EmacsConf 2015 Planning Doc

The kernel of this idea is basically to have a "State of the Union" address, where the Union is Emacs. I think it would be awesome if someone really embedded in Emacs development (specifically thinking of Stefan) talked about the current state of Emacs development with regards to

• how development today is functioning. What are major development process problems that need to be fixed but haven't? What do the maintainers of Emacs stress about (letting patches rot in debbugs, having bugs rot in debbugs, being unsure of the general brokenness of Emacs because of the lack of testing), and what processes can be put in place to ease their anxieties?
• new contributors. Making Emacs easier for new contributors was a huge topic in the Fall of 2014 on emacs-devel. The switch to git was seen as the first step, what were the next steps and how did they work?
• whether anything surprisingly good/bad has happened this year.
• the general state of emacs-devel.
• and what we can do to help! :D

(suggested by Samer)

Possible people:

• Stefan Monnier?

Roadmap, how we can help

:interested: Daniel Gopar and Miguel Flores

• What's the experience like?
• What got you interested?
• What helped?
• How can we help more beginners like you get deeper into Emacs?

• Tips, tricks, workflow ideas

Talk by Harry Schwartz, founder of the NYC Emacs Group

• Experiences
• Encouraging people to give talks

:interested: Harry Schwartz

Maybe also hear from the London Meetup?

:interested: Harry Schwartz

• How to read Emacs Lisp
• How to start writing your own
• Modifying other people's code
• Writing your own

:interested: Harry Schwartz

This would be a great short demo. If you want, you can also flesh it out into a behind-the-scenes "this is how to write stuff like this", or describe other little conveniences along these lines that people can use. - Sacha

Walkthrough of how to:

• find a small bug to work on
• navigate the source code
• prepare a patch
• work with emacs-devel

Nic Ferrier? Steve Purcell? Milkypostman? Tom Tromey?

• Why evil + spacebar
• Why guide-key
• Why layers
• Vim concepts being brought over - Vundle, etc.
• State of evil - what is not ideal yet? what are missing features from the ecosystem?
• How can contributors help?

Concrete tips, demonstrations

• tutorials
• discoverability
• command mode / god-mode / composable commands
• Hydra

People: Xah Lee? bbatsov? Steve Purcell? abo-abo?

• Automated testing
• Continuous integration and testing on multiple Emacsen
• Code coverage reporting
• Emacs Lisp style and package linting
• Refactoring
• Performance

I'm working on a series with John Wiegley on this topic, so we might be able to spread this one out over lots of little demos. - Sacha

• A/V
• Drum up speakers
• General volunteer work
• emacsconf2015 planning

• (potentially) being responsible for our twitter, emacsconf.org domain, heroku accounts.

• Hosting hangouts
• Keeping an eye out for questions
• Managing our Google+ EmacsConf & hangouts pages.

• Drumming up interest
• emacsconf2015 planning

• emacsconf2015 planning

• emacsconf2015 planning

• emacsconf2015 planning

What makes a good session?

• Something that's great as a demonstration instead of a blog post with screenshots
• Something that people have lots of questions about
• Something that benefits from multiple perspectives (like a panel)

August, maybe a Saturday?

EmacsConf is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, or anything else. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form.

All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for EmacsConf.

Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the conference at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.

Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly event for all.

Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, derisive comments regarding technical background, and unwelcome sexual attention.

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Excessive swearing and offensive jokes are not appropriate for EmacsConf.

If a participant engages in behavior that violates the anti-harassment policy, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference.

In addition to having a code of conduct as an anti-harassment policy, we have a small set of social rules we follow. We (the organizers) learned and lifted these rules from the Recurse Center, where we felt that they contributed enormously to a supportive, productive, and fun learning environment. We'd like EmacsConf to share that environment. These rules are intended to be lightweight, and to make more explicit certain social norms that are normally implicit. Most of our social rules really boil down to "don't be a jerk" or "don't be annoying." Of course, almost nobody sets out to be a jerk or annoying, so telling people not to be jerks isn't a very productive strategy.

Unlike the anti-harassment policy, violation of the social rules will not result in expulsion from the conference or a strong warning from conference organizers. Rather, they are designed to provide some lightweight social structure for conference attendees to use when interacting with each other.

The social rules.

If you have any questions about any part of the code of conduct or social rules, please feel free to reach out to any of the conference organizers.

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff.

If the matter is especially urgent, please call/contact any of these individuals:

• Samer Masterson - (703) 225 8132
• (add another organizer here)

Conference staff will be happy to help participants contact local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the conference. We value your attendance.

The EmacsConf Code of Conduct is under a Creative Commons Zero license. It was forked from the !!Con Code of Conduct, which is under a Creative Commons Zero license. The !!Con Code of Conduct was forked from the PyCon 2013 Code of Conduct, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, and which itself was forked from an example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers and available under a Creative Commons Zero license.