path: root/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-journalism--emacs-journalism-or-everythings-a-nail-if-you-hit-it-with-emacs--alfred-zanini--main.vtt

WEBVTT captioned by alfred

NOTE Introduction

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All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to my talk.

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We'll be talking today about Emacs journalism

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and what that means.

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First of all, I'd like to thank the EmacsConf organizers.

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Thank you very much, Sacha, for being very patient with me.

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Let's get right into it. So who's this talk for?

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First of all, it's for anyone

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who wants to learn about workflows

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and how you can work with Emacs

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to basically do anything you want.

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And it's for all levels of Emacs lovers.

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So I'll keep it accessible.

NOTE Why this talk

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Why this talk? So first of all,

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I want to share a lot of Emacs.

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I also wanted to learn about workflows myself.

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So what better way than to talk about them

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to be able to learn? And we could maybe learn a thing

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or two about collaboration and using Emacs to that motive.

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I think it's useful to try and figure out who am I?

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Why am I having this talk? I'm a journalist based

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in Hong Kong and a documentary filmmaker. So that means

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that I have interviews quite often.

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I'm dealing with texts and subtitles,

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which I have to transcribe.

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And I'm also dealing with a lot of research.

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So that means going through a lot of documents and a lot of,

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well, skimming through documents

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to be able to have something to write.

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And I also use Emacs since basically one year ago,

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I started using it full time

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to have a great detriment of my productivity.

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So we'll be talking about, we'll be talking about, well,

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basically, my workflow for Emacs

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and how I went about having an Emacs workflow.

NOTE Thinking about workflows

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So what is best when you're thinking about your own workflow

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and some things to think about journalism

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and about using these kinds of tools

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in combination for this? So where do we all start?

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Let's start with a simple-ish definition

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of what is a workflow. A workflow is

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any sequence of actions or tools you use to accomplish that.

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So it doesn't have to be through text processing,

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though obviously being a text-oriented community,

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it will most likely be partially text.

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But it's just about how we accomplish a task

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and which tools and mindsets we go into it with.

NOTE My old workflow

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For example, let's talk about my old workflow.

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That workflow was basically just Google Drive

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using proprietary tools like Notion, Google Drive, Office,

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Storyboarder, and for communication, WeChat.

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If I could forgive all the privacy concerns of WeChat,

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I wouldn't, but I still wouldn't forgive

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the terribly buggy interface, and I hate it.

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So there are certain tools that you have to use

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and you have to modify your workflow

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or just adapt your workflow to the tools

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that you have to use. So for me, unfortunately,

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that means having to use WeChat. You compartmentalize it

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and set it aside, try not to think about it too hard.

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And this is the part that hurts the most, right?

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You're thinking about your workflow,

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you're thinking about, all right,

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I have this thing that works, I don't think about it.

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And all of a sudden, oh, I'm not happy

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with what I have right now. So let's get into,

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let's get into how, oops. So let's get into how and why

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we're not happy with our workflows.

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Because obviously, it's quite nice

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to not have to think about things.

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But once you've thought about it,

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and once you're not happy with how it works,

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I think it's quite useful to think about

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why we're not happy about it.

NOTE Finding my workflow

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A huge part of what Emacs is being conscious of, well,

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how do we find our workflows?

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How do we find what we want to do? And for me, obviously,

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the best way to find that is to write it down

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and to try and tailor my tools to it.

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This is what I came up with.

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I want to be able to manage my accounting,

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to manage collaboration. So: working on files

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alongside my colleagues, communication,

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so that's planning out and managing meetings,

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managing teammates, managing tasks, information gathering.

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So that's what I was saying, going through documents,

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going through all these lists of tasks and all of these,

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not lists of tasks, all of these, well, basically,

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scientific papers, notes, references and wikis, media.

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So I want to be able to have a music player,

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a podcast player, a movie player. That's outside of work,

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but it's still one of the tasks that I do. Media processing,

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so this is where my job kind of gets into it a bit more.

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So I want to be able to take notes

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on the media that I watch,

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to transcribe the interviews

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and even the conversations that I have,

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to be able to later on have an easier time.

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Photo editing, video editing, so unfortunately,

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Emacs isn't quite quite oriented to that.

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Graphic design, color grading, storyboarding.

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And so obviously, you go into it a bit more.

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So managing to do scheduling tasks, interviews,

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preparing shot lists, tracking time,

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setting daily work goals, setting priorities,

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independent tasks, publishing,

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so publishing stuff for my work on my work CMS,

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publishing stuff on my personal CMS,

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although that's not happened yet. I've been kind of busy.

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Security and privacy, so making sure

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that everything that I use respects my data and respects me.

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Unfortunately, not the case, but you take what you can.

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Text processing. So that's journaling,

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writing down articles, my personal wiki, my work wiki,

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which I use to document, well, for example,

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several projects that I have currently.

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So I basically have my work wiki that I'm trying

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to fill out where I'll be able

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to basically go into it later on

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and have my thoughts written down.

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And programming, which I'm not very good at.

NOTE Literate configuration

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Some people might have noticed

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that this looks a lot like [literate] programming.

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If you go into my config file,

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I have something kind of similar.

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I was planning on having a bit more time

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for this presentation and making it stick to that.

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But you'll see basically the mess that is my Emacs config.

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But it kind of sticks to the same thoughts, right?

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Text processing, web browsing, finances,

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that's my accounting, media and research.

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So my BibTeX... Here be dragons.

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Terrible, terrible config

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that I've stolen from plenty of people.

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So basically, that's how Emacs fits into this.

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So this is where I talk about literate configs

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and how that's helped me. Obviously, I've extolled

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the virtue of literate configs

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to quite an extent right here. It's basically...

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The concept is to have documents, living documents

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and documentation as code.

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So basically, let's go back into my config.

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I talk about what the config file does, have code blocks.

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So this is something that Emacs does. I'm pretty sure

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that there are some resources about that accessible online,

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which are even accessible in the Emacs Gulf. And so, yeah,

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basically just having everything accessible

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in one single source, one single file,

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which allows you to basically put everything down

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and integrate things from your config much much more easily.

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That's something that I found very useful in Emacs

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and which I think everyone can benefit from

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or the idea of it, like having everything stored centrally.

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It doesn't have to be used just for Emacs.

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It can be used also, it can be used also for, for example,

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a Qt browser or for other window manager configs.

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That kind of thing.

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And it's not been very easy to set a place.

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So I haven't done that just yet, but that's the plan.

NOTE Org Mode

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Basically, this is all thanks to Org mode.

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So, small presentation of what Org mode is. Org mode

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is basically a project / task management,

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past management and task management,

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and writing mode for Emacs.

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So I can just put in a heading to do Hello World,

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send a message to Rosie tomorrow about the shoot space MDS--

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that's thanks to wonderful Doom Emacs--and schedule it.

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I don't know. It's tomorrow. Let's go and set it to 9am.

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And say, maybe it's it's tomorrow already. I've done it.

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I've sent a message. Perfect. It's done.

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And it also allows you to have an agenda view.

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So I hope there's nothing too compromising right here.

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Whatever. It's fine. So it allows you

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to basically manage your agenda from there.

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And you might have seen me doing my little space nrf

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and wonderful key binding by Org Roam. So this

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is also another thing which is quite quite nice

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with Emacs is that you can you can have Org Roam, which

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is basically a database management program.

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So I can have documentary ideas

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and have basically my ideas which link up to another file.

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So for example, this one, which I have nothing for,

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but you get the idea. So it allows you to apps

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to link up with different files and to manage your thoughts.

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And this gets back into the workflow part of my talk,

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which is, well, this, this is a way

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to control what your workflow

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is control what the tools you're using are and to control,

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basically the way in which you interact

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with your technology.

NOTE Collaborating with Pandoc

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So I am getting back into the way that I collaborate.

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Because obviously it's no good having just

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one Emacs user who's trying to share to share things

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with his editor. So I use pandoc.

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For example, let's go back into my file right here.

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Obviously, I don't spend much time inside of tables.

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But if I select this one, that's "SPC m e".

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Thank you, Doom Emacs for the for the keybindings.

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And I can just export it via pandoc right here, So "p".

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And I can just export it to doc, docx, or export it to ODT.

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So as an ODT file, which is typically what I do.

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And then I just send it through WeChat,

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which is not optimal, but I'm not allowed

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to do anything else. So it is what it is.

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Basically, this is how I export my files. And I re-import,

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I re-import them with pandoc as well.

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So I convert my Pages files, which I receive

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through an ICS plugin. It's not quite finalized,

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so I'm not ready to show it,

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but there's a link that I'll be putting

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in the description which talks about this.

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So this is my sharing part.

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It's nothing very special, honestly.

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It's just making sure that your documents

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are able to be shared.

NOTE My own
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I have certain things. So for example,

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if I go into retro gaming in Hong Kong,

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if I go into my scripts, there are certain headings

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which I have. So for example, they ignore...

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My editor doesn't like to have some headings.

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But when I have a video script that I'm preparing,

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I like to have them for my own organization

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and for my thinking. So I keep them in right there

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and put in ignore. This is the advantage

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of the Emacs because you can just SPC m e o o,

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and this is ready to send, basically.

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There are ways to have export presets,

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but I'm not quite there yet. It's a lot of work.

NOTE You don't have to get lost in the weeds

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So, getting back to my presentation.

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This all goes into basically other packages,

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which I want to implement, but I haven't been able to.

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My main conclusion: you don't have to get lost in the weeds.

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I kind of did that while preparing this talk.

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So basically, you don't have to do it all at once.

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Don't let it consume your life.

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I probably should have done this earlier.

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But Emacs configs are forever work in progress.

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So there are lots of features which you can add,

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a lot of things which you can implement if you only had,

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I don't know, five weeks to be able to implement them.

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But you're working right now.

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And this is a message to me five months ago.

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Don't do it. Just keep working

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and don't get lost in configuration all day.

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So yeah, basically the aim is to use software that you love,

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but not die in the process.

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And yeah, basically just using it as much as you can

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using fast software as much as you can.

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I'm doing that as well for...

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I have certain software such as storyboarder or bit tags,

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that kind of thing, which I try to use as much as possible,

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even outside of Emacs.

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And the aim is to get the work done in the end.

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I'm not an absolutist on this. So yeah, basically,

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let's keep modding our configs and having fun.

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If you've got any questions about the talk,

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I'm happy to answer. I am a novice at this,

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both presenting in front of camera

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and at talking about Emacs.

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I'm sure I've gotten a few things wrong,

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and it's not been the smoothest talk, but it's 10pm, almost.

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I need to get back home. Yeah, take care, everyone.

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Thanks again to the organizers. Here's my contact info.

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And I'll be in touch with the questions.

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I don't think I'll be able to do the live answers,

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but that's more or less it. Thanks so much for listening,

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if you've been listening, and take care.