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[[!meta title="Ideas"]]

Ideas for talks and sessions for EmacsConf 2015.

TODO state legend:

- **IDEA** (or none): might be a good talk, but no one has signed up
  for it yet.
- **IDENTIFIED**: potential speakers for this talk have been
  identified.
- **INVITED**: someone has actually reached out to the potential
  speakers and invited them. :-)
- **ACCEPTED**: we have a speaker for the talk.
- **SCHED**: we have a speaker and a timeslot for the talk.

## Ideas

### IDENTIFIED The State of Emacs

The kernel of this idea is basically to have a "State of the Union"
address, where the Union is Emacs.  I think it would be awesome if
someone really embedded in Emacs development (specifically thinking of
Stefan) talked about the current state of Emacs development with
regards to

- how development today is functioning.  What are major development
  process problems that need to be fixed but haven't?  What do the
  maintainers of Emacs stress about (letting patches rot in debbugs,
  having bugs rot in debbugs, being unsure of the general brokenness
  of Emacs because of the lack of testing), and what processes can be
  put in place to ease their anxieties?
- new contributors.  Making Emacs easier for new contributors was a
  **huge** topic in the Fall of 2014 on emacs-devel.  The switch to
  git was seen as the first step, what were the next steps and how did
  they work?
- whether anything surprisingly good/bad has happened this year.
- the general state of emacs-devel.
- and what we can do to help! :D

(suggested by Samer)

Possible people:

- Stefan Monnier?

### IDEA What's new in Emacs 25?
Roadmap, how we can help

#### What's new for users?

#### What's new for developers?

### IDEA Hearing from Emacs beginners
:interested: Daniel Gopar and Miguel Flores

- What's the experience like?
- What got you interested?
- What helped?
- How can we help more beginners like you get deeper into Emacs?

### IDEA Q&A for new Emacs users

### IDEA Things you want more people to know about Emacs
- Tips, tricks, workflow ideas

### Updates on interesting things

#### IDENTIFIED Guile Emacs I think it would be awesome if Robin
Templeton or BT Templeton (there is a chance that they're the same
person, I'm still not clear on that...) talked about the state of
Guile Emacs.

- What works?  What's left to be done?
- What does Guile replace in the core Emacs engine?
- **Is Guile Emacs the future of Emacs?**  Is Guile Emacs going to
  **happen** and be merged into trunk at some point in the future?  If
  so, what's needed to get us there, otherwise, why not?  
  And what can we do to help! :D :D

Suggested by Samer

#### IDEA Emacs forks and variants?
 What's going on with Emacs variants?  Interesting news?

### What are good workflows for common needs?

#### Programming
- C/C++
- Rails
- Javascript
- Java
- Clojure
- Scala
- Python

##### IDEA interactive development

I'd love some talks about **interactive** development with Emacs:
making changes in code and getting immediate feedback (think Light
Table).  The Emacs Rocks episode about swank-js is a perfect example
of what I mean: <http://emacsrocks.com/e11.html>.

Suggested by Tikhon Jelvis

#### Writing and research
- Reproducible research
- Writing prose
- Org for publishing
- Knowledge management
- Efficiently managing and using bibliographic databases

##### IDEA Reproducible research
- How do you manage your literature review?
- How do you analyze your data?
- How do you work with charts and graphs?
- How can you publish in the required formats?
- What have your experiences been like using this?  Advantages?  Gaps?

##### IDEA How can a student use Emacs/org-mode effectively?
- Note-taking
- Agenda
- Scheduling
- Writing papers
  - Outlines
  - Export
- Attachments

#### IDEA Data science
- ESS
- Org Mode and reproducible research

### ACCEPTED How to start an Emacs Meetup!
Talk by Harry Schwartz, founder of the NYC Emacs Group

- Experiences
- Encouraging people to give talks

:interested: Harry Schwartz

Maybe also hear from the London Meetup?

#### Identifying people by area who might be interested in an Emacs meetup
See also Samer's Google Form

- San Francisco: Samer

### IDEA Introductory Emacs Lisp
:interested: Harry Schwartz

- How to read Emacs Lisp
- How to start writing your own
- Modifying other people's code
- Writing your own

### IDEA Talk on engine-mode (and defining other conveniences?)
:interested: Harry Schwartz

This would be a great short demo.  If you want, you can also flesh it
out into a behind-the-scenes "this is how to write stuff like this",
or describe other little conveniences along these lines that people
can use. -- [[SachaChua]]

### What are some surprising uses of Emacs?

#### IDEA Update from the Emacs music scene?

#### ACCEPTED Literate Devops
Howard Abrams

- Why sysads should consider Emacs
- Neat things you can do
- Demonstration

### IDEA How can people contribute to Emacs core?
Walkthrough of how to:

- find a small bug to work on
- navigate the source code
- prepare a patch
- work with emacs-devel

### IDEA Where is the Emacs package system going?
Nic Ferrier?  Steve Purcell?  Milkypostman?  Tom Tromey?

### What can we build with interesting capabilities available in Emacs?  How?

#### IDENTIFIED What can you do with a web server?
- httpd, elnode, skewer, impatient, etc. - @skeeto or Nic Ferrier?

#### IDENTIFIED What can you do with REPLs?
- comint, NREPL

### IDENTIFIED Design and Evolution of [Spacemacs](https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs) by @syl20bnr

- Why evil + spacebar
- Why guide-key
- Why layers
- Vim concepts being brought over - Vundle, etc.
- State of evil - what is not ideal yet?  what are missing features
  from the ecosystem?
- How can contributors help?

### IDEA What can improve the usability of Emacs?
Concrete tips, demonstrations

- tutorials
- discoverability
- command mode / god-mode / composable commands
- Hydra

People: Xah Lee?  bbatsov?  Steve Purcell?  abo-abo?

#### Improving discoverability
With all the tools that are available, this could be a separate talk:

- Ido
- Ido Ubiquitous
- Smex
- Guide Key
- Helm (helm-M-x, helm-descbinds)
- Hydra
- ...

### IDENTIFIED What are good development practices for Emacs Lisp?
- Automated testing
- Continuous integration and testing on multiple Emacsen
- Code coverage reporting
- Emacs Lisp style and package linting
- Refactoring
- Performance

I'm working on a series with John Wiegley on this topic, so we might
be able to spread this one out over lots of little demos.
-- [[SachaChua]]

#### IDENTIFIED Useful utilities
Maybe with before/after code?

- s.el
- f.el
- dash.el
- writing asynchronous code

I think Magnar would be able to talk a lot about this. =)
-- [[SachaChua]]

### How can we get more people from beginner to intermediate?

### IDENTIFIED How can we get more people to begin using Emacs and stick with it for a while?

### Lightning talks: Workflow tips and favourite packages

#### Magit

#### Ebib

#### EWW

#### ESS

#### IDENTIFIED Hydra
abo-abo, naturally.
I'd love demonstrations of what people use this for =)
-- [[SachaChua]]

#### Org contrib

### Hackathons/workshops/demos

#### How can you create a package and submit it to the Emacs package repositories?

#### How can you add tests and coverage reporting to a package?
I can prepare something along these lines -- [[SachaChua]]

#### IDENTIFIED How can you build better interactive tutorials?
- Phillip Lord?