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Ask HN: Looking for Emacs org-mode tutorial videos by women

22 points by jonnycomputer ↗ HN
I was interested in recommending Emacs and org-mode to colleagues, but discovered that I could not find any tutorials or introduction-to videos made by, or narrated by women. In the interest of my colleagues not getting the impression that its just a tool for a certain well-established crowd of male nerds, particularly since most of my colleagues are women, I was hoping to get help finding resources that portrayed it more inclusively--in the interest of bringing more people in to use this fantastic tool.

Edit: I'm not interested in culture war crap. I'm interested in resource recommendations that might better appeal to a certain audience. Please, if your only point of replying is to complain that I asked the question, please refrain, because its off-topic.

36 comments

[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] thread
NateEag
Sacha Chua is one of the best-known women in the Emacs world.

She ran a podcast about Emacs for a while, which might be relevant:

https://sachachua.com/blog/emacs-chat/

atomicbeanie
Sacha has nice content and might know of other resources. I am sure she has noticed how few publish in that space and how many opportunities for women emacs users to share exist.
jonnycomputer
Yeah. Its strange, because I feel fairly certain that there are a great many women (in absolute numbers) who use emacs and org-mode. My thought was maybe that I was just not seeing the content that was out there, and wasn't sure how to search for it. I agree that there is really a lot of room to grow its appeal outside of its traditional user/developer base.
sachac
Noorah's talk (https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/17/ , also recommended elsewhere in this thread) is a good one to look at. You might also like https://www.rousette.org.uk/tags/emacs and https://gretzuni.com/category/free-software/ .

One of the things I like about Emacs is its versatility. Do you think the people you're talking to might be curious about some examples of how people have used Emacs? I think it's awesome that people who are blind or have low-vision have Emacspeak, that people use Org Mode to work around the limitations of their brain, that people use Emacs for all sorts of non-coding things... I started trying to organize some links at https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsDiversity to give a sense of the breadth of different things people use Emacs for. It's totally not comprehensive, but I hope you can add more resources as you come across them.

One of the most fun ways to grow Emacs' appeal outside the user/developer base is to use Emacs for your other interests and talk about how. I've seen lots of posts related to Org and cooking, exercising, and so on. I had fun using Emacs Lisp to help me figure out a quilt pattern.

As for making it easier for other people to get into Emacs, some people find it effective to make a customized interface for the workflows people need, especially if they can tweak it to fit people's preferences.

Gotta run (kiddo's woken up), but hope that helps!

jonnycomputer
Thank you for your constructive response. I'll take a look.
yewenjie
Sacha publishes the weekly Emacs newsletter and has many org related blogs on her site. She is also one of the most wholesome tech person I have ever seen.
w4rh4wk5
I am afraid in that I cannot really help you there. I am a Vim user and usually only read written tutorials where I don't even know the gender of the author (which does not matter to me anyway).

However, I find the nature behind your request interesting and would like to better understand where exactly you are coming from.

> In the interest of my colleagues not getting the impression that its just a tool for a certain well-established crowd of male nerds

Where exactly would they get this impression from? Over the last decade I've seen so many different people nerding about Emacs (or Vim for that matter) that I'd never nail it down to be one coherent, well-established crowd. Especially with the rise of VSCode and its underlying complexity a lot of people join and leave that community every day.

> I was hoping to get help finding resources that portrayed it more inclusively

Which resources did you find that portrayed Emacs to be exclusive / non-inclusive in any way. Okay, you'll have a hard time if you are missing some fingers, but that's not what you are getting at.

jonnycomputer
I anticipated that some people might have this reaction. Its understandable, but I think that the concern is misplaced, and honestly, I think a discussion about it detracts from the object of what I was asking for.

Briefly, there was nothing exclusive or non-inclusive about enthusiasts posting their video tutorials and happening to be men. This is not aimed at them, or a criticism of them. Its just that when choosing from a menu of options, people will often choose the option that they can see themselves using. Because gender is such a strong part of people's identities, when you see users that share in that identity, it is easier to see yourself choosing that option. I think this is fairly well established, and not controversial.

w4rh4wk5
I am sure people provide the requested resources in threads parallel to this and I am okay with not getting into a discussion.

I'll therefore just give you my take on your answer and call it a day.

> Because gender is such a strong part of people's identities

Personally, I made the experience that there are a lot of people in both camps, some view gender as a big part of their identity, some simply do not. While I belong to the latter, I have no idea about the actual split in the editor community / industry.

> when you see users that share in that identity, it is easier to see yourself choosing that option.

I definitely agree that this is true and therefore understand your desire for a video tutorial narrated by a woman. But I am not sure whether we should embrace this concept instead of making people aware of this bias and actively work against it.

dvfjsdhgfv
> Because gender is such a strong part of people's identities

Is it though? I guess for some, definitely. For others, like me, I think of my gender only momentarily during specific moments, and definitely not when I'm programming or learning something new. And it's very clear to me that when participating in an online course what really counts (for me!) is the ability of the lecturer to engage with the students, not their gender.

bellyfullofbac
I suppose it's not up for discussion (since it's offtopic) that I find this mindset strange, it feels more like segregation rather than inclusivity, "I want to watch tutorials only made by my group."...

Then again, looking "Emacs tutorial" on YouTube I re-encountered a particular weird character I saw before, he's got a homepage where he solicits Patreon donations to ask him a question, he does YouTube streams where maybe 5 people show up where he talks about what you'd expect a "neckbeard nerd" to talk about, he seems to have been unable to find employment for many years, and he's also talked about women in weird way. I would not want my daughter to learn Emacs from him.

jonnycomputer
Well, yes, I think it is off-topic.

I'm just trying to reach an audience that might be turned off by the options that I found available. Just look at it as marketing 101, not culture war.

bellyfullofbac
I can't resist to comment: this is either you being condesending (maybe the women would be fine watching tutorials by men too, I can't believe all the men would be turn offs), or these women actually need to be coddled, which then the maybe term snowflake would be appropriate.

I think I'm pretty sane, but wahey, what an odd odd world I've grown old in if your request is deemed normal.

Well your post got flagged to death (wasn't me!), I guess if you had made it clearer it was marketing not "culture war" in the first place it would've worked better.

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hprotagonist
also, xah largely doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.

it’s like, what if w3schools was also kinda creepy?

JoeyBananas
Xah: [nothing] You: Stay away from my daughter, nerd.
bellyfullofbac
I never mentioned his name, but google his name + feminism.
db48x
The currently–available tutorials were all created by volunteers. If none of them are acceptable then you should do it yourself or hire someone acceptable to do it.
jonnycomputer
Yes I understand that. I'm only asking for recommendations if you have them.
jks
I have a different but related question: are there org-mode tutorials, by presenters of any gender, that show how they actually use org-mode as part of their workflows? I've seen enough tutorials where you are shown how to make

  * headlines

  ** in a hierarchy

  * and back to level 1

  1. and numbered lists
  2. [ ] and clickable items
...and all the other features, but I would be interested in seeing what kind of improved workflows or routines are enabled by using org-mode in some actual work.
the_third_wave
Those colleagues could just look past the sex of the person doing the talking and focus on the content, just like we've done for a long time - just like we've been taught. MLK wanted his children to be judged by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Your colleagues are most likely perfectly capable of judging tutorials by their content, not by the sex of the narrator. Segregation is what we should be glad we left behind, not what we should strife for.
jonnycomputer
Is this constructive? I asked for help, and all you do is write off-topic posts criticizing. Thanks. But no thanks. Perhaps, --- just perhaps --- you should reconsider you effing assumptions.
the_third_wave
Yes, it is constructive in that your colleagues are much better off ignoring innate characteristics like sex in the quest for editor tutorials. I do not know whether your colleagues prompted you to specifically search for female-narrated tutorials or if this is your own initiative. If the former is true you can actually help them by pointing out that the sex of the narrator has no bearing on the suitability of the tutorial for people of the opposite sex. If this is your own initiative I'd suggest you drop the requirement for a female narrator and ask yourself whether you would want to only listen to male narrators. Assuming that you do not care whether a tutorial is presented by a male or a female it is no more than logical to assume that the same goes for your female colleagues.
jonnycomputer
Perhaps you didn't read what I was trying to accomplish.

Perhaps you leaped to conclusions, because you got triggered.

Perhaps you should take a moment and realize that I'm not approaching people who already use emacs and org-mode.

Perhaps you might have realized that I looked at the videos online and didn't think that they would make Emacs or org-mode appealing to my target audience.

Perhaps, you might consider, whether you like it or not, that the messenger matters, instead of lecturing people that it shouldn't.

Perhaps you should consider that marketers know something you don't about making products appealing to segments of the market.

Perhaps you could have honored my request to keep discussion on topic instead of hijacking it go on your tirade.

Perhaps you've been shadow banned twice (your words) for a reason.

jonnycomputer
And frankly if it seems I'm pissed, its because I am. I was asking for information, and seemed well along to getting it, when a whole bunch of people like you flagged and hijacked it because you got triggered. Talk about cancelling and need for safe-spaces. Sheesh.
the_third_wave
The mere fact that several people did not respond to your question in an affirming way does not mean those people "hijacked" the thread, nor does it imply these people were "triggered". They responded, like I did, to a question which portrays segregation based on innate characteristics (sex, in this case) as a positive thing by pointing out this is actually counterproductive.

Had your question been phrased differently - e.g. does anyone know of any tutorials on this subject which do not preach to the choir or ...which do not seem to be targeting the in-crowd the responses would have been different, you would probably have gotten suggestions for tutorials produced by men and women alike without any of these having been selected specifically based on the presenter's sex.

jonnycomputer
Thank you for those who chose to help. I appreciate you.

I'm afraid that the rest of the responses were not constructive. Worse, they've painted a picture that is not very flattering of the HN community, I'm afraid. I'm not some woke holy warrior--not by a long shot--but you all have convinced me that sexism is a bigger problem in tech than I'd given credence to thus far. Sad.

ThrowawayR2
Try asking on a weekday, when the regulars are on, rather than the weekend.
jonnycomputer
Thank you for the suggestion. I'll take that aspect in consideration for future queries.