Notes for ILC talk?

gistfile1.org

Title: Taking over the world, two parentheses at a time

How can we get more people to use and love Lisp? Come to this session for practical tips on applied selfishness and community-building, and join in the conspiracy to take over the world (or a reasonable portion thereof). I’ll share some stories from Emacs evangelism, including new tools, beginner-friendly approaches, and the effectiveness of indirect brainwashing.

Bio: Sacha Chua loves getting Emacs to do all sorts of things that boggle casual passers-by. She’s working on more resources for Emacs beginners and enthusiasts, including doodled cheat sheets and interviews with people who are even more into Emacs Lisp than she is (emacslife.com). You can check out her blog at LivingAnAwesomeLife.com or follow her on Twitter (@sachac).

Possible titles:

• For Great Community
• Build You a Community for Great Lisp (Heh, can I get away with calling it this? Maybe I can ask the Haskell guide author =) )
• Paren by Paren: Build Lisp Communities
• Evil Plans for Taking Over the World

Goals:

• Inspire people to work on building up their communities by showing them concrete things they can do and the effects of this on the community
• Get more people hooked on Org Mode for literate programming and publishing ;)

Topics

• Selfish reasons for taking over the world
  • The more people learn and share, the more you can take advantage of
  • Other people writing code
    • Other people doing work
    • Other people connecting
    • Encouragement, inspiration, fun
• Niche
  • Parentheses are scary?
  • Terms
  • Old, obscure
    • Clojure
  • But hey, things seem to be looking up
• Keeping yourself enthused
  • Working on obscure things; can feel isolated
  • Virtual
• Growing community
  • Might not be easy to get numbers
    • Frame of reference
  • Anecdotally, feels like things are growing
  • Virtual community is important too, so that you don’t feel isolated
• Preaching to the choir
  • We tend to get settled in our ways
  • New things that you can do
    • Google Hangout, podcasting, etc.
  • Ways you can encourage other people to share
• Fill in the gaps
• Key ideas
  • Share the code
    • Snippets? Anonymized?
  • Share the process
  • Share the attitude
    • Code as conversation
  • Share the spotlight
    • Help other people gain confidence and become part of the community
• Tactics
  1. Blog posts, articles, mini-guides, e-books
     1. Literate programming
     2. Emacs configuration
     3. Workflow demo?
     4. Blog planets
        • If you have a blog, make sure you’re listed
        • You don’t have to blog exclusively about the topic; see about category-specific feeds
        • Framing
          • Inspiration
          • Discovery
  2. Newsgroups, mailing lists
     • Gmane, Gwene
  3. IRC: don’t forget to bring in the newbies =)
     • Also: gist, lisppaste
  4. Quora, StackOverflow, other Q&A sites
     • Check on these once in a while
  5. Screencasts
     • Code walkthroughs
     • Live coding
  6. Pairing (screen-sharing, tmux or screen)
     • Swarms
     • Ask for notes/posts from the people you help
  7. Video chats: Google Hangout on Air, Skype, etc.
  8. Meetups, conferences, virtual communities?
  9. Sharing source, packages, etc.
  10. Way of life
      • Talk about practical applications and goofy curiosities
      • Break out of the toy box
      • Stretch the concept
        • Indirect brainwashing
• Call to action
  • Outreach
    • Preaching to the choir (conference!) - but also, the rest of the year
  • Share what you’re learning (don’t wait to be an expert) and your enthusiasm
    • Write about the process, too
  • Shine the spotlight on other people; build connections

• Growing popularity of Emacs (meetups, etc.)
  • Why?
  • What can we learn?
• Why me? (Bio notes)
  • Blogging
  • Emacs chats