Re: [ANN] EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals

[Amin Bandali <bandali@gnu.org>]

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quiliro@riseup.net writes:

> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> quiliro@riseup.net writes:
>>
>>> What a great call for papers.  If it was created using Emacs, it would
>>> be great to have a talk or a howto for how it was made.
>>
>> It seems to me like it is just an org-mode document, converted to
>> plain text using one of the built-in exporters.
>
> Yes.  It would be nice to see the source.
>

Yes, the announcement text in the body of that email was indeed
exported from an Org file -- which I'd attached to that email -- plus
some small tweaks.  I'm attaching the Org file again to this reply as
well, just in case.

P.S. please direct any further replies either to myself privately, or
only to the emacsconf-discuss and emacs-tangents lists, so as to avoid
spamming the other lists (like emacs-devel) with off-topic discussion.


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#+title: EmacsConf 2021
#+subtitle: Online Conference
#+date: November 27 and 28, 2021
#+options: author:nil

[[https://emacsconf.org/2021/][EmacsConf 2021]] will be a virtual conference on *November 27 and 28,
2021 (Sat-Sun)*.  If you'd like to present at the conference, please
[[https://emacsconf.org/2021/cfp/][submit your proposal]] by *September 30, 2021*.

EmacsConf 2021 is about the joy of [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][Emacs]] and Emacs Lisp.  Come share
your experiments and adventures with the Emacs text editor / operating
system / way of life!  We welcome speakers of *all backgrounds* and
*all levels of experience*, including newcomers giving their first
talk.  What have you found exciting about Emacs lately?  What do you
wish someone had told you when you were starting out?  What part of
your workflow might inspire someone to get into Emacs or go deeper?

A great way to get started with writing a proposal is to start by
exploring the programs from previous years: [[https://emacsconf.org/2020/schedule/][2020]], [[https://emacsconf.org/2019/schedule/][2019]], [[https://emacsconf.org/2015/schedule/][2015]], [[https://emacsconf.org/2013/#program][2013]].
You might also find some neat ideas on the [[https://emacsconf.org/2021/ideas/][ideas]] page.  Feel free to
add yours there too!  If you're still not sure, come by our IRC
channel =#emacsconf= on =irc.libera.chat= and say hi.  You can join
the chat using [[ircs://irc.libera.chat:6697/emacsconf][your favourite IRC client]], or by visiting
[[https://chat.emacsconf.org][chat.emacsconf.org]] in your web browser.

All kinds of people use Emacs for all kinds of things.  We'd love it
if EmacsConf 2021 could highlight interesting perspectives and reflect
the diversity of our community.  If you know someone who might have a
good idea for a talk, please reach out to them and encourage them to
submit a proposal.  Many people (especially from underrepresented
groups such as women, people of colour, non-developers, etc.) might
not consider themselves expert enough to share their thoughts.  If you
let them know that you value their knowledge and maybe even suggest
something that you think others would like to hear more about, they
may realize that they have something worth sharing and that we would
love to hear from them.

* Important dates

For EmacsConf 2021, we are planning for 9am to 5pm Toronto/EST
(2pm-10pm UTC) on November 27 and 28.  Depending on people's
availability, it might be two half-days.

| CFP opens             | August 5, 2021           |
| CFP closes            | September 30, 2021       |
| Speaker notifications | October 15, 2021         |
| Schedule published    | October 31, 2021         |
| EmacsConf 2021!       | November 27 and 28, 2021 |

If you are not available during the conference itself but you have a
neat idea that you'd like to share, please propose it anyway!  You can
always handle questions after the conference, and we might even be
able to coordinate with other Emacs meetups for regional events (if
you're an Emacs meetup organizer and would like to make this happen
let's [[https://emacsconf.org/contact/][get in touch]]!).

Please note that although we will try our best to stick to the above
dates in the coming months, given the current state of the world, we
may have to move things around a bit in case of unforeseen events.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.

* Talk formats

We'd like EmacsConf 2021 to inspire lots of different people to
explore lots of different things in Emacs.  We hope to put together a
stream of quick ideas followed by lots of conversation over IRC and/or
Q&A sessions, with occasional deep dives into topics that many people
might find interesting or useful.

As you think about your talk, consider what you can share in:

- *Up to 10 minutes total:* What is the core idea?  What do you want
  people to do or remember?  You can show just enough to get people
  interested and then point them to where they can learn more
  afterwards.  You can answer questions over IRC, the pad, or the
  wiki, and there's no limit to how long that conversation can go.

- *Up to 20 minutes total:* How would you flesh out some of the points
  from your 5-10 minute presentation?  How can you show the pieces
  working together?

- *Up to 40 minutes total:* What would benefit from a deep dive?
  How do you keep it engaging?

When writing your proposal, please write an outline of what you plan
to talk about if you have 5-10 minutes.  If you'd like to propose a
longer talk, outline what you might include if you had more time to
present (up to 40 minutes, including Q&A).

Here's an example for a potentially 40-minute talk:

- 5-10 minutes: quick demo of the abc package working together with
  xyz package.
- 20 minutes: same as above, with some customization options to
  accommodate a different workflow.
- 40 minutes: all of the above, including modifying the behaviour of
  the package in order to add something new.

This flexibility would help us in devising the conference schedule so
that as many people as possible could get a chance to present their
ideas, while still allowing for featuring longer deep dive talks.

Other session formats such as tutorials, workshops, and hangouts are
welcome as well, in case you would find those other formats preferable
to a traditional talk format.  If you're interested in these or other
session types, please let us know [[https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-org][publicly]] or [[https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-org-private][privately]].  We'll be
happy to work something out with you.

* Office hours

We're aware that it can be intimidating to submit a proposal to a
conference, so we thought we'd try to help!  This year, we're opening
up the doors of our virtual offices for you to come talk to us about
your proposals with hopes of helping you with any hurdles you may be
facing with preparing your proposal.

We'd like to publish a schedule of availabilities of volunteers for
holding office hours.  Currently these volunteers consist of some of
the EmacsConf organizers, but we'd love to have the help of other
members of the Emacs community as well.  If you are a more experienced
Emacs user and would like to help with this, please [[https://emacsconf.org/contact/][get in touch]]!

Our first office hour this year is planned for Saturday, August 14,
from 3pm to 4pm UTC with zaeph (Leo Vivier) at the following
BigBlueButton room: https://bbb.emacsverse.org/b/ban-qye-fd1-5kw.

* Submitting your proposal

Once you're ready to submit your proposal, the [[https://emacsconf.org/2021/submit/][submit]] page has the
instructions on how to submit your talk.

We use an anonymized submission process to reduce bias and encourage
contribution.  Identifying information will be removed from
submissions by a conference organizer who will not participate in
talk selection.  The anonymized submissions will then be reviewed by
a selection committee.

If your talk is approved, we'd love it if you could help us make sure
the conference runs smoothly.  After we email you with the time
allotted for your talk, we'll ask you to

- prepare a prerecording of your talk, or record it with our help if
  that'd be easier for you; and
- schedule a short tech-check if you'd like to be able to answer
  questions in a live session.

Don't forget to subscribe to our main mailing list, [[https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-discuss][emacsconf-discuss]],
for discussion and announcements about the EmacsConf conference.

We look forward to your ideas and submissions!

* Getting involved

If you would like to help with the conference (planning the sessions,
reviewing proposals, helping with infrastructure, making sessions more
accessible, editing video transcripts, etc.), see our [[https://emacsconf.org/2021/planning/][planning]] page
and come say hi to us at =#emacsconf= on =irc.libera.chat=.

In addition to the [[https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-discuss][emacsconf-discuss]] list, feel free to subscribe to
[[https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-org][emacsconf-org]] as well, for discussions related to organizing the
conference by the EmacsConf organizers and volunteers.

We'd really appreciate your help in making EmacsConf 2021 the best one
so far!

* Commitment to freedom

We remain fully committed to freedom, and we will continue
using our infrastructure and streaming setup consisting entirely
of [[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html][free software]], much like previous EmacsConf conferences.
An article describing our infrastructure and tools is underway,
and will be announced on the emacsconf-discuss list when published.


* COMMENT Copyright & License

Copyright (c) 2020 Amin Bandali, Sacha Chua, David Bremner
Copyright (c) 2021 Amin Bandali, Sacha Chua, Leo Vivier,
Sebastian Crane

The EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals is part of the EmacsConf wiki,
and is dual-licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License; and the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation,
either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

A copy of these two licenses is available on the EmacsConf wiki, in
the [[https://emacsconf.org/COPYING.CC-BY-SA][COPYING.CC-BY-SA]] and [[https://emacsconf.org/COPYING.GPL][COPYING.GPL]] files.

* COMMENT How to export this file

As of the time of writing this document (Org mode version 9.3.7), the
Org links library (=ol.el=) does not yet recognize =ircs= link types,
and will throw an error if you try to export a file containing them,
such as this file.

To work around that, you can use something along the lines of the
Emacs Lisp code below, by either adding it to your init file, or by
putting the point in the code block and hitting =C-c C-v e= (that is,
hold Ctrl, then hit c followed by v, then release Ctrl, and hit e) to
evaluate the code, working around the issue only for the current
session.

#+begin_src emacs-lisp :results silent
(org-link-set-parameters
 "ircs"
 :export
 (lambda (link description format)
   "Export an ircs link.
See `org-link-parameters' for details about LINK, DESCRIPTION and
FORMAT."
   (let ((desc (or description link)))
     (pcase format
       (`html (format "<a href=\"ircs:%s\">%s</a>" link desc))
       (`md (format "[%s](ircs:%s)" desc link))
       (_ nil)))))
#+end_src