quite an extent right here. It's basically...
The concept is to have documents, living documents
and documentation as code.
So basically, let's go back into my config.
I talk about what the config file does, have code blocks.
So this is something that Emacs does. I'm pretty sure
that there are some resources about that accessible online,
which are even accessible in the Emacs Gulf. And so, yeah,
basically just having everything accessible
in one single source, one single file,
which allows you to basically put everything down
and integrate things from your config much much more easily.
That's something that I found very useful in Emacs
and which I think everyone can benefit from
or the idea of it, like having everything stored centrally.
It doesn't have to be used just for Emacs.
It can be used also, it can be used also for, for example,
a Qt browser or for other window manager configs.
That kind of thing.
And it's not been very easy to set a place.
So I haven't done that just yet, but that's the plan.
Basically, this is all thanks to Org mode.
So, small presentation of what Org mode is. Org mode
is basically a project / task management,
past management and task management,
and writing mode for Emacs.
So I can just put in a heading to do Hello World,
send a message to Rosie tomorrow about the shoot space MDS--
that's thanks to wonderful Doom Emacs--and schedule it.
I don't know. It's tomorrow. Let's go and set it to 9am.
And say, maybe it's it's tomorrow already. I've done it.
I've sent a message. Perfect. It's done.
And it also allows you to have an agenda view.
So I hope there's nothing too compromising right here.
Whatever. It's fine. So it allows you
to basically manage your agenda from there.
And you might have seen me doing my little space nrf
and wonderful key binding by Org Roam. So this
is also another thing which is quite quite nice
with Emacs is that you can you can have Org Roam, which
is basically a database management program.
So I can have documentary ideas
and have basically my ideas which link up to another file.
So for example, this one, which I have nothing for,
but you get the idea. So it allows you to apps
to link up with different files and to manage your thoughts.
And this gets back into the workflow part of my talk,
which is, well, this, this is a way
to control what your workflow
is control what the tools you're using are and to control,
basically the way in which you interact
with your technology.
So I am getting back into the way that I collaborate.
Because obviously it's no good having just
one Emacs user who's trying to share to share things
with his editor. So I use pandoc.
For example, let's go back into my file right here.
Obviously, I don't spend much time inside of tables.
But if I select this one, that's "SPC m e".
Thank you, Doom Emacs for the for the keybindings.
And I can just export it via pandoc right here, So "p".
And I can just export it to doc, docx, or export it to ODT.
So as an ODT file, which is typically what I do.
And then I just send it through WeChat,
which is not optimal, but I'm not allowed
to do anything else. So it is what it is.
Basically, this is how I export my files. And I re-import,
I re-import them with pandoc as well.
So I convert my Pages files, which I receive
through an ICS plugin. It's not quite finalized,
so I'm not ready to show it,
but there's a link that I'll be putting
in the description which talks about this.
So this is my sharing part.
It's nothing very special, honestly.
It's just making sure that your documents
are able to be shared.
I have certain things. So for example,
if I go into retro gaming in Hong Kong,
if I go into my scripts, there are certain headings
which I have. So for example, they ignore...
My editor doesn't like to have some headings.
But when I have a video script that I'm preparing,
I like to have them for my own organization
and for my thinking. So I keep them in right there
and put in ignore. This is the advantage
of the Emacs because you can just SPC m e o o,
and this is ready to send, basically.
There are ways to have export presets,
but I'm not quite there yet. It's a lot of work.
So, getting back to my presentation.
This all goes into basically other packages,
which I want to implement, but I haven't been able to.
My main conclusion: you don't have to get lost in the weeds.
I kind of did that while preparing this talk.
So basically, you don't have to do it all at once.
Don't let it consume your life.
I probably should have done this earlier.
But Emacs configs are forever work in progress.
So there are lots of features which you can add,
a lot of things which you can implement if you only had,
I don't know, five weeks to be able to implement them.
But you're working right now.
And this is a message to me five months ago.
Don't do it. Just keep working
and don't get lost in configuration all day.
So yeah, basically the aim is to use software that you love,
but not die in the process.
And yeah, basically just using it as much as you can
using fast software as much as you can.
I'm doing that as well for...
I have certain software such as storyboarder or bit tags,
that kind of thing, which I try to use as much as possible,
even outside of Emacs.
And the aim is to get the work done in the end.
I'm not an absolutist on this. So yeah, basically,
let's keep modding our configs and having fun.
If you've got any questions about the talk,
I'm happy to answer. I am a novice at this,
both presenting in front of camera
and at talking about Emacs.
I'm sure I've gotten a few things wrong,
and it's not been the smoothest talk, but it's 10pm, almost.
I need to get back home. Yeah, take care, everyone.
Thanks again to the organizers. Here's my contact info.
And I'll be in touch with the questions.
I don't think I'll be able to do the live answers,
but that's more or less it. Thanks so much for listening,
if you've been listening, and take care.