68 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
68 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
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<p>This year’s Emacs conference (EmacsConf 2021) will take place on
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November 27 and 28. I will be among the speakers. My talk’s
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description:</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>How Emacs made me appreciate software freedom</p>
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<p>The theme will be “how Emacs empowered my software freedom”. I will
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outline the key moments in my transition to a GNU/Linux operating
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system and mark those which eventually contributed towards me becoming
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an Emacs user, maintainer of a—dare I say—popular package, and
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contributor to upstream Emacs (among others). By alluding to personal
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experiences, I will draw generalisable insights and connect them to
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what I believe are irreducible qualities of Emacs qua software and
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Emacs as a community of like-minded people. The talk will be
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theoretical in nature: there won’t be any code-related demonstration
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nor technical references that only people with a background in
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computer science would likely recognise. Personal anecdotes shall be
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tangential to the point and considered as ancillary to the thesis of
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what Emacs represents from the standpoint of software freedom and user
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empowerment. The presentation is intended for a general audience that
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is interested in GNU software in general and Emacs in particular. My
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formal educational background as a social scientist (i.e. not a
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programmer) and later as a philosopher informs my approach to this
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topic.</p>
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<p>The presentation shall be 40 minutes long. Its text will be in essay
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form and shall be supplied as complementary material to the video.
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The notation will be in Org mode.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<h2>Backstory</h2>
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<p>I had no intention to participate in the event, even though I was well
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aware of it and despite the fact that I had followed the previous two
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conferences. My reasoning was that (i) I probably had no technical
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insight to share that wasn’t already known to the members of—and
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likely participants in—such a setting, (ii) I already have my website
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with a dedicated section on Emacs where I can publish any article or
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video I want, and (iii) EmacsConf provides a platform for people who are
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otherwise not disseminating their own stories to reach a wider audience.
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Some or all of these assumptions may have been fallacious. They still
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represent what I believed at the time.</p>
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<p>At around the end of September, a few days before the deadline for the
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submission of proposals, someone knowledgeable of the conference’s
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logistics, whose name shall not be divulged, contacted me and asked me
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to deliver a talk. I was eventually persuaded to make an attempt at
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taking a 20-minute slot, but it was not feasible to condense my thoughts
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to such a short video, especially given the tight deadline (I was
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preoccupied with other issues, including <a href="https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2021-09-29-modus-themes-1-6-0/">the release of modus-themes
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version 1.6.0</a>
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that was made just in time for the creation of the <code>emacs-28</code> branch in
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emacs.git). So I replied, perhaps with some relief, that I would not be
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available for this year’s event and would consider trying again the year
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after.</p>
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<p>To cut the long story short, the 40-minute slot was considered a viable
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option and I made a last-ditch effort to submit an abstract before the
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deadline. It happened on the 30th of September.</p>
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<p>There are lots of talks in this year’s conference. All seem very
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interesting and I am looking forward to watch them. Hopefully mine will
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be worth it as well.</p>
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