This file is automatically exported from /2025/organizers-notebook/index.org. You might prefer to navigate this as an Org file instead. To do so, clone the wiki repository.
You might also like the general organizers' notebook and the organizers' notebook from 2024.
Table of Contents
- Timeline
- About this document
- Communications plan
- Good/better/best
- Phases
- Check EmacsConf infrastructure:project:
- Processes and notes
- Decisions
- Support code
TODO Timeline
| Days since previous milestone | ||
| CFP | ||
| CFP deadline | 84 | |
| Speaker notifications | ||
| Publish schedule | ||
| Video submission deadline | 42 | |
| EmacsConf | 36 |
We like to have at least a month to work on audio normalization and transcription, and we want speakers to have at least a month to work on their videos (considering early submissions will already have gotten started on processing).
About this document
Tags:
conforg: Requires access to private conf.org repository
Communications plan
Objectives:
- keep everyone in the loop without them feeling like they’re overloaded
Everyone:
- ☐ Call for participation (speakers and volunteers)
- ☐ Reminder about CFP
- ☐ Last call
Speakers:
- ☐ Send all speakers backstage access and upload instructions
- ☐ Send all speakers check-in instructions
Volunteers:
- ☐ Send captioning volunteers the backstage info
- ☐ Send past captioning volunteers an invitation to participate - ask when there’s a lot of load
- ☐ Ask for help with audio processing
Good/better/best
This table makes it easier to move the slider depending on who wants to volunteer and how much we can get done. At some point, we’ll figure out how to track our current status so we know what we need to scramble to do in order to get the conference off the ground. bold is our current goal. Feel free to volunteer for anything that interests you!
| Good | Better | Best | |
| Streaming | Regular stream | + alternate streams on PeerTube | + alternate streams on YouTube |
| 480p | Same on live | Separate node | Ansible setup |
| Audio normalization | Core org handling it | Other volunteer | Multiple volunteers |
| Video resolution | Usual reminders | Extra reminders | Everyone remembering to use a large font size |
| Intros | Standard, recorded | Reviewed by speakers | More details/context |
| Pad | v1.9.7 | v2.x |
Phases
DONE Set up organizers notebook
DONE Draft CFP
Draft linked pages
- ☑ cfp
- ☑ submit page
- ☑ year index
DONE Check with other organizers
DONE Update dates in emacsconf.el
<file:///home/sacha/proj/emacsconf/lisp/emacsconf.el> <file:///home/sacha/proj/emacsconf/lisp/emacsconf-erc.el>
DONE Update conf topic
DONE Remove draft marker
- ☐ cfp
- ☐ submit
DONE Post CFP in the usual places
- ☐ emacsconf-discuss
- ☐ reddit.com/r/emacs
- ☐ Emacs News
- ☐ emacs-tangents or info-gnu-emacs
- ☐ Mastodon
- ☐ Bluesky
- ☐ X
DONE Draft schedule
Legend:
- light blue: constraint is <= a time
- peach: constraint is >= a time
- solid line: Q&A will be through BigBlueButton web conference
- dashed line: Q&A will be IRC/Etherpad during the event or e-mail after the event
Notes:
- cancelled bibliography, moved zettelkasten to Saturday
- moved gnus to Sat morning; added time to talks to accommodate actual video length
- cancelled languages
- cancelled authoring
- uncancelled weights
- weights and claude-code cancelled, moved gnus and gardening earlier for a lighter, earlier close. They’re both async. Added graphics
- n-angulator cancelled
- life cancelled
- writing cancelled
- AI dev afternoon: llm, claude-code, private-ai feels like a good progression
- I kinda like this spread-out combo of zettelkasten, gardening, writing, and bookclub-tapas on Sunday afternoon
- I spread reference, latex, bibliography, authoring, and blee-lcnt in case people want to hang out in each other’s Q&A sessions
- I wanted to generally have live Q&A in between talks that don’t have live Q&A.
- It’s okay to have a shorter day, since this is easier for people who are in Europe.
- hyperboleqa is all Q&A.
- We could have an open mic session or a panel before sat-close
- Sunday morning in 2023 had some packet loss issues at around 9:30
Review rescheduled talks
(mapcar (lambda (o)
(list (plist-get o :slug)
(plist-get o :scheduled)
(plist-get o :emailed-schedule)
(emacsconf-schedule-difference-from-emailed o)))
(emacsconf-mail-rescheduled-talks))
For big changes, use emacsconf-mail-schedule-updates
| schemacs | 2025-12-06 Sat 09:30-09:45 | 0 | |
| reference | 2025-12-06 Sat 09:30-09:50 | 0 | |
| gmail | 2025-12-06 Sat 10:10-10:30 | -5 | |
| juicemacs | 2025-12-06 Sat 10:05-10:25 | -10 | |
| python | 2025-12-06 Sat 11:05-11:25 | -15 | |
| latex | 2025-12-06 Sat 11:10-11:30 | -15 | |
| llm | 2025-12-06 Sat 13:00-13:20 | 0 | |
| calc | 2025-12-06 Sat 13:40-13:50 | 0 | |
| private-ai | 2025-12-06 Sat 13:40-14:00 | -5 | |
| blee-lcnt | 2025-12-06 Sat 14:00-14:20 | -15 | |
| commonlisp | 2025-12-06 Sat 14:20-14:40 | -5 | |
| graphics | 2025-12-06 Sat 14:50-15:10 | -5 | |
| greader | 2025-12-06 Sat 14:40-14:50 | -35 | |
| completion | 2025-12-07 Sun 11:20-11:40 | 20 | |
| zettelkasten | 2025-12-07 Sun 13:00-13:20 | 0 | |
| hyperboleqa | 2025-12-07 Sun 13:40-14:10 | -5 | |
| bookclub-tapas | 2025-12-07 Sun 14:30-14:50 | -15 |
While speakers are working on their videos
DONE Send draft schedule :email:
DONE Send backstage and upload instructions :email:
TODO Record pronunciations
DONE Post the schedule publicly
While volunteers are working on captions
DONE E-mail speakers asking them to confirm the pronunciations :email:
Record intros and opening remarks
TODO Record sat-open remarks :emacsconf:record:
Welcome to EmacsConf 2025, where we have fun exploring how much we can do with a text editor. It’s hard to give a general overview of all the cool talks today and tomorrow, so you can flip through the talks and see what sparks your interests. Don’t feel limited to one track or another. The best parts of EmacsConf are the conversations. The wiki has a page on how to watch and participate, and I’ll give you a quick overview as well. You can watch both streams at live.emacsconf.org using free and open source software. Using a streaming media player like mpv seems to be the best way to watch in terms of performance but there are also web-based players just in case that’s all you’ve got. The schedule shows the General track on top and the Development track on the bottom, so you can see what else is going on. As you’re watching the talks, you can refer to the schedule in another window. Hover over the boxes to see the times and titles, and click on the boxes in the schedule to jump to the talk’s page for more details. You can also get the schedule as an iCalendar file or as an Org file in different time zones. Many talks will be followed by live Q&A web conferences with the speaker, which will be done in BigBlueButton or BBB. These are indicated with a solid border on the schedule and by Q&A: BBB on the schedule page. You can join the web conference room by clicking on the BBB link on the schedule page or the talk’s webpage. Then you can ask your questions yourself when the Q&A starts. To improve performance, please keep your webcam off and stay muted until it’s your turn to talk. If you don’t like Javascript, you can still ask questions via IRC and the hosts can read them out for you. We’re probably going to automatically switch between talks and Q&A sessions, so the transitions on the stream might be a little sudden.
People in the BigBlueButton room can continue the conversation even after the talk moves off-stream. and you can also reach out to the speakers using the contact information on the talk page.
Other talks will have Q&A via Etherpad or IRC, depending on what the speakers prefer. This is indicated in the schedule with a dashed border and on the schedule page as well. Some talks will have the Q&A after the event, so you can add your questions to their Etherpad or ask on IRC. We’ll e-mail the speakers afterwards and update the talk pages when they answer. The schedule pages and track pages have quick shortcuts so that you can find out more about talks, open the Etherpads, and join the Q&A sessions. The watch page has more tips on how to make the most of Q&A. If you can, please add notes and ask questions in the Etherpad for the talk. That makes it easier for everyone to share their notes, and speakers and hosts can read the questions from there. We’ll copy the notes to the talk pages afterwards. We have one pad for each talk, so you can follow the links to get to the next one or go back to the schedule and get the link from there. If you have general feedback about the conference itself, please put it in pad.emacsconf.org/2025 , which is linked on each pad. You can also use this as a general community message board for things like Help Wanted. Internet Relay Chat or IRC can be another great way to be part of lots of conversations. You can use chat.emacsconf.org to join the IRC channels through your web browser. The tabs on the left can help you switch between the different channels. There’s #emacsconf-gen for the General track and #emacsconf-dev for the Development track. If you need to reach us, you can join #emacsconf-org or e-mail emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org. You can use #emacsconf for hallway conversations. Of course, you can join any of these channels with your favourite IRC client. You can connect to irc.libera.chat port 6697 with TLS. Once again, we’re going to be streaming with open captions for most of the talks this year, thanks to our speakers and captioning volunteers. The captioned talks are indicated on the schedule, and with any luck, we’ll be posting transcripts on talk pages shortly after the talks start. If you need additional accommodations, please let us know in #emacsconf-org and we’ll see if we can make things happen. If something goes down, we’ll update status.emacsconf.org. If it doesn’t look like we’ve noticed yet, please let us know in the #emacsconf-org IRC channel, where we will be quietly panicking. In all of these conversations, please keep in mind our guidelines for conduct. You can find them on the wiki, They basically boil down to: please be nice. If all goes well, the prerecorded talks and transcripts should be available from the talk pages shortly after they start playing, and we’ll post the recordings of live talks and Q&A sessions within the next month or so. If you’d like to get an update, you can subscribe to the emacsconf-discuss mailing list. All right, let’s get going. Leo is hosting the general track, and Corwin hosting the development track. The other volunteers and I will run around mostly backstage, and you’ll probably meet us in the closing remarks. That’s also where we get to thank all the people and organizations who make EmacsConf possible. Thanks for coming to EmacsConf 2025.
TODO Record sun-open remarks
Welcome to the second day of EmacsConf 2025. The best parts of EmacsConf are the conversations. The wiki has a page on how to watch and participate, and I’ll give you a quick overview as well. You can watch the stream at live.emacsconf.org using free and open source software. Using a streaming media player like mpv seems to be the best way to watch in terms of performance but there are also web-based players just in case that’s all you’ve got. As you’re watching the talks, you can refer to the schedule in another window. Hover over the boxes to see the times and titles, and click on the boxes in the schedule to jump to the talk’s page for more details. You can also get the schedule as an iCalendar file or as an Org file in different time zones.
Many talks will be followed by live Q&A web conferences with the speaker, which will be done in BigBlueButton or BBB. These are indicated with a solid border on the schedule and by Q&A: BBB on the schedule page. You can join the web conference room by clicking on the BBB link on the schedule page or the talk’s webpage. Then you can ask your questions yourself when the Q&A starts. To improve performance, please keep your webcam off and stay muted until it’s your turn to talk. If you don’t like Javascript, you can still ask questions via IRC and the hosts can read them out for you.
We’re probably going to automatically switch between talks and Q&A sessions, so the transitions on the stream might be a little sudden, People in the BigBlueButton room can continue the conversation even after the talk moves off-stream, and you can also reach out to the speakers using the contact information on the talk page.
Other talks will have Q&A via Etherpad or IRC, depending on what the speakers prefer. This is indicated in the schedule with a dashed border and on the schedule page as well. Please ask your questions in the recommended places so that the speakers can easily see them.
Some talks will have the Q&A after the event, so you can add your questions to their Etherpad. We’ll e-mail the speakers afterwards and update the talk pages when they answer.
We’re going to start Sunday morning with more IRC/Etherpad Q&A to try to get around some of the bandwidth issues that we noticed last year.
The schedule pages and track pages have quick shortcuts so that you can find out more about talks, open the Etherpads, and join the Q&A sessions. The watch page has more tips on how to make the most of Q&A. If you can, please add notes and ask questions in the Etherpad for the talk. That makes it easier for everyone to share their notes, and speakers and hosts can read the questions from there. We’ll copy the notes to the talk pages afterwards. We have one pad for each talk, so you can follow the links to get to the next one or go back to the schedule and get the link from there. If you have general feedback about the conference itself, please put it in pad.emacsconf.org/2025 , which is linked on each pad. You can also use this as a general community message board for things like Help Wanted. Internet Relay Chat or IRC can be another great way to be part of lots of conversations. You can use chat.emacsconf.org to join the IRC channels through your web browser. The tabs on the left can help you switch between the different channels. Most discussions will be in #emacsconf-gen for the General track. If you need to reach us, you can join #emacsconf-org or e-mail emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org. You can use #emacsconf for hallway conversations. Of course, you can join any of these channels with your favourite IRC client. You can connect to irc.libera.chat port 6697 with TLS. Once again, we’re going to be streaming with open captions for most of the talks this year, thanks to our speakers and captioning volunteers. The captioned talks are indicated on the schedule, and with any luck, we’ll be posting transcripts on talk pages shortly after the talks start. If you need additional accommodations, please let us know in #emacsconf-org and we’ll see if we can make things happen. If something goes down, we’ll update status.emacsconf.org. If it doesn’t look like we’ve noticed yet, please let us know in the #emacsconf-org IRC channel, where we will be quietly panicking. In all of these conversations, please keep in mind our guidelines for conduct. You can find them on the wiki, They basically boil down to: please be nice. If all goes well, the prerecorded talks and transcripts should be available from the talk pages shortly after they start playing, and we’ll post the recordings of live talks and Q&A sessions within the next month or so. If you’d like to get an update, you can subscribe to the emacsconf-discuss mailing list. All right, let’s get going. Leo Vivier is hosting the general track again today. The other volunteers and I will run around mostly backstage, and you’ll probably meet us in the closing remarks. That’s also where we get to thank all the people and organizations who make EmacsConf even possible. Thanks for coming to EmacsConf 2025.
TODO Generate assets
TODO Send check-in details :email:
DONE Ask libera.chat to increase IRC limit
After the conference
TODO Send thanks and follow-up questions :email:
DONE Confirm shifts
AM: 9-12 PM EST, PM: 1-5 PM EST (plus a little extra for setup/transition)
Saturday Dec 6 2025
| Start | End | Host | Streamer | Checkin | IRC | Pad | Coord | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gen AM | 09:00 | 12:00 | zaeph | sachac | sachac | sachac | ||
| Gen PM | 13:00 | 17:00 | zaeph | sachac | sachac | sachac | ||
| Dev AM | 10:00 | 12:00 | corwin | sachac | sachac | sachac | ||
| Dev PM | 13:00 | 17:00 | corwin | sachac | sachac | sachac |
Sunday Dec 7 2025
| Start | End | Host | Streamer | Checkin | IRC | Pad | Coord | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gen AM | 09:00 | 12:00 | zaeph/corwin | sachac | sachac | sachac | ||
| Gen PM | 13:00 | 17:00 | zaeph/corwin | sachac | sachac | sachac |
Backups:
- dev host/streamer:
- gen host/streamer:
- checkin, IRC, pad:
Interested in a shift? Please e-mail emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org and we’ll help you figure out what you need to learn.
`(setq emacsconf-shifts
(list
,@(apply #'append
(mapcar
(lambda (day)
(let ((headers
(mapcar
(lambda (field)
(intern
(concat
":"
(downcase
(if (string-match org-link-bracket-re field)
(match-string 2 field)
field)))))
(seq-drop (car (cadr day)) 3))))
(mapcar
(lambda (row)
(apply #'append
(list 'list :id
(when (string-match "^\\([^ ]+\\) \\(AM\\|PM\\)" (car row))
(format "%s-%s-%s"
(car day)
(downcase (match-string 2 (car row)))
(downcase (match-string 1 (car row)))))
:track
(if (string-match "^Gen" (car row)) "General" "Development")
:start
(format "%sT%s:00%s"
(elt day 2)
(elt row 1)
emacsconf-timezone-offset)
:end
(format "%sT%s:00%s"
(elt day 2)
(elt row 2)
emacsconf-timezone-offset))
(seq-map-indexed
(lambda (value index)
(unless (string= value "")
(list (elt headers index) value)))
(seq-drop row 3))))
(cdr (cadr day)))
))
(list
(list "sat" sat "2025-12-06")
(list "sun" sun "2025-12-07"))))))
TODO Check EmacsConf infrastructure :project:
- ☐ IRC
- ☐ Streaming assets
- ☐ Publishing to the wiki
- ☐ Web conference
- ☐ OBS
- ☐ Publishing to the media server
- ☐ Etherpad
- ☐ Streaming
- ☐ Toobnix
- ☐ YouTube
- ☐ Mumble: Can join from my phone, can speak on stream
TODO BigBlueButton
- Plan: Scale up the bbb.emacsverse.org on Sacha’s Linode account
- Installation notes from last year
DONE Create meeting rooms for each speaker
TODO Back up after the conference
DONE Set up moderator access codes for all the meeting rooms, and make it so people can start the meeting
Setting up moderator access codes
DONE Check BBB audio from my phone
Customize BigBlueButton branding
TODO Change background presentation
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/3.0/administration/customize/#change-the-default-presentation
TODO Modify landing page
/var/www/bigbluebutton-default/assets/index.html keep backup copy as it will be overwritten when bbb-conf is called
TODO Change default welcome message
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/3.0/administration/customize/#change-the-default-welcome-message
TODO Change html5 title
/usr/share/bigbluebutton/html5-client/private/config/settings.yml
TARGET=/usr/share/bigbluebutton/html5-client/private/config/settings.yml yq e -i “.public.app.clientTitle = \”EmacsConf\“” $TARGET
TODO Try live captions
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/3.0/administration/customize/#enable-live-captions
TODO Explore meeting layout? Default to custom, hosts will need to drag people’s webcam over if there’s a share
IRC web client
On front0: cd ~thelounge; sudo -u thelounge nohup node /usr/bin/thelounge start
DONE Ask libera.chat to increase connections allowed from chat.emacsconf.org on Dec 6 and 7
IRC announcements
TODO Confirm manual IRC announcements
TODO Confirm automated IRC announcements from res
Media
DONE Switch public media to unprotected root before the conference
- Clear public media directory.
- Set
media_protect_rootto false in Ansiblegroup_vars/all.yml. ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml prod-playbook.yml --tags media
You can generate the index with emacsconf-publish-update-media.
DONE Publishing resources to the wiki
ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml prod-playbook.yml –tags publish
TODO Publishing videos to the media server
Playing videos, switching to windows
DONE Generate test videos for everything
emacsconf-stream-generate-test-videos
TODO Document how to get that set up again
Etherpad
STARTED Try upgrading to 2.x
https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/repo/published/s3lph/pads/content/role/etherpad/ roles/pad/tasks/main.yml
nodemon -e yml -w ../../roles/pad/tasks/main.yml -x “vagrant up –provision”
http://pad.emacsconf.org.vagrant/
Progress: http://pad.emacsconf.org.vagrant:9001/p/2025-hyperboleqa works http://pad.emacsconf.org.vagrant/p/2025-hyperboleqa works now that I passthrough .js
http://pad.emacsconf.org.vagrant/padbootstrap-rLLvrD2UOFI.min.js
Generate pads for all the talks
TODO Generate the main index
TODO Do a dry run
TODO Generate all the test assets
DONE Test connecting to VNC and streaming via OBS :emacsconf:
Resizing
live0: 64GB front0: 32GB meet: 64GB
TODO Resize nodes before production
live0: 64GB front0: 32GB meet: 64GB
TODO Resize nodes after production
live0: nanode front0: nanode
TODO Resize meet after production
meet: nanode
Processes and notes
Hosting
TODO Finalize host for dev track
ERC
Some convenient commands are defined in emacsconf-erc.el.
| /opall | Grant operator status in the Emacsconf channels |
| /deopall | Remove operator status in the Emacsconf channels |
| /conftopic | Set the first part of the topic |
Uploading videos
YouTube
emacsconf-publish-youtube-step-through-publishing
Toobnix
Decisions
Support code
(defun my-ox-link-path (link _ info)
(let* ((raw-path (org-element-property :path link)))
(setq raw-path
(org-export-file-uri
(org-publish-file-relative-name raw-path info)))
;; Possibly append `:html-link-home' to relative file
;; name.
(let ((home (and (plist-get info :html-link-home)
(org-trim (plist-get info :html-link-home)))))
(when (and home
(plist-get info :html-link-use-abs-url)
(not (file-name-absolute-p raw-path)))
(setq raw-path (concat (file-name-as-directory home) raw-path))))
raw-path))
(defun my-org-md-link (link desc info)
(if (string= (org-element-property :type link) "file")
(let ((path (my-ox-link-path link desc info)))
(if (string= (file-name-extension path) "svg")
(with-temp-buffer
(insert-file-contents-literally path)
(buffer-string))
(org-md-link link desc info)))
(org-md-link link desc info)))
(with-eval-after-load 'ox-md
(setf
(alist-get 'link (org-export-backend-transcoders (org-export-get-backend 'md)))
'my-org-md-link))