Re: Draft call for participation (maybe June 26?), lessons learned from last year

[Sacha Chua]

Esteban Ordóñez <quiliro@riseup.net> writes:

Hello, quiliro, bandali!

> "What have you found exciting about [Emacs]
> (<https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/>) lately?  Have you figured out a
> good workflow?  Have you used Emacs for something interesting?  Do you
> want to share the story of how you got into Emacs?  Share with us what
> you've been learning and meet other enthusiasts along the way at
> EmacsConf 2023.  All backgrounds and all levels of experience are
> welcome.  Emacs isn't just a text editor, it's a way of life!"

Sure, that could work. I tweaked it further by removing one of the
questions, so we don't repeat the word "share" and so that we have three
questions instead of four.

    What have you found exciting about
    [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][Emacs]] lately? Have you
    figured out a good workflow? Used Emacs for something interesting?
    Come share what you've been learning at EmacsConf 2023 and meet
    other enthusiasts along the way! All backgrounds and all levels of
    experience are welcome. Emacs isn't just a text editor, it's a way
    of life!

> I learned by using Emacs that each sentence ends with double space for
> ease of movement with C-a and C-e.  I think that it is a standard.  That
> is why I have used double space.

Hah, bandali likes writing that way, I think, but I've never quite
gotten used to it myself. We can try that out. It doesn't affect the
HTML view anyway, just the ASCII export.

> Each of the rest of the headers can be sent when the person asks
> something about those topics or the conference organization requires it.
>  The least text we send, the more it will be read.  This first message
> and how it reflects ease of engagement is crucial to call attention and
> gain diversity.

I removed the sections for important dates and what will happen after
the submission.

I removed the section on the commitment to freedom because the same kind
of message is on the https://emacsconf.org/2023 page, but since that's
something bandali added before, let's check with him to see if that's
okay. It might be important to at least some of our potential
speakers/attendees that they won't need to use any proprietary software
in order to participate in EmacsConf, unlike many other conferences. Can
someone think of where it makes sense to put that in, maybe in just one
sentence?

Here are the reasons I want to keep the other sections:

- How can you submit your proposal? Main call to action, next step

- Know someone who might have something to share? People mentioned they
  found this very encouraging before.

- Want to volunteer? Also a call for volunteers, and it can help people
  who don't feel like they have a full talk to contribute

Diversity-wise, I think it might be helpful to have some
coaching/mentoring going on at the conference, and maybe figure out
other format options that require less time investment than a video with
recorded audio. <laugh> I'm still finding it hard to find time to make
one of those! Encouraging talks about nontraditional uses of Emacs and
user-focused talks about Emacs could be good too. The number of people
who say to me "I'm just a user, not a developer"... And it'd also be
nice to pull people in further with inspirational workflow/Emacs Lisp
videos that also come with notes/resources.

Is there anything else we can tweak about this CFP so that we can bring
out both user-focused and developer-focused talks of varying levels of
experience? In previous years, I've tried to arrange the schedule so
that we start with general talks and Org Mode talks, do a little
bridging with Emacs Lisp going from basic to intermediate, have some
whizbang demos that end up getting referred to a lot afterwards, maybe
do a deep dive on something, and then wrap up with something that's
hopefully more general and forward-looking or celebratory. This is the
first year we can plan for two (or more) streams from the beginning, so
it might be interesting to see what we can do so that there's something
for everyone. =)

Sacha