path: root/2021/meetings.md

[[!meta title="Meeting notes"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2020 Amin Bandali, Sacha Chua, David O'Toole, Corwin Brust, Leo Vivier, Daniel Gopar"]]
<!-- Automatically generated from meetings.org -->


# Ongoing projects

-   Subtitles/transcripts: sachac, bhavin192
-   FOSSHost: mplsCorwin
-   Calendar, connecting with meetups: sachac
-   Streaming infrastructure for meetups?: bandali, sachac
-   Amin and Gopar's podcast: bandali, gopar
-   mplsCorwin's livestreaming project, working on trimming
-   Writing about Emacs: zaeph


# January 28, 2021 meeting

-   Agenda
    -   Diversity: dto not around at the moment, gopar also interested
    -   Guidelines for conduct renamed
    -   Transcripts for day 1 done and uploaded to YouTube, will add them to the wiki pages; tweaked transcript display and got some feedback, could use more tweaking; next: day 2
    -   Yay CRDT
    -   Sending a ‘get well soon’ email to David (dto)
    -   emacsconf mailing lists?
-   Diversity
    -   Working with questions
        -   Do we need to change anything about the CFP this year?
            -   2019: asked for demographic information
            -   2020: anonymized by bandali before consideration, added paragraph to CFP about encouraging people to reach out
            -   2021: Ideas/projects
                -   Are people feeling not up to snuff?
                -   Do people not know about it? (I've heard from a number of people who didn't know about EmacsConf until close to the event or after)
                    -   Longer CFP process, more reaching out to different places
                        -   L: We had discussed starting in July to have a little more lee-way to review the papers, and give more time to people to actually find out about it.
                -   Do underrepresented people not have enough discretionary time due to systemic issues?
                -   Are people worried about being roasted if they make mistakes? (Might be a good opportunity for a FAQ with reassurances)
                -   Add a note about workshops/coaching
                -   Workshops (on top could feature mock presentations
        -   Do we need to change the guidelines for conduct? (might be in tandem with the previous question)
            -   Kind Communication Guidelines
        -   Do we need to rethink the organisation team to have more diversity?
        -   Do we need to rethink Q&A?
            -   It was nice having speakers read the pad if they wanted to; maybe make it clear that they don't have to answer all the questions and that they can answer in any order
            -   Tech check: Coaching speakers on what to do, how to handle questions they don’t want to answer at the moment
            -   Maybe if people felt they had more time for Q&A, they would feel more comfortable with taking a reflective pause or postponing it to a conversation afterwards
        -   reach out to communities to see who might be interested in this issue
            -   e-mail? chat?
        -   How can we make EmacsConf more accessible to people?
            -   Live captions would be pretty interesting; a little hard to do. See if anyone wants to volunteer?
                -   Can join in BBB and stream to a separate stream?
                -   BBB live captions cover bottom part of screen
                -   Maybe if there's a keynote?
            -   Stenography is cool, but hard to get into. Plover?
            -   We can mention the subtitles we've been working on.
            -   \#emacs-accessible? Do we need to make this more prominent?
            -   Can we get more people giving feedback on the transcript format and UI on the wiki?
            -   Should we ask people to e-mail us about their accessibility needs before the conference?
            -   Can we get speakers submitting prerecs earlier so we can subtitle, and then release them simultaneously?
                -   Nudge people towards prerecs more to reduce tech risk
        -   How do we deal with divisive people?  Do we need to change the way we handle the people we accept in the CFP?
            -   Using our discretion and judgement might be best, case-by-case
            -   With pre-recs, we’d be able to sense the tone; but we could also do that with the tech-checks
            -   Harking back to RMS’s talks, it was idiosyncratic; the other speakers didn’t have any problem.
            -   We don’t seem to be making too much progress on this question because it’s tied to tech questions.  That being said:
                -   We’re going to coach speakers during the tech-checks.
                    -   ‘Here’s what we do during emergencies.’
                    -   EmacsConf organizers: Handling the viewport
        -   Do we need to reach out to people and encourage particular talks? How? How does that interact with the anonymous CFP process?
            -   What kinds of talks do we generally want?
                -   What are our goals? How do we want to nudge attendees?
                    -   Inspirational: Inspired by interesting videos to go and check out stuff, try things out, push their config
                    -   Deep dive: Explain something that can be used to build lots of stuff, help with questions
                    -   Connecting: people see people like them using Emacs for things they do or want to do
                -   I want one that dives into Org technical stuff, and a nifty org-babel use, and maybe one that dives into an Emacs Lisp library or C, and maybe one on collaborating with others, and maybe one on graphics, and maybe one on interesting UI, and one on music/games, and one on an interesting non-technical use case, and one maybe on the Emacs alternatives (remacs, guile, emacs-ng?), and one about Emacs meetups, and a really cool coding talk, and a newbie/user story&#x2026; - sacha (who has a surprisingly long wishlist)
                -   package maintainers - going from one to many people (or also one package to many packages)
                -   We can ask as an individual asking another individual; doesn't have to be formal in the CFP or anything.
                -   shell
                -   automation
                -   Internet browsing / interacting with Internet services
                -   EmacsConf, automation
                -   Do we want to try the workshop-during-the-conference idea again?
    -   Showcasing diversity? Might be fun for podcasts, and maybe make an index on EmacsWiki
    -   Ideas for future actions
    -   Mailing list for workshops
        -   We could mediate people doing workshops by managing a custom domain, offering email addresses
            -   It would allow us to circumvent the Emacs maintainers which are busy enough as it is, and might generate some
        -   Two elements that we’d need to cover to federate the community
            -   Mailing list
                -   Mailman
                    -   Amin says it’s a little complicated to set up, server-side.
            -   Landing page
        -   Questions to figure out:
            -   Which name do we use for the domain?
            -   It’s a lot of time investment; shouldn’t we be waiting for the FSF sponsorship to actually have a way to remunerate people for their work?
        -   Follow-up:
            -   Referring up to know how others manage spam?
                -   Could we ask them to handle our email for us to avoid investing too much time into spam rules?
    -   Podcast
        -   No podcast this week (which is fine, don’t worry!)
        -   Roadmap
            -   Probably another recording tomorrow about ERC
                -   With an Emacs-news segment
            -   Gopar’s journey into Emacs
            -   Future people
                -   David from System Crafters also interested in talking
                    -   Maybe something in parallel with ERG?
                -   Maybe bringing Leo later?
                -   Fermin (Maxima speaker) Reach out: irc? email?
        -   Rethinking the intro
            -   Maybe a song that kicks in 7-8 seconds to not delay it too much
        -   We still need to look into a good outro music
            -   shoshin has been super busy, but we might be able to get something from them later on.
    
    -   Future actions
        -   Maintenance
            -   Re-add CFP to the sidebar (since it might be useful for users checking previous years for info)
            -   Checking the price for live-transcription; maybe they could make a price to us?
                -   Does LibrePlanet live-caption?
                -   Could we find a stenographer who knows about Emacs?
                    -   If not, we could feed them a list of words to use for them to prepare
                -   Icecast?
            -   Wiping the emergency contact from the repo (and purging the history)
        -   To investigate
            -   Creating an awesome-emacs repo which would list community people who would be interested in doing more for/with the community
                -   Link for reference: [emacs-tw/awesome-emacs](https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs)
            -   EmacsWiki should have a people page, but it just has <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryHomepage> . Time to make a better one. <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsChannelDemographics> and <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsChannelPeople> are #emacs-focused; see also usesthis
                -   L: We’ve created one for usergroups, so we might as well create one for users as well!
            -   crdt for the question pad?
            -   Might not be stable enough.
            -   Ideas for crdt
            -   BBB & Accessibility
                -   Can we have multiple channels? (transcription vs. audio-description)
                -   Can we have a synthetic voice to read them out?
                    -   Blind people might prefer
            -   Finding a monthy slot for getting more people into the EmacsConf meetups.
        
        -   Homework
            -   Answer this question: ‘What kinds of talks do we generally want?’
            -   Amin: Check how much time it would take to deploy Mailman for the workshops.
            -   Leo: Update bhavin on the mailing stuff to let him that we are currently looking into options
            -   Leo: Sending a get-well-soon to David
        
        -   How strongly do we want to ask for pre-recs?
            -   Definitely at least as much as this year.
            -   It’s also much easier for Amin to chill when we have pre-recs.


# January 21, 2021 meeting

-   Updates:
    -   Sacha: one more talk left to transcribe for day 1, hooray!
        Everything else has been edited. Next step for day 1 is to edit
        the subtitles into transcripts and make them available. Also want
        to check if ableplayer passes LibreJS, since that can give us
        clickable transcripts; will include text transcript anyway for
        non-JS.
    -   zaeph: Emacs Research Group wants to meet daily
    -   bandali: A little tired because of work; but good progress is
        being made (yay!).  Some progress done on the podcast.
    -   corwin: mental health improving; looking forward to getting back
        to the swing of things :)
-   Next EmacsConf: Calendar?
    -   We could stick to the same period as 2020's edition (i.e.,
        mid-November to mid-December)
    -   CFP?
        -   start earlier: accomidated anticipated higher
            -   First entire week of July might be a good time: it'd give us 4
                months before the actual conference
    -   Office hours
        -   Could be used for the outreach part of the CFP
        -   Could also keep people excited about EmacsConf
        -   On the format
            -   A regular timeslot where people can join
            -   We ask them whether we could use a recording of the session to
                build some hype for the EmacsConf
            -   We can also have a private moment with them to address some of
                the possible problems with their talk/topic
            -   Short-ish and regular works best, probably
        -   Let's work on this during February, and let's aim for a first
            session in March
            -   if there are not presentations we can record and share we
                could use clips from recent orginizer meetings; we could close
                meetings with statements intended for this use.
-   On having multiple tracks for the next EmacsConf, either
    simultaneous or single-threaded
    -   Three tracks based on levels of mastery, e.g.:
        -   Beginners
        -   Pro-users
        -   Package developers
    -   Last year, we had de-facto tracks, or recurring topics like music,
        academic research, SVG-graphics, games, typography/themes,
        free-software philosophy, etc.
        -   We could use this info for the **outreach program**: 'We'd love to
            have people come talk to us about music'
-   Overhauling the graphics for the conferenc
    -   Posters?
    -   Scenes in OBS
    -   Custom dashboard.el ?
-   Figuring out the roles for the next EmacsConf
    -   Fleshing out roles for everyone in advance (so that we're not
        figuring it out one week prior) and along with this any private
        comms to faciliate (e.g. iff voice-over and cuts are different
        roles).
-   Diversity discussions
    -   Taking inspiration from the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
-   On changing the time for the weekly meeting
    -   Corwin is happy to keep the same time because it'll motivate him
        to wake up early on Saturdays
    -   We could have a monthly session which takes place on a weekday to
        try to get more people on board (David O'Toole, David Bremner,
        Karl Voit, etc.)

-   Ongoing projects for February:
    -   FSF Fiscal sponsorship (Leo)
    -   Office hours roadmap (Leo)


# January 14, 2021 meeting

-   Updates:
    -   Sacha:
        -   More subtitles edited (bhavin192 is helping too). Almost done
            with day 1 except for opening/closing remarks and manual transcriptions for 03-questions and 08
        -   switched to using emacsnews Reddit account
        -   scheduled tweets from @sachac about upcoming Emacs events - do you want these mirrored to @emacsconf or something?
            -   no new events aside from the ones already on the calendar
    -   bandali: recorded first episode of Emacs Weekly, skipped the news component and just had an interview about EmacsConf
        -   next:
            -   mix audio together and edit it
        -   plan to have several buffer episodes before releasing, maybe beginning of February
            -   can put together separate segments
            -   news might be doable with less prep
            -   can do solo episodes
            -   maybe community hosts, too?
        -   nudge from Sacha to transcribe or have show notes if possible =)
        -   gopar doesn't have a laptop at the moment
        -   which parts of your config might be good to contribute to core?
            questions to nudge people to contribute to core/packages
            -   This question coudl also be used in workshops settings with a sense of chronology: 1. publish it online, 2. merge it to core?
-   Q for mplsCorwin: would you like to transcribe 03-questions and 08, or shall I go ahead and do them? - sachac
-   Q for bandali: is the emacsnews Reddit thing handy for you? It's okay if you're still experimenting.
    -   not tested yet
-   Testing quick collaboration
    -   Testing tmate so that other people can edit the meeting minutes easily
    -   Test? it is working!
    -   Here I am in tmate and emacsclient. Each person can have their own emacsclient tab.
-   pat selves on back for getting stuff done, yay
-   Diversity workshop: It'd be nice to organise a 2h session where we discuss every problem that arised in the last conference, and pre-empt those that might arise for the next editions
    -   Using the word 'open source'
    -   Lack of diversity in the presentations (CFP?)
-   Next steps:
    -   sachac: follow up with mplsCorwin or transcribe 03-questions, 08; then all the day 1 talks will be done


# January 7, 2021 meeting

-   Checking in:
    -   bandali, zaeph, gopar, sachac, dto
    -   bandali: fairly uneventful, things are going okay, learning more about Jami, experimenting with DSLR for webcam but aspect ratio is a little weird
    -   sachac: virtual school started again; EmacsNYC meetup; emacs calendar in HTML and Org
    -   dto: having fun with neural networks
    -   zaeph: at his parents, can't do much work, enjoying the lull; figuring out collaborative slipboxing with org-roam; getting more into writing
    -   gopar
-   Agenda:
    -   Update: emacslife.com/calendar
    -   Update: attended NYC meetup
    -   methodology
    -   bandali
        -   met with organizers of EmacsNYC. They were curious about BBB and Jitsi, streaming, IRC web client
        -   met with gopar last night re: podcast
        -   will work on a blog post about the technical setup
        -   someone wanted to set up a meetup in Mexico, too, so maybe we can make an updated starting-a-meetup guide (<https://harryrschwartz.com/2015/09/14/starting-an-emacs-meetup.html>)
            -   how to find people and advertise
                -   reddit.com/r/emacs
                -   Emacs News
                -   <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Usergroups>
            -   how to stream and record
            -   what it might be like if there are no presentations (don't worry! hang out, share cool stuff, figure things out together, flip through Emacs News)
            -   sharing afterwards
    -   CRDT: see BBB chat if you want to try it
    -   dto:
        -   tutorial; (also, SystemCrafters just livestreamed an Emacs Lisp tutorial too)
        -   Hmm, it's like having lab hours
            -   Could be open (office hours, bring your questions; maybe a liiittle structure) or guided (here's an exercise to start with)
        -   podcast
        -   Upcoming workshops
        -   BBB has breakout rooms, might be worth looking into if it scales up a lot; Jitsi can have multiple people sharing screens at the same time;
        -   EmacsNYC said Jitsi is okay for the 20-30 people they've seen so far; EmacsBerlin said the same too (I think they self-host; want to see how they're doing it?). Sounds like it's much better now than it was last year
        -   dto will figure it out and write things up =)
        -   one-on-one tutorial was nice; finger memory for how to type some of these Lisp expressions
        -   it's better to have that interactivity, I think, since there are plenty of lecture-type resources on the Net
        -   one-on-one is fine, and then you can scale up (1-on-2, etc.) as you become more comfortable with it and see what can help you scale (ex: having them SSH into a shared server with emacsclients and then being able to quickly flip through their buffers so that you can peek over their shoulder or quickly show something?)
    -   gopar: upcoming podcast recording re: EmacsConf experience
        -   figuring out name
        -   planning to have a little buffer
            -   Hey, do you want to blend that into the Emacs Lisp / Emacs tutorial/workshop idea? Whenever you don't have any content, you can teach people a little more
            
            -
    -   bhavin192: Mailing list for meetups (some common prefix or something similar).
        -   **let's remember to discuss this and the next point** =)
    -   bhavin192: Update to Code of Conduct (I was hoping to use the same text or page for Emacs APAC meetup)
    -   zaeph: figuring out collaborating via Org Mode
        -   per-project pages make sense if you think about it from the web publishing point of view
        -   bandali: can be a different wiki if you want
        -   zaeph is a little intimidated by the idea of working with the garage door open
            -   there is already a private organizer wiki, so we can use that to incubate things if you want to collaboratively work on notes and stuff
        -   also totally okay to work on things individually and not collectively if you want, and we don't have to figure out workflows that work for everyone or a name that covers everything; sounding official increases expectations and may cause problems
        -
    -   Next:


# January 2, 2021 meeting

-   Conversations
    -   mplsCorwin: FOSSHost: okay to experiment with being a CDN, will
        experiment with videos
        -   authenticated RTMP server to support streaming meetups from Jitsi?
        -   PeerTube?
    -   sachac: added more events to
        <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Usergroups> and the calendar
    -   sachac: subed.el patches for splitting and merging subtitles, will
        continue editing subtitles
    -   Podcast:
        -   Thinking about name:
            -   Current: emacs.el podcast
            -   Emacs Weekly? Probably okay, although includes commitment to
                actually make it weekly
            -   Amin and Gopar's Wild World of Emacs?
        -   ideas for making it visually interesting when there's no video
        -   Suggested guest: Fermin - interesting story about how he got into
            Emacs and started making it better for PHP
    -   Making these conversations more public:
        -   Maybe start with just putting public meeting minutes somewhere,
            like the wiki, and then figure out if anyone actually wants to
            subscribe to it =)
            -   E-mail summary to mailing list?
            -   <https://emacsconf.org/2020/meetings/> announced on IRC
                \#emacsconf
            -   With long-form summary at some point?
            -   dto volunteering to help Leo (it turns out dto was also an
                English major in his past life, and has done a fair bit of
                copyediting)
            -   mplsCorwin can handle social media
            -   bandali: avoid perfectionism
                -   Lots of people have a hard time with this
                -   getting things out of your head = good
                -   don't let the great be the enemy of the good. Take advantage
                    of the friendly community.
                -   dto: story about local trails committee, which is kind of like
                    this
                -   Look, we can just post a rough outline, whee! =)
                -   bullet-points are fine as a starting point
        -   Segments of recording? Timer in the pad can help.
        -   Livestream with delay?
            -   Something to grow into, maybe; let's start with text and
                possibly recording segments
        -   Maybe private part and then public part, with time notes in case
            there are things we need to remove from the recording, keeping
            private segment as short as possible
            -   Everyone's cool with this
            -   Discussed: Separate days for private and public meeting? Might
                take too much time.
        -   Guidelines for private segments: document reasons if possible
            -   Confidentiality
            -   Buzz factor: vet ideas before unleashing them? preview?
        -   Figuring out the persona/voice/feeling for EmacsConf, for the
            meeting
            -   Hard to figure out how to communicate both excitement and
                reserve
            -   Diversity and perspective: we're trying to figure out how this
                comes across from the outside, without our own knowledge
            -   sachac: We could try to just dump the outline for starters, and
                can come up with quick automation for transforming the Etherpad
                =)
            -   Is it because we're trying to figure out the official voice for
                EmacsConf? Is it easier to talk as individuals?
    -   Sticker giveaway: mplsCorwin
-   Next week, 3PM UTC Saturday, Leo to send calendar invite and/or e-mail:
    -   Leo will write a summary of what we've been doing and put it in the
        pad, for e-mailing out?
    -   Braindumps welcome =)
    -   Week after: public meeting/recording