fosdem 2022 lightning talk
On Sunday, I presented a lightning talk at the FOSDEM 2022 conference. Usually, FOSDEM takes place in Brussels, but recently it’s moved online. That was fortunate for me, because otherwise I probably would never have submitted a talk proposal!
The talk was about aretext, the vim clone I’ve been working on for the last couple years:
- Pre-recorded talk: it’s just under 12 minutes long, and it doesn’t include the live Q&A session.
- Abstract on fosdem.org, which will eventually link to the full video with Q&A.
Some thoughts on the experience:
Recording myself talking was much more difficult than I expected! Even though this was a short video, it took a long time to create because I needed to learn how to use a microphone, recording software (OBS), and editing software (Kdenlive). I also had only a few hours to record the video while my wife took our daughter to ballet class.
If you look carefully in the background of the video, you can see my wife’s half-finished macramé moon looming in the background like the Death Star in Return of the Jedi. You will not see the shoes, laundry, mail, art projects, and general clutter that I shoved into the kitchen.
The audience asked interesting questions about Language Server Protocol support, plugin security, and (of course) whether I had used emacs. Unfortunately, for some reason, the Q&A feed ended early, mid-sentence, but I didn’t realize that until afterwards. One person stayed in the chat room afterwards to talk about text editing data structures and algorithms.
It’s amazing that the conference is run 100% by volunteers! I’m very grateful for all the work they did to keep things running smoothly.