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[[!meta title="EmacsConf 2025 Report"]]
[[!date "2026-01-02"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright &copy; 2025 Sacha Chua"]]


# Table of Contents

-   [Overview](#overview)
-   [Technical details](#technical-details)
-   [Process improvements](#process-improvements)
-   [Finances](#finances)
-   [Acknowledgements](#acknowledgements)
-   [Updates](#updates)


<a id="overview"></a>

# Overview

EmacsConf 2025 was held on December 6 and 7 as an online conference. We had 25 talks across two tracks on Saturday and one track on Sunday, with a total of 11.3 hours of presentations (including 5 live talks), 5.2 hours of Q&A via web conference, and lots of lively discussions across IRC and Etherpad. There were around a hundred viewers each on the General track and the Development.

We posted videos and transcripts on talk pages shortly after they started streaming, and the recordings of live talks and Q&A sessions are now also available. We've also archived questions and commetns from IRC and Etherpad onto the talk pages. You can find the talk pages at <https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks> . The videos are also available on [media.emacsconf.org](https://media.emacsconf.org/2025), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@emacsconf), and [Toobnix](https://toobnix.org/c/emacsconf/videos).

Overall, people said:

-   Awesome conference as always
-   It was very fun participating
-   This is one of the most organized conferences I have attended and it is like that every year
-   Excellent weekend. It went by so fast 😊
-   thanks all for this nice Emacs weekend

You can find the talk pages and videos at <https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks>.


<a id="technical-details"></a>

# Technical details

EmacsConf is committed to software freedom. We used the following tools
for this year's conference:

-   [Org Mode](https://orgmode.org/), [Emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/): organization and collaboration
-   [MPV](https://mpv.io): video player
-   [BigBlueButton](https://bigbluebutton.org/): web conference
-   [OBS Studio](https://obsproject.com/): streaming
-   [TigerVNC](https://tigervnc.org/): controlling the remote server
-   [Icecast](https://icecast.org/): streaming WEBM
-   [Internet Relay Chat via Libera.chat](https://libera.chat/), [The Lounge](https://thelounge.chat/), and [ERC](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/erc.html): conversation
-   [Mumble](https://www.mumble.info/): audio conferencing for coordination
-   [Etherpad](https://etherpad.org/): questions and notes
-   [Ikiwiki](https://ikiwiki.info/): website
-   [PsiTransfer](https://github.com/psi-4ward/psitransfer): uploads
-   [FFmpeg](https://ffmpeg.org): video and audio processing
-   [Audacity](https://www.audacityteam.org/): audio editing
-   [WhisperX](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX): captioning
-   [Aeneas](https://www.readbeyond.it/aeneas/): forced alignment to get timestamps
-   [sub-seg](https://gitlab.com/jun8git/sub-seg): subtitle segmentation into more logical phrases
-   [subed-mode](https://codeberg.org/sachac/subed): captioning
-   [Git](https://git-scm.com/): version control
-   [Mailman](https://list.org/): mailing lists; service provided by the Free Software Foundation
-   [Nginx](https://www.nginx.com/): web server; server provided by the Free Software Foundation
-   [Ansible](https://www.ansible.com/): system configuration

You can find out more about our infrastructure at
<https://emacsconf.org/infra> .


<a id="process-improvements"></a>

# Process improvements

This year, we tried out the following experiments:

-   We used our own BigBlueButton 3.0 server to host Emacs meetups throughout the year in addition to EmacsConf.
-   We upgraded Etherpad to version 2.5 for security fixes.
-   We added [sub-seg](https://gitlab.com/jun8git/sub-seg) and various [subed](https://github.com/sachac/subed) improvements to our captioning workflow.
-   We resumed restreaming to Toobnix in addition to YouTube and Icecast.
-   We adapted to host availability by asking speakers to read their own questions as needed.
-   We modified our [mpv.conf](https://emacsconf.org/mpv/) to display the time remaining in the lower right-hand corner. This helped with time-keeping.
-   We wrote more code to simplify updating YouTube, Toobnix, and other places.
    
    For in-depth notes, see [behind the scenes](https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/01/emacsconf-2025-notes/).


<a id="finances"></a>

# Finances

Costs (USD), including tax where applicable:

<table>


<colgroup>
<col  class="org-left">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">

<col  class="org-right">
</colgroup>
<thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col" class="org-left">Node</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Jan</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Feb</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Mar</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Apr</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">May</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Jun</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Jul</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Aug</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Sep</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Oct</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Nov</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Dec</th>
<th scope="col" class="org-right">Total</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="org-left">meet</td>
<td class="org-right">2.17</td>
<td class="org-right">7.55</td>
<td class="org-right">6.78</td>
<td class="org-right">6.74</td>
<td class="org-right">7.13</td>
<td class="org-right">6.95</td>
<td class="org-right">7.19</td>
<td class="org-right">7.27</td>
<td class="org-right">6.75</td>
<td class="org-right">7.19</td>
<td class="org-right">7.56</td>
<td class="org-right">14.02</td>
<td class="org-right">87.30</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="org-left">front0</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">18.79</td>
<td class="org-right">73.79</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="org-left">live0</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">5.00</td>
<td class="org-right">32.89</td>
<td class="org-right">87.89</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

:end:

Grand total for 2025: USD 248.98, covered by people's donations through [the Free Software Foundation's Working Together program](https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=70).


<a id="acknowledgements"></a>

# Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following:

-   Thank you to all the speakers, volunteers, and participants, and
    to all those other people in our lives who make it possible
    through time and support.
-   Thanks to other volunteers: 
    -   Corwin and Amin for helping with the organization
    -   JC Helary, Triko, and James Endres Howell for help reviewing
        CFPs
    -   Amitav Krishna, Rodion Goritskov, jay\_bird, and indra for
        captions
    -   yang3 for the EU mirror we're setting up
    -   Bhavin Gandhi, Michael Kokosenski, Iain Young, Jamie Cullen,
        Ihor Radchenko (yantar92), FlowyCoder for other help
-   Thanks to the Free Software Foundation for the mailing lists,
    the media server, and of course, GNU Emacs.
-   Thanks to Ry P for the server that we're using for OBS
    streaming and processing videos.
-   Thanks to the many users and contributers and project teams that
    create all the awesome free software we use, especially:
    -   [Emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/), [Org Mode](https://orgmode.org/), [ERC](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/erc.html), [TRAMP](https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/), [Magit](https://magit.vc/), [BigBlueButton](https://bigbluebutton.org), [Etherpad](https://etherpad.org/),
        [Ikiwiki](https://ikiwiki.info/), [Icecast](http://icecast.org/), [OBS](https://obsproject.com/), [TheLounge](https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge), [libera.chat](https://libera.chat/), [ffmpeg](https://www.ffmpeg.org/),
        [OpenAI Whisper](https://github.com/openai/whisper), [WhisperX](https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX), the [aeneas](https://github.com/readbeyond/aeneas) forced alignment tool,
        [PsiTransfer](https://github.com/psi-4ward/psitransfer), [subed](https://github.com/sachac/subed), [sub-seg](https://gitlab.com/jun8git/sub-seg), [Mozilla Firefox](https://www.firefox.com/), [mpv](https://mpv.io/),
        [Tampermonkey](https://www.tampermonkey.net/)
    -   And many, many other tools and services we used to prepare
        and host this years conference
-   Thanks to [shoshin](https://cicadas.surf/~shoshin/) for the music.
-   Thanks to people who donated via the [FSF Working Together program](https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=70) (Scott Ranby, Jonathan Mitchell, and 8 other anonymous donors), the costs are covered for this year.


<a id="updates"></a>

# Updates

If you would like to get updates and announcements, you can sign up at
<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-discuss> .

Please keep an eye out for interesting things that
might be fun to present at next year's EmacsConf.
We'd love to get talks at all levels of experience
and about lots of different kinds of interests.
Previous speakers wrote:

-   "I always got the feeling of being heard and
    welcome in spite of the vast distances and
    cultures separating us. This community always
    feels like it is open to new members any time.
    With regards to the conference process also, it
    was a microcosm of the bigger community and
    hence I got the same feeling. You didn't have to
    be an expert or a person who's been using emacs
    for a long time to talk about something useful
    for the community. Even the struggles of a noob
    may be useful for someone else in the
    community."
-   "I can honestly say though that I had a great
    time putting my talk together. I hope people
    will have a good time listening to it. Now that
    the work is over, I can say it was worth it. so
    I recommend it warmly"
-   "This has been an all-around fantastic
    experience, both as a first-time attendee and
    speaker. many thanks to the volunteers who make
    emacsconf possible, and the other speakers for
    their wonderful talks (many of which i'll be
    reviewing now that i'm not so busy preparing)"

If you'd like to volunteer for EmacsConf, check
out <https://emacsconf.org/volunteer/> to see if
anything resonates with you, and e-mail us at
<mailto:emacsconf-org@gnu.org>. We'd love to have
you on board.

Hope to see you next year!

-   Sacha Chua