I was asked to speak about Literate Devops at EmacsConf 2015. Due to work and family complications, I knew that I couldn’t physically attend. Wait, what year is this!? We should open a can of virtualization on this meatspace! The week before, we tested out the technology, and the Furies looked favorable upon me to remotely attend a live conference.

On Saturday, September 29th at 9:00am, I sat at my large monitor, carefully arranged into windows of note taking Emacs, conference twitter feeds, the #emacsconf IRC channel … and of course, the live video feed. “This is good,” I thought. No struggling in uncomfortable seats to power small-screened laptops. I had all the coffee I wanted, and just the way I wanted it too.

The first talk, by Nicolas Petton (who was also presenting remotely from France), illustrated immutable data structures and lazy sequencing from Clojure to Emacs Lisp. I thought, “This is going to be a great day!”

And then it happened. The power went out halfway through the second talk. Using the battery and data service on my cell phone, I went to the power utility’s web site. Their power outage map was covered in red. Estimated time began at 12:50… then 1:30… then 3:00…

I panicked and put out a plea for help. I quickly cross town to the first friend who responded, to give my talk perched in his living room.

My demonstration went well enough (I start at 1:27:00), but I was frazzled and the environment on my laptop was less than ideal. I received some very thoughtful compliments, however:

Your talk on Literate DevOps with Org-Mode was fantastic, and everyone was blown away by it. You had a really stressful day, but you gave the talk anyway for your fellow emacers, and everyone really enjoyed it. I really appreciate the effort it took to go through with the talk after your power cut out. An excerpt from IRC at the end of your talk:

The virtual clapping on IRC was pretty humorous:

| 5:41 PM | <tered> <clap clap> | 5:41 PM | — cestdiego *claps* | 5:41 PM | <python476> <fingerclap> | 5:41 PM | <Caine> great talk | 5:41 PM | <momerath> thanks Howard!! | 5:41 PM | <cestdiego> M-x clap | 5:41 PM | — offby1 stomps feet | 5:42 PM | — python476 flips IKEA desks

While the entire experience was interesting and enjoyable, I just wasn’t pleased, and felt my fellow Cultists in the Church of Emacs deserved better, so last night, I re-recorded myself. The audio is better, but it doesn’t have the questions and answers afterward.

See you all next year at EmacsConf 2016!