path: root/2021/improving-emacsconf-2021-07-03.org

#+TITLE: Improving EmacsConf 2021
#+DATE: 03/07/2021
* Audio check
- Leo:                     <@LEO, maybe a little reverb/click, oh it has somewhat gone away :-)>
- Amin: <Same audio volume>
- Sacha: <Same audio volume>
- Overall: nice quality
* Notes

- Joe and Sacha here via CRDT!

* Pattern in this discussion
- *Not have a job-posting but talking about roles like*
  - dealing with the infrastructure
  - organising the schedule
  - coordinating with speakers
  - live tweeting
  - checking the time
  - checking in speakers
  - streaming
  - calling speakers when there are issues
  - managing the pad
  - handling questions
  - describing what's going on
  - captioning videos
  - handling social media
  - filling in schedule gaps / dealing with technical issues
  - ...
- *Other potential roles*
  - Creating a mastodon account to communicate w/ participants (e.g., “here is the CFP”, “the talk is about to start”)
    - There’s a script for announcing the next talk, we could do more w/ better scripts
    - Pleroma could run in a FOSS Host VM
    - seabass happy to be involved w/ these things, pending avoiding the seagull invasion

- Posting this would help people see whether they want to sign up for the functions
- If we can’t get someone to do some of these then it becomes stressful!
- Hatrack: choose whatever hat fits your head

* Let’s get started

During the meeting, we will give a quick overview of lessons learned,
timelines, ideas/plans, and things we need help with in terms of:

- diversity and outreach;
** CFP stuff
  - Call for Proposals (CFP) process - maybe early August
*** Should they be anonymized? non-anonymized?
- Advantages of anonymized:
  - Helps avoid unconscious bias
- Advantages of non-anonymized:
  - Easier to deal with some situations (like experience reports)
  - Controversial figures? Very tricky.
*** Process to date and going forward
- Previously, Amin would anonymise them, removing github links and such
- Can we get people to anonymize their own submissions? (Although it's hard to really anonymize stuff anyway...)
- Do we want to do this again?
  - Since we were accepting all the submissions maybe there’s no point to doing this?
- If people are interested in /reviewing/ — you can get involved with that.
  - Should we expand the review process to include coaching people / previewing the presentation, so we know if the presentation is a good fit for 10m or 40m?
- publicizing, reaching more people
- It was very nice to connect speakers proposing similar talks to get them to coordinate and differentiate
**** David:
- I remember that one of the original motivations was as a diversity-focused effort; it is a standard technique to cope with reviewer bias
- It’s only useful if people know we are doing it; people should feel confident in their submissions
- Hard to measure how it had an impact
- Amin: it would make sense to keep it... if the submissions are about the same or less than the total capacity we have, so we don’t have to reject any talks.  But if we have considerably more submissions than we have time for, then let’s do it.
**** Ray:
- Practical question, I can see why you would want it
- When (what Date) will you know if you have more submissions than slots?
- Or ...?
**** Corwin:
- I was thinking, it’s a tough decision to make b/c it’s an important principle that we are evaluating on content not character of submitter — however, we don’t want total-pariahs giving talks on this platform
- So I’m not sure the anonymity thing serves us well
- JC: If we do careful book-keeping maybe can prove fairness of evaluation not based on ‘character’?
- Amin: Dealing w/ submissions from _problematic people_ — this goes above the anonymisation level.  We could refer to the Code of Conduct or Discretion to say we won’t accept it.  That kind of exceptional situation would allow us to forego the anonymisation.
  - seabass: There’s also the possibility to review talks for CoC violation, it could be on the content of the talk
  - Corwin: We can come up w/ ideas of people we wouldn’t want to stand next to on stage, so we have to be careful who represents us; e.g. ‘edgelords establishing technical cred’ — I don’t want to become somebody’s stage.
**** Seabass:
- Judgement of character is in the eye of the beholder; one way to reduce unpleasant material is by increasing the diversity of those reviewing the talks, having a diverse panel to accept talks
  - Corwin: Can we also say, diversity is more important than anonymity, as long as we explain why we reject things on a discretionary basis (esp. if ‘as organisers we aren’t having that’).
- Individual talks have to be reviewed more than once to have the full impact
- If it’s only reviewed ONCE it is useful to have it anonymous
- RP: In journals you’ll have 2 referees, and in many journals you will have that in addition to editors
- David: We have to think about how anonymity and coaching people towards presentations work with or against each other
- Amin: we might want to have another meeting just to discuss this point, since there is some interest about it; Libreplanet historically had only FSF staff but recently opened up to people from the community
*** Volunteering to help review
- Ray could help depending on time
**** Have some sessions that would make each talk better!
*** Volunteering to help coach people to improve their contributions
- E.g., Leo could give a session on public speaking
- Aesthetics of presentations
** Other agenda points
- accessibility;
  - captions in progress; sachac isn't going to reach real-time captioning speed in time =)
- technology and infrastructure;
- scheduling, including themes and tracks (e.g. talks by/for beginners,
  music, multimedia, Org, GTD, gaming, system administration, etc); and
  - prerecorded presentations, live, Q&A balance?
- feedback and/or discussion around other aspects of the conference.

** Protocol
- (Feel free to put ideas/feedback into the BBB chat or on IRC #emacsconf on libera.chat.)
- Figuring things out together can be tough, don’t be scared to disagree especially if we have different values
- Feel free to invite others to jump in
** Timing
- ≈2 hours of Q&A, following this intro and update from EmacsConf team
** Topics
- Mostly EmacsConf
- Further details available on EmacsConf Wiki

* Intro presentation on what the EmacsConf team has been up to over the last 8 months :5m:10m:

- Back to the end of EC2020... 2nd December or so... 
- Awed by lots of participation (300-400 concurrent viewers)
  - Etherpad notes 
- Followed by 1-2 debriefing session for 2 hours w/ all organisers — then realised more time will be needed
  - Etherpad notes continued
  - lots of discussion re: sessions, supporting speakers, ideas for improvement
  - Eventually doing weekly sessions about Emacs, EmacsConf, the community, and such
- Efforts not just on EmacsConf but involved in Emacs UG Workshops, especially given that they are all online
  - Got the Emacs Calendar up and going, yay =) :-)  emacslife.com/calendar , https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Usergroups , announcements on #emacs, #emacsconf, https://twitter.com/sachac (should I post them from @emacs ?)
  - BigBlueButton hosting for Emacs meetups who are interested
- Slowly working on transcripts/captions (sachac, bhavin192); day 1 finished, much of the way through day 2
- Thinking about other ways to help the Emacs community

** This session: ‘Improvement Meeting’
- 8 months after EmacsConf so that we don’t under deliver relative to expectations — now we are feeling pretty sure about the things we have to say
- We didn’t initially know what to call this meeting
- Conferences can always improve
- Diversity is a significant aspect — tech stack also in scope
- Chief aspects to change: more hands-on approach to helping people gain confidence needed to present at EC21
  - Planning opportunities to meet w/ committee and discuss w/ us about topics of interest

** Suspected Failure Modes
- Suppose you want to come along, but don’t feel confident in your ability to give a presentation
  - impostor syndrome
  - Talk-times seem too long or daunting
  - ...
- If you are feeling ill at ease with anything regarding presenting, Emacs, EmacsConf, or anything...
  - ... previously wasn’t clear how we could work through these worries

** Adaptations
*** Encouraging more people 
  - pre-recorded presentations = super helpful for reducing stress (speaker and organizer) on the day of, although recording was a bit challenging (and maybe not enough support)
  - *New* for 2021: office hours: can give your presentation to a small, friendly audience and record it there, so that it feels a little more natural for people? :-)
**** Remark from Raymond S. Puzio:
#+begin_quote
/Also, based on some recent experience with the PLoP conference, a model of conferences in which the organizers seek to shepherd potential contributors through the process of preparing and polishing a presentation can be much less adversarial than the usual model of submitting a proposal for review by organizers./
#+end_quote
**** Remark from Bhavin Gandhi:
#+begin_quote
/Office hours: aha! This is exactly what PyCon India have been doing as well (called mentorship office hours).  The next step we (PyCon India mentorship team) are doing is talk rehearsals. That's done because most of the talks are live.  This usually helps first time speakers to help them improve slides, the way they present, any technical details in the slides and more.  In our case (EmacsConf), this can be done asynchronously as well, recording gets submitted, few people / organizers review it and then repeat./
#+end_quote
*** Time     
 - Also, some people are suggesting an EmacsConf that's better for APAC timezones, so let us know if you want to help with that too =)
   - JC: I went to a couple of fun workshops that were 24 hours on clock time with rolling hosting per time zone.
     - Day shift + night shift (e.g., Europe-local-time)
   - David B: *ECOOP* this year is playing every talk twice to cover timezones
     - Restreaming would be low-effort but it would be better if there was another solution?
   - yuchen: Thanks for mentioning the timezone issue for APAC. It is a problem, but here in Australia there does not seem to be a sizeable emacs community (or GNU / free software community more generally). I feel it is similar for Asia too. It could be a chicken-and-egg problem, but given the small audience I'm also worried it could also be a low return if the committee invest too much on it, hence why I think it may be better for people in APAC to take this in our own hands :)
   - EmacsConf 2019 had a Zurich event that also had live presentations
   - The call for proposals can include the possibility of figuring out other timezones
     - We can also accept lightning talks with unavailable speakers who will follow up with questions later; handy for filling in gaps in the schedule
     - We did this already with EmacsConf 2021; some presentations played when their speakers were still probably going to be sleeping, so it's fine
   - Bhavin Gandhi: Another idea I had was to someone else handle hosting and playing pre-recorded talks during the APAC time. Speakers who are available can do live Q&A in that case?
     - Yes, if someone wants to step up =) Might also be able to do this as a patchwork of meetups, if people want to coordinate
**** Q&A is a separate event
- One time for presenting, 2 Q&As, or panels, in which people from different TZ’s could participate
- Could be additional organisation burden; in the ECOOP case, everyone will do a pre-recorded talk, and show up for 2 Q&A sessions.  The day is split into 3 zones (3-hours in length); Speakers agreed to do 2 Q&A’s in two blocks, so more commitment for them.
  - David B can report back on whether it works
  - We can offer it as an option +1
- FOSDEM: speaker may have gone off to get breakfast, so there may be an advantage to having a panel
- It can be hard to stay motivated to watch 5 talks waiting for the Q&A
- Raymond S. Puzio: I also know a differential geometry seminar which works on the model of making the videos of the talks available a week ahead of time, then having a coffee chat section for discussion with the speaker. Again, these are just comments for future discussion not suggestions for immediate action.
***** Note
- We experimented with an alternate track in 2020 so that wasamasa could do a longer talk and Q&A. Probably doable if we sort out the workflow
*** Posting stuff quickly
- Might be able to make the prerecorded talks available right away    
- Another benefit: we can share with and disseminate via UGs, also via other streaming sites
*** Emacs Research Group info, details to follow
- Emacs w/in academia and research into Emacs
- Methodology of writing papers
- ...
*** Accessibility
- takaxp: Distributing pre-recorded video with translated captions to non-native English speakers is a good way. The captions could be added by machine.
- Sacha Chua: Yup, this is important to me too. I've been editing the automated captions to make them nicer. =) If we can get prerecorded videos far ahead enough in time for me to get through them, I'd love to pre-caption everything.
- SC and Corwin, fixing automated captions — ideally all pre-recorded videos would be captioned (or better would come to EC with captions); this can support translation
*** Volunteers
- Corwin: More volunteers would make for a better experience
  - I’ve gotten to know more Emacs package developers, and got some reflection on my own practice
- Amin: You don’t have to take on more than 1 or 2 things, e.g., note-taking is something you can help with
- Notes that don’t get written down are a liability, especially in-the-moment-of, especially if you’re the only person in your locale who knows about Emacs
- LV: *Feel free to join us!* — about a dozen organisers, we’re always finding something for you to do that makes your contribution significant, regardless of the time and brainspace you have available.
- Last time Sacha did all of the scheduling of all of the talks... Sacha could be comfortable doing that but if the number of submission grows a lot, this is one area where we could use more help
*** Keynotes?
- Qiantan keynote on CRDT? :-)
- Live coding workshop / party?
* EmacsConf 2013 reminiscence
- Things have definitely come a long way since the first EC in London :-) 
* EmacsConf 2019 thoughts
- Amin: it was me and Sacha, the next year we got so many awesome people on board
* EmacsConf 2020 thoughts
 - High acceptance rate (circa 100%)
 - Deadlines / lead time needed so that streaming can work well
   - Getting last-minute prerecorded presentations = we made it work, but it was a little stressful =)
      - [sorry :-} ... hmm.. I don’t remember whether I gave my talk live or via pre-recording actually!]
- No mailing list yet, but you will see us around
- It’s a lot of stuff that we do — we’d be even happier if we could let other people take a subset of the responsibility so that we could focus on what we’re doing best; as it is, ‘being at the mill and the oven’.
* EmacsConf 2021 thoughts
 - Will take place towards end November or beginning of December
 - How can we make EmacsConf 2021 even better?
- JC: Would we maybe want to /only/ do prerecorded talks?  These could be shown ‘on-demand’ and then ‘live’ panels could focus on discussions among the contribotrs.  I’ve seen a conference do it that way, it works OK.
  - Less technical risk
  - This could fit with the shepherding and office hours ideas, i.e., the talk would/could be pre-recorded in an office hour
** Questions for y'all
- How did you feel about pre-recorded talks, live Q&A? Live talks? Should we try to nudge speakers more to one way or the other?
- Thanks for taking the time to come to the meeting. What are you here for? What do you want to make sure to mention?
** Ideas for talks
- amirrajan: how emacs org-mode can help with neurodivergence (ADHD)
  - @ Leo, maybe, depending on people’s writing it can be stressful too ...
** Ideas for other stuff
*** Organisation
**** Workshop
- Still want a *WORKSHOP* / lab / clinic sort of thing =)  +1
- Come hang out and get help with your Emacs config / Org workflow / coding setup / etc. (depending on volunteers)
  - JC: Would be great.  Noorah’s talk about her config for thesis-writing would be an interesting one
  - In principle this might be a place to do some more focused discussion on the diversity theme, e.g., a (facilitated?) workshop on access + community stuff
**** Licensing
- JC: BTW, contributors did sign a license or waiver...?
  - Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) was done as part of the call for proposals, so all speakers included that in their submission — Nice
  - Maybe distrib/archiving via wikicommons, archive.org and such could come along later
*** Tech
- Yes, there's local recording, and then streaming to icecast; might be able to restream to elsewhere depending on whether we have the CPU cycles / network for restreaming
**** Backup streams
 - YouTube vs self-hosted Live Stream options
   - Sacha (or another organizer) will try to have enough brainspace to start that again =)
 - Other federated video software, PeerTube got streaming capabilities
- Could also stream to Twitch; FLOSS clients exists
  - If you’re having trouble with the stream you don’t have to download proprietary software
  - amirrajan: RE Twitch/facilitating questions: I’d be happy to volunteer facilitating QnA to the main conf chat
- Probably be ‘yes/and’ with streaming possibilities
**** Bandwidth
- Issues: diversity per /low bandwidth/ connections is important to consider, e.g., mobile clients on 480p stream
**** Note-taking
- CRDT stuff — can this be made robust enough to replace Etherpad?  :-)
  - Also, is CRDT viable for someone using a screenreader?
**** Releasing pre-rec videos
- Pre-event: share with other event co-organizers, ideally with captions for autotranslation
- During the event: post as each talk is started, so people can watch it in case they have stream problems (or if they want to jump to the start of the talk)
 
**** Hosting
- More mirrors of the videos are welcome
- U Waterloo, Chaos Communication Club, ...
**** We could have breakout rooms on BBB
- Either during the conference or office hours
** Concerns about what might go wrong (and risk-management)
- Preparing for load, e.g., with CDN, though some of this is easier to think about after the presentation
** Hoped for outcomes
 - What about bringing in some more talks from the Southern hemisphere?  We had talked about time zones but not latitude ...
*** Geographical Diversity of EC committee
 - Would have to do some outreach to APAC to bring someone(s) in from that region
*** Could we have a 2nd EC (like, EC-Asia)
 - Sacha happy to hand over Amin's reins on the system ;)  :party:
 - Amin has done most of the EmacsConf organisation for 2019
 - If most of the talks are prerecorded and people accept and schedule their own live presentations/Q&A if any, we have the infrastructure for it
  - EmacsConf.org wiki has info about how to do it
  - Another blog post will be coming along to give info about streaming
 - Raymond S. Puzio: Here is the 24 hour biology conference which just happened --- succesfully AFAIK. https://www.smb2021.org/

* Next actions
** Call for proposals

- 
- include possibility of Q&A outside the usual 9-5 conference time
- office hours
- strong nudge towards pre-recording or presenting at office hours (maybe dropping the possibility of live-for-the-first-time presentation?)
- public call for proposals and review process?
  - Bhavin Gandhi:
    I haven't seen any major issues with that Sacha: I have helped a couple of conferences where the proposal submission, followup comments asking for slides, outlines etc along with feedback of talk rehearsals was all public. Having proposals publicly example: https://hasgeek.com/rootconf/2019-pune/sub/implementing-distributed-tracing-in-faas-XTtmFQSe49vLZCvNYcViYY
    
** Office Hour scheduling details are Out in the Open
- Thinking about Saturdays, weekly, but not all of the organisers at one time
- Could have flip-flop in time-zones
- JC: What about making the office hour an extension of local UG meetings?
- LV: As long as we have time when we stop and time when we finish, that’s good enough; we’ll need to see how many people tune in, whether it’s a group session, or a 1-to-1 scheduled thing; so any event like this requires some thinking
  - LV: I’m personally happy to commit to be there to the office hour; though, if no one shows up, we’ll adapt.
     - To check... do people think this is a good idea to increasing inclusivity and diversity?
- Event system on emacsverse (maybe https://joinmobilizon.org) - bhavin192
*** For purpose of planning
- Ray: Say we have 6 weeks, 8 people... at least tentative schedule to see who will show up
  - RP: Want to ensure minimal structure so that there’s definitely someone there when anything is promised
  - Amin(?): Good to have a backup person in case the main person doesn’t show up
  - Having more people show up is a nice problem to have!
- Can worry later about whether to keep it going after the conference
- Bhavin Gandhi: One suggestion I got from PyCon India was to have some way to do RSVP for the office hours, so that the organizers know how many people to expect.
*** More organisers and make sure people come and talk about things that they are good at
- OBS
- Workflows around processing videos for the last mile
- ... and there’s a lot to putting on a great presentation
  - ... Can build a culture of putting on great talks
** EC organisers interested in doing a session on how they do it
- This could be a good way to empower people, so people see not only the tools but also the methods
** Should we run an Action Review here?
- We do this in Emacs Research Group w/ a set format to make sure we are measuring progress
- Public-facing discussion of this might feel disparate?
* Other stuff
  - done
* Closure
- Strategy for diversity, etc.
- Anonymising takes time, but in this equation we need to find what works best — judging presentation of the pre-recorded talk
- We are open to suggestions as demonstrated
- We started to dig at the problem in a way that’s constructive
- Hoping to have everything sorted out for early-August CFP
** Is ANOTHER SESSION like this warranted?
- Probably so, maybe same time in 2 weeks?
- We’ll be thinking about these questions in the mean time

* Meeting notes until the top of the hour
Sacha Chua
2:57 PM

=)
sa
Sacha Chua
2:58 PM

have to kick the cat upstairs
sa
Sacha Chua
3:01 PM

Yay people who take notes! =)
sa
Sacha Chua
3:02 PM

might be able to help with notes
sa
Sacha Chua
3:03 PM

Haha, I don't have the details for your CRDT handy
sa
Sacha Chua
3:03 PM

s'okay, don't worry about the note details, jcorneli's got it

We can just keep going
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:05 PM

yes
jo
Jorge Duarte(Offline)
3:05 PM

Yes
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
3:05 PM

The audio volume is same!
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:06 PM

I'm going to sleep in about 30 minutes. hope that's fine
sa
Sacha Chua
3:06 PM

I don't seem to have admin powers here, strange
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:06 PM

Hello everyone frm Ray!
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:06 PM

It's about 12am here :)
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
3:07 PM

Yuchen I was wondering about that only :P It's 19:30 here :D
sa
Sacha Chua
3:08 PM

yuchen: Thanks for making it despite the late hour!
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:09 PM

Thanks for having a public meeting
sa
Sacha Chua
3:11 PM

If you can be here for only a short time (or want to get stuff out of your head before you forget), feel free to quickly write the things you care about
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:20 PM

Ir was also helpful to have conversations which started at the conference continue throughout the year.
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:26 PM

Also, based on some recent experience with the PLoP conference, a model of conferences in which the organizers seek to shepherd potential contributors through the process of preparing and polishing a presentation can be much less adversarial than the usual model of submitting a proposal for review by organizers.
da
David B
3:30 PM

ECOOP this year is playing every talk twice to cover timezones
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
3:30 PM

Office hours: aha! This is exactly what PyCon India have been doing as well (called mentorship office hours).

The next step we (PyCon India mentorship team) are doing is talk rehearsals. That's done because most of the talks are live. This usually helps first time speakers to help them improve slides, the way they present, any technical details in the slides and more.

In our case (EmacsConf), this can be done asynchronously as well, recording gets submitted, few people / organizers review it and then repeat.
am
amirrajan
3:31 PM

RE: accessibility
jo
Jorge Duarte(Offline)
3:31 PM

Oh, this Emacs Research Group sounds amazing!
am
amirrajan
3:31 PM

how emacs org-mode can help with neurodivergence (ADHD)
sa
Sacha Chua
3:32 PM

Yeah, we've seen a few Reddit threads about things like that =)
da
David B
3:34 PM

ask me later about the origins of the word deadline...
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:35 PM

Since writing up a paper or proposal which turns out to be inappropriate upon review can be a considerable sunk cost, it is helpful to get feedback on suitability early on. Another example would be an author submitting a proposal to a publisher and discussing it before writing a book.
jo
Jorge Duarte(Offline)
3:36 PM

Is there an emacs research group mailing list/website/twitter/etc?
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:36 PM

No, but we do have a chat website we use for discussions on ERG and related topics.
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:39 PM

Thanks for mentioning the timezone issue for APAC. It is a problem, but here in Australia there does not seem to be a sizeable emacs community (or GNU / free software community more generally). I feel it is similar for Asia too. It could be a chicken-and-egg problem, but given the small audience I'm also worried it could also be a low return if the committee invest too much on it, hence why I think it may be better for people in APAC to take this in our own hands :)
jo
Jorge Duarte(Offline)
3:40 PM

I am interested in ERG, and would like to participate in these discussions.
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:41 PM

Yes, but feedback can go both ways --- as long as people get ignored because they are small, that may make them keep getting ignored and say small.
ta
takaxp
3:42 PM

We have an Emacs community in Japan but I think limited members may attend the live session.
am
amirrajan
3:42 PM

I know it isnt FOSS but “cross hosting” the conf on Twitch?
da
David B
3:42 PM

yeah, it was me who mentioned double broadcast, but I think the authors were there to answer questions twice

which is high effort
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:43 PM

Joe once had an interesting suggestion about a workshop 24 hrs/day which rotated around the globe --- could you say more, Joe? I know a biology conference which didi this.
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
3:44 PM

Another idea I had was to someone else handle hosting and playing pre-recorded talks during the APAC time. Speakers who are available can do live Q&A in that case?
da
David B
3:44 PM

For reference https://2021.ecoop.org/info/schedule-overview
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:46 PM

Nor for this year since there's not enough time, but could be something to consider for future years.
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
3:47 PM

I agree about the actual efforts required :)
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:48 PM

Here is the 24 hour biology conference which just happened --- succesfully AFAIK. https://www.smb2021.org/
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:53 PM

Didn't expect that my questions will bring more options to consider, which my brain can't really process properly right now :p The suggestions all sound good to me, thanks for the considerations. I will read the notes / watch the recording and follow up on this by email. I need to go to bed now. Thanks for the meeting. Looking forward to the office hours if they get implemented
sa
Sacha Chua
3:53 PM

yuchen: Thank you so much!
ba
bandali
3:54 PM

thanks to you yuchen indeed!
ta
takaxp
3:54 PM

Distributing pre-recorded video with translated captions to non-native English speakers is a good way. The captions could be added by machine.
yu
yuchen(Offline)
3:54 PM

thank you all, good night
ba
bandali
3:55 PM

+1 takaxp
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
3:55 PM

I also know a differential geometry seminar which works on the model of making the videos of the talks available a week ahead of time, then having a coffee chat section for discussion with the speaker. Again, these are just comments for future discussion not suggestions for immediate action.
sa
Sacha Chua
3:55 PM

takaxp: Yup, this is important to me too. I've been editing the automated captions to make them nicer. =)
sa
Sacha Chua
3:56 PM

If we can get prerecorded videos far ahead enough in time for me to get through them, I'd love to pre-caption everything.
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
3:59 PM

Can it be a backup stream to PeerTube?
co
Corwin
3:59 PM

Since last yearr Sacha also has a twitch
am
amirrajan
4:02 PM

RE Twitch/facilitating questions: I’d be happy to volunteer facilitating QnA to the main conf chat
ta
takaxp
4:02 PM

We have 954 members in a Slack for Japanese Emacs users, if pre-recorded video with captions are available then I can make a local event for them to watch the video and discuss more easily :) For the majority of us, attending the live session is the next step.
da
David B
4:03 PM

possibly unpopular opinion, but I think non-free JS is not the biggest problem with youtube
se
seabass
4:03 PM

David B: are there further problems that could affect EmcsConf?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:05 PM

amirrajan: Awesome =)
se
seabass
4:05 PM

https://media.ccc.de/
sa
Sacha Chua
4:05 PM

takaxp: I think that would be great to set up
sa
Sacha Chua
4:07 PM

I think a wonderful next step for 2021 would be to make the prerecorded videos (with captions if possible!) available to event co-organizers so that they can select them before their events, and for us to make the prerec videos publicly available at the same time they're being presented
sa
Sacha Chua
4:07 PM

(so that people can watch them in case the stream gets messed up)
sa
Sacha Chua
4:07 PM

so, like, that's a cp to the right directory that can be automated =)
ta
takaxp
4:09 PM

Sacha: Agree :)
co
Corwin
4:10 PM

IT SOOOO COOOOL
sa
Sacha Chua
4:10 PM

I haven't figured out a Free Software / free encoding live captioning tech stack yet, but we can use IRC (ex: #emacsconf-accessible) or CRDT or the pad
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
4:11 PM

I also kept taking backups of the etherpad last year :D
ta
takaxp
4:12 PM

Right, that is an issue we should resolve. I'll also survey such software or service to add caption to videos.
sa
Sacha Chua
4:14 PM

Offline captioning is easy, I've got a pretty neat workflow for that as well
se
seabass
4:14 PM

excuse me, a seagull is knocking on my window
sa
Sacha Chua
4:14 PM

(using subed.el! =) )
ba
bandali
4:14 PM

lol seabass
sa
Sacha Chua
4:14 PM

and we might be able to get volunteers set up for that
da
David B
4:15 PM

/me waves from the back of the room
sa
Sacha Chua
4:16 PM

All right, let's do this. =) It's a text editor, we should be able to get lots of text about it. ;)
sa
Sacha Chua
4:16 PM

I'm not going to be anywhere near live captioning speed with steno by EmacsConf 2021, but maybe someday. =)
ba
bandali
4:16 PM

:)
ta
takaxp
4:17 PM

:)
sa
Sacha Chua
4:18 PM

We do have a process-related question to figure out before the CFP announcement: keep anonymized? Change?
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
4:19 PM

Gow many weeks?
co
Corwin
4:19 PM

probably now until conf with some gaps for vacation and weeks no one can cover?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:21 PM

I might be able to do Sat 11:30PM to 12:30AM EDT
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
4:22 PM

One suggestion I got from PyCon India was to have some way to do RSVP for the office hours, so that the organizers know how many people to expect.
da
David B
4:23 PM

I would be more willing to be a backup person, I think
sa
Sacha Chua
4:23 PM

or do we want something like an "e-mail this address with some times that work for you and we'll try to see if anyone is available"
sa
Sacha Chua
4:24 PM

which is not quite office hours
sa
Sacha Chua
4:24 PM

(although we can post general availability)
da
David B
4:24 PM

probably important to make it low effort for potential participants
co
Corwin
4:24 PM

=1

S/=/+
sa
Sacha Chua
4:24 PM

Sounds good.
sa
Sacha Chua
4:25 PM

I can put office hours in the calendar and they can be announced in the usual places
co
Corwin
4:25 PM

that sounds perfect to me
da
David B
4:26 PM

Time warning?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:26 PM

Sounds like we should have an event thingy on emacsverse anyway, something like a Free Software version of Meetup
se
seabass
4:26 PM

I was just wondering if Corwin's regex was valid lol
sa
Sacha Chua
4:26 PM

30m in this meeting
da
David B
4:26 PM

ok.
ba
bandali
4:26 PM

hehe
bh
Bhavin Gandhi
4:27 PM

Something like this Sacha?
https://joinmobilizon.org/
sa
Sacha Chua
4:27 PM

Yeah, I've seen Emacs user groups using that
da
David B
4:27 PM

sed is vim talk anyway
se
seabass
4:28 PM

M-x re-builder
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
4:34 PM

I was thinking nor so much teaching as matchmaking, but that would also be worthwhile.
co
Corwin
4:35 PM

mode-masters

al la toast masters
sa
Sacha Chua
4:36 PM

It's because I like to be able to fit all my favourite talks in. ;) Which is all of them.
ba
bandali
4:37 PM

:)
co
Corwin
4:38 PM

Not so much a "jobs board" as an "hat rack". Grab a an hat. Do the thing.
ba
bandali
4:38 PM

+1
co
Corwin
4:39 PM

The 1001 hats of amin bandali :P
sa
Sacha Chua
4:42 PM

Have we resolved the question about the call for proposals? Have we made all the decisions needed for it?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:44 PM

Anonymous or not?
co
Corwin
4:47 PM

that's well said. it's more "appearance of" than actual advoding actual bias, as least in so far as I've not heard of specific concncerns: it's preventitive.
sa
Sacha Chua
4:50 PM

I think we tried to phrase it as "... uhh... do you really want to deal with giving all those talks? It's a lot of work!" ;)
sa
Sacha Chua
4:50 PM

and there's also the possibility of expanding capacity, if we can figure that out
sa
Sacha Chua
4:52 PM

soooooo complicated
ba
bandali
4:52 PM

+1 on expansion, sacha
sa
Sacha Chua
4:53 PM

So, like, last year was Unexpectedly Complicated

Well, somewhat expectedly, but still.
da
David B
4:54 PM

it occurs to me that office hours and anonymous submission don'

t really go together
ba
bandali
4:54 PM

ohinteresting observation
sa
Sacha Chua
4:54 PM

Do we want to make the submission process more open?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:55 PM

Like, public mailing list / wiki?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:56 PM

so people can +1 a talk submission publicly?
sa
Sacha Chua
4:57 PM

or choose to privately e-mail feedback?
se
seabass
4:57 PM

I wasn't thinking so much that individual talks are upvoted by the community, but rather that the talks are reviewed by multiple people selected openly from the community
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
4:57 PM

If you would like me for a reviewing discussion, I would be available.
sa
Sacha Chua
4:58 PM

Something like https://emacsconf.org/2020/submissions/ , not that anyone else probably looked at it last year? =)
ta
takaxp
4:59 PM

I'd like to know the reason why a proposal is accepted rather than a proposal is rejected.
ra
Raymond S. Puzio
4:59 PM

Yes
da
David B
5:00 PM

a definite maybe
sa
Sacha Chua
5:00 PM

As submissions come in, we could probably organize them into something either public or limited to co-organizers/reviewers
sa
Sacha Chua
5:01 PM

Are there problems associated with making those proposals public? Would it be helpful for people to see what else has been proposed, or discouraging?