10 December 2022 — Emacs Research Group

2022-12-10 Sat — Noorah Alhasan, Joe Corneli, Leo Vivier

10 December 2022 — Emacs Research Group

Check-ins

NA

  • Potential new cat owner 🐈

  • Cat has been visiting for 10 days to 2 weeks, Annan's been taking care of it

  • Now wants to come inside :-)

  • Petsmart bound

LV

  • Just came from a tangential conversation that was tense; I had to tell my friend that I'm giving up (the 3rd time)

    • NA: Keep in mind that you'd be foregoing €40-80K per year and the quick route to senior dev + management in your case!

    • And you can always go back to do the PhD later

  • It's freezing (current cast-iron-paned heater isn't on yet)

  • Low on money so doesn't want to gamble on the bill!

  • Emacsconf was great

  • Following that, lots of frustration leading to applying for 5 developer positions

    • LV: Now's the time for rejoicing in my readiness for this approach

    • Besides I've been fighting impostership for a long time and value the self-made aspect of my development; I'd rather take the long way round

    • NA: So you want to focus more on development now... rather than writing and philosophy; but they'd shape your focus for 2 years

    • A programme in an information school would work better for you

    • Which would you rather be getting more training on?

    • LV: So, where's the ceiling on what I can do on my own?

    • Self-learning can be very inefficient

    • JC: You don't need to do it now!

    • If you went to an iSchool you could leave w/ a Masters in Information Studies — much more employable

  • I also just want to spend time here in France & to be more grounded!

JC

  • In Minneapolis, reconnecting w/ Anders

Meta points

TODO Don't forget to record the session!LV

TODO Pre-PAR — Review the intention: what do we expect to learn or make together?

  • Catch Leo up on the workshop framing from NA + JC

Agenda (Part 1)

  • We can't measure the strength of connection between nodes in Org Roam!

  • Nor anything like that in Org Roam UI

  • It could be something simple like frequency of words to test the strength of connection: which would only be applied to neighbouring nodes

  • Read into network analysis, they have done stuff like this before

    • Quadratic (e.g., 100x100) at worst case

    • But this does go to linguistic ideas

    • We can think more about how to do this well

  • If you have many lines going out of it you could at least say "This one is instrumental to others"

  • This is a constant time!

  • Tech question: if I open org-roam.db w/ DB Browser for SQLite

    • There are 2 columns w/ node id an alias...

    • Can we pull the text for the node id into another column

    • Text data is currently stored in file, but it would be easier for analysis if we had the full-text data inside

    • LV: Though, from data-hygiene standpoint, it's considered better to keep only metadata in the database! — Otherwise computation vs database writes is tricky

    • Maybe I need a python script that extracts the text from each node & puts it into compute

  • "Datalake" might be a tech thing we could use

  • Expanding the local neighbourhood of new nodes could be useful for thinking about "what's missing" that would make our new insights more effective & more valuable

  • Think about this in terms of "activation" — you might be more likely to create more links in an already-densely-connected area

  • Another route: exclude distance 2, but see connections that aren't obvious (not distance 3 but w/ high salience)

  • E.g., also, "retract nodes that are already well connected, so that we only see the new stuff"

  • Currently there's no way to do these queries or interact with the graph

BREAK

Agenda (Part 2)

Speed through of specific changes

  • Use Bristol Pound to build similar network of exchange which we can analyse

  • Rethink the CLA along bio-psycho-social-eco

  • Potentially create new patterns with pictures created by participants

Web form demo

  • Populate name, text

  • Google is handling the backend here

  • JC: Maybe also node that they are connecting to

    • NA: But I want to make it as simple as possible at first, e.g., "I am reacting to something someone else is saying"

    • LV: Like on "Survivor" breakout rooms

    • JC: OK, this is like the open string, and we could build other features on them

  • Timestamps could differentiate the phases

  • Could also display as a timeline, and we come back and interact with them later

  • LV: How about creating documents of the design ideas... so that feature-wise we have ideas fitted under bigger ideas; simple ideas are easy to keep in mind, but more complex ideas are hard to remember

  • JC: Can we zoom in on the ideas that are related to technology in our Org Roam?

  • Can it be phone friendly?

  • LV: E.g., React/reactive display should help with this

PAR

1. Establish what is happening: what and how are we learning?

  • Brief meeting today

  • Deployed some computing concepts in today's meeting

2. What are some different perspectives on what's happening?

  • Leo feeling unfocused (and slept 12 hours last night!); will be fine when the quagmire is resolved

  • JC: You do seem to be in a transition phase of some kind

  • Enjoyed demos inducing conversations (e.g., you can actually expand Org Roam — cool!)

  • This helps think about things we can do

3. What did we learn or change?

  • JC: Spelling of Annan

  • Leo has insta-mime ability with is push-to-mute

4. What else should we change going forward?

  • JC: I met a couple people that I might want to suggest

  • Next Saturday Noorah is traveling to Kuwait (GMT+3)

Tentative agenda for next week

  • Abby mentioned earlier in the week

  • After that, next meet as ERG on 7th?

  • Can find times during the week to coordinate as needed

Check-out

NA

  • Excited about the cat

  • Packing soon!

JC

  • Shortly going to see my second cousin

  • I do have a slight cold so won't cough on her

  • Oh yeah, lots of meetings for next week

    • NA: me too, got dragged in!

LV

  • JC: Drop it for a year, you'll have everything and more next year!

  • LV: I have people around me who know I prevaricate when I'm at 90%...

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