path: root/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-meetups--attending-and-organizing-emacs-meetups--bhavin-gandhi--answers.vtt

WEBVTT

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All right. Hi, again, everyone. So, we are back. And I am with Vavin. Hi, Vavin. How

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are you doing?

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I'm good. How about you?

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I'm doing well. You will note that I now have an extra layer because I was absolutely frozen

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in the first half of this year's EmacsConf. But now, hopefully, I should start getting

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a little warmer. Usually, I'm more stressed, you know, when we only have one track and

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we only have about two minutes between every talk. I need to run all the time. And even

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though we are in the dead of winter in Europe, usually, I'm pretty warm. But today, I am

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so relaxed that I have the mental availability to be cold. Anyway, this is not about me.

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This is about you, Vavin.

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So, for the new joiners, newcomers to the chat, we do have a pad where you can ask questions.

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And we are primarily looking at this pad for the questions. What we'll do afterwards is

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that we'll open up this current room in which we are. And we will allow you to ask questions

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directly to Vavin. And it's a subject, you know, user group that is very close to Sasha

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and my heart because we've done a lot of work towards it. And we might have some knowledge

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to contribute afterwards. But for now, I prefer if we heard about Vavin. So, Vavin, take it

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away.

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Yep.

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I see one question. What about using on multiple computers? I think that's not related or I'm

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not sure what it is about.

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I'm not sure either.

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Yeah, I'll just do the next one. What about collaborative editing with this multiple computers

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with Macs like CRDT or with R2D2?

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I think there's something weird going on. I'll give you just a second.

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I'll just pick up the relevant one in that case.

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Sure, thank you.

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Thoughts on physical meetups.

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Yeah, so this year, I think a few months back, I had thought of doing it. But the way right

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now it is, at least in my region, the community is comparatively small. So usually right now

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the model is working is basically the remote one. And we get people from some people from

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I think China, some people from Australia. So we get to have a couple of people and good

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discussions usually. Whereas for physical meetups, what I've been thinking is maybe

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one off meetup can be physical. Let's say you come together similar to people have been

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watching Emacs on this year. So something like you come together, do the online meetup

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first and then networking and discussions can happen offline. So that was one of my

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idea. Maybe I'll try it with Emacs APAC sooner or later and we'll see how it goes. So that's

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the current plan about physical meetups. And in terms of if you ask me thoughts, they are

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good too. So you get to talk with people face to face, you got to make more connections.

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So yeah, I might experiment some mixed way of doing it right once in a while you meet

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or otherwise you do it online so that people who are not able to join in or travel to that

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particular area or region, they can just join online.

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Yeah, it's a very interesting topic of physical meetups because we, so I participate in one

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of the workshop Emacs Paris and we used to have in-person meetups in Paris and usually

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there were about five to 10 people showing up, which was a good number. But when COVID

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happened and we moved to virtual meetings, we started having a lot more people. Now we

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are averaging about 15 to 20 people at every session and it's amazing. But the problem

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is, I'm knocking on wood really hard, but now that COVID is a little easier to manage

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and that's a lot of people are returning to in-person meetings, it's a little more complicated

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really to say, do we go back to physical meetings even though we have more people on a virtual

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meeting? It causes us to ask many questions about why do we want those meetings to be

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held? And we need to think about this in 2023 with the organizers of Emacs Paris and I think

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Emacs SF also was in the process of thinking about how to go back to physical venues. And

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I think right now the consensus amongst a lot of workshop user group organizers is that

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they would like to have both. So if it was a monthly meeting before, why not have a physical

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meeting every month and a virtual meeting every month as well on a two-week cycle. So

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that's a lot more work, obviously. It's not choosing, it's choosing. I'm not sure how

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big the pool of people you have in Emacs APAC actually is but it feels like it's a much

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larger area than say Emacs Paris for France. So you try it even though. Yeah, exactly.

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So in India, there is the region with this Maharashtra Pune, it is like one end and across

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maybe you can say 500-600 kilometers radius, you have many other cities where more people

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are there. So having all of them at one place is basically event like conference or something.

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Monthly meetup, probably not. So there is one more meetup group I managed, not related

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to Emacs, but we had same question, what to do now? We have many people joining us throughout

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the state and should we have a meetup in one city only? So yeah, I think we'll have to

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experiment and see. Yeah, but it's fun to experiment, it's fun

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to have. We know that we have interested people all around the world, like that it showed

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you the type of workshop that we can have and how to run your own, but we already have

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many workshops around the world. It wasn't the case if you go back three years ago. I

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think if I'm completely speedboarding now, but I think we had about five user groups

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worldwide three years ago, and now we must have something like 12, 13, 14 even, which

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is a massive increase when you think about it. Now that Babin has provided you with the

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tools to do just the same and start your own workshop, and also you have the buddy system

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of Andrea that you saw earlier today, you have more options than ever to be able to

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meet people talking about Emacs. Now, there's obviously EmacsConf as well, which is helping

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and we have a lot of lovely tools to share with you, but I think it's better or it's

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a good compliment to have a monthly checkup with people who might feel a little closer

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to you, either, and closer can have multiple definitions, you know, it can be closer in

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terms of proficiency with Emacs, or it can be closer geographically, which makes it easier

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or culturally, which will make it easier to converse with people. We do have a question

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about hybrid meetings. Do you want to take this one, Babin? It's so related to what we

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were talking about.

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Yep, yep, yep, yeah. So I tried it, not with Emacs one, but with the other one I organized.

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And even I had some thoughts. The only problem is what happens, the people who are joining

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virtually, they usually end up feeling left out. Because people who are in the room, they

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might be discussing something face to face, they might have some discussions. The only

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way I think would work is everyone joins the online link from their own machines. You do

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your regular meetup discussions. And after that, you have some discussions. Because otherwise,

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one side or other side will end up feeling left out. Rather than doing it, I'll just

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keep it one or other, either completely virtual or completely in person.

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Yeah, I think it is really complicated to do a hybrid stream well. I told you the figures

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of the people we had, which was roughly between five to 15 people at most in physical venues.

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Right now, by the way, we should probably say hi to the people in Switzerland who are

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currently watching Emacs in a very nice, warm room. I'm thinking warm because I'm cold.

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It's not only warm in terms of the weather inside the room, but also warm in terms of

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the people around it. Hi, everyone. Hybrid meetings pretty much take the attention

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of two people entirely. One to manage the physical venue, and one to manage the virtual

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interactions. And generally, those two people would be core organizers of the events. And

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that takes a lot of energy. And I think people are a little scared to do such events because

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you also need to manage webcams, you need to manage presentation, how to take questions,

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how to relay audio. And frankly, as someone who organizes or helps organize EmacsConf

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every year, I can tell you that it can be plenty of wrong going on with audio setup,

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video setup, and making sure that everyone is being listened to. But ultimately, we are

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sharing these tools. So maybe we could share the tools for EmacsConf for people to actually

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start running their own workshop. That would be interesting. But please don't send me an

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email asking for this. I need to rest.

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So there is one, I think, thought. Yeah, one thought in the IRC. It is about the time it

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takes for me to organize the meetup. So what I have done is creating the announcement,

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posting it at least on the website, I have automated it. So at times, even I forget that

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when is the meetup and all. But my automation takes care of creating the online website

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entries, announcements and all. So that saves me a lot of time and a lot of cognitive load

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I should say. I don't have to remember I have to announce it. And what happens is, I do

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plan to automate more things like announcements on IRC, announcements on Mastodon and stuff.

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So that will save a lot more time. But usually, that basically means I don't have to do much

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stuff before the meetup. It's like 15 to 20 minutes. And during the meetup, obviously

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I attend along with everyone else. And post meetup, it might take more time. But I haven't

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worked on processing or collecting the video and publishing those. So maybe add more, let's

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say, 30 minutes or so. So yep.

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Yeah, there is definitely something to be said about how do we use the workshops to

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make content that lasts after the workshop. It's a discussion we've been having with some

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of the workshop organizers. I remember mostly Emacs SF again, and also Emacs Paris. We were

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talking about, yes, we record the sessions, but we share the sessions only with members

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of the event. What if we have a really great presentation? It would be such a shame to

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leave it live merely on the BBB record server where only users can see it. No, it's actually

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much better if we could find a way to share it on YouTube, for instance, or any other

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distribution platform where people would be able to share this. With EmacsConf, we share

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all the talks that happen in prior years. What if we could have user groups and workshops

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do the same? That would be amazing. But I think people are feeling a little iffy and

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rightfully so. This is a lot of energy to first make presentations like this for the

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speakers, but then to package them, to caption them for accessibility. We are able to broadcast

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talk this year with captions with no little thanks to Bavin, who is actually helping us

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a lot behind the scenes working on the subtitles. Thank you again so much, Bavin, for all this.

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You will be the first to tell, this is a lot of work, actually. I'm not sure how much time

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you've spent in the last two months working on subtitles, but it's been a long time.

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It does take time. That's why I'm still not sure how much time it will take for me to

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get those talks or recordings out, right? But as a first step, like I mentioned in the

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talk as well, just get it out first and then work towards refining it.

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Yeah, that's the usual saying that good is better than perfect or here and there is better

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than later and never. I think that's a very good plan here. Bavin, we have about five

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more minutes until we need to head into the next store. We have opened the chat room,

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so if people wanted to join and ask questions with Bavin, mostly if you're interested in

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running your own workshop, this would be a golden opportunity to converse with Bavin

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and see how you could get started on this. Or maybe if you want to find people interested

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in starting a workshop, maybe not in BBB today, but it'd be interesting for you to connect

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on the pad or whatever else really to be able to say, oh yeah, I want to start an Emacs

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Michigan meeting or whatever. I'm not sure why I defaulted to Michigan, don't ask me.

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But you would be able to find maybe other people willing to do so and that'd be great.

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Why don't you stop moving my hands like this? This is the one gesture I'm doing today and

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I need to pluralize it a little bit. Do we have any more questions on the pad? I think

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no.

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Not on pad. I think there are two questions in IRC. I'll just quickly answer them. One

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is about automation. So I have my repository, the website repository on GitLab and they

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provide something called pipelines. So you can just schedule things and I have a cronjob

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you can say sort of on their platform itself, which goes and gets triggered on certain days

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and my script basically takes care of publishing a new blog entry basically. And there was

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one question, what is iLuxy? So it is a new Linux user group from Chennai, India. So yeah,

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I think I've been using their mailing list and there have been a couple of people from

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that part of the country who joined the meetup as well.

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And we're definitely trying to make Emacs user group a thing. Like Lug, Linux user group

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has been a thing for decades at this point. And if only we could manage to make, I mean,

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the thing it doesn't sound as well, a huge, probably the worst argument in its favor really,

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but Emacs user group feels like it should be something that is widely adopted as much

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as Linux user groups. Because when you think about it, whether it be Linux or whether it

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be Emacs, those groups are where a lot of people get to experiment with those tools

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and learn, especially a lot of beginners who make it to those meetings. They get propelled

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in the future in terms of how much they learn and it's so much better. You probably heard

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more about this in the Android talk we had earlier today. Right, I'm blabbering on about,

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but it's a topic very dear to my heart and I'm so glad that you managed to feel sorry

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a topic and a presentation. Sorry, I'm mixing up everything there.

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We will soon be moving on to the next stream. So I see that we have a couple of people still

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on BBB, but no one with a microphone. So again, when we open the BBB chat room, if you want

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to join and ask questions, it's all the better. It's good if you want to join and listen,

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but we need people to actually be asking questions because that's when we have the speaker in

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one room and you can gather all the questions. I'm going to give you a little secret. If

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sometimes it doesn't sound like I'm making any sense, it's because on one here, I am

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listening to Bavin. That's the left here. On the right here, I'm listening to production

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and sometimes stuff is burning in the background and I have to take a deep breath and focus

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on, for instance, everyone is talking in my ear. It's really complicated. So what I'll

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be doing is that in about 1 minute and 20 seconds, we'll be moving into the next talk.

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Bavin, thank you so much for taking the time to answer all the questions. You'll probably

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be sleeping fairly soon, right?

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Yeah, please help us in the backstage. But yes, thank you so much for all your help.

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Thank you for your presentation. As for the others, we are about to move to the next talk

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in about 1 minute. So it's going to be a bit of an awkward pause again. Sorry for this,

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but at the top of the next minute, we'll be starting the next talk. See you in a bit,

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I suppose. Thank you again, Bavin.

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Thank you. Thank you for organizing the event. It has been fun.

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Thank you for participating in it.