Our Attempt At Going Online Only

Tomorrow will be the third event we’ve had since the global pandemic started, it also marks the third event that has been entirely online.

I would be lying if I said this has been a smooth transition, but that isn’t to say that we haven’t had some great things to come from this. It turns out when you’re online people can join from anywhere in the world! Who knew!?

During this transition we’ve have had to think about how we can maintain the most free(freedom) software and tooling we can along the way to continue in the spirit of what our group represents.

The Free Software Foundation has a great resource for communicating during these times and something we’ve pulled a lot of inspiration from. We currently run all of our events using Jitsi and starting next event will encourage everyone to join us on #emacsnyc freenode channel.

During our last event, we had some success leading a discussion on how people have been coping with working/not working from home. Talking about how they’ve setup their workspace, do they do specific things to make sure they are getting some sunshine/exercise/socialization, and other considerations. It turned into some great discussions and even led to a bit of debate.

This next month we intend to try a similar discussion based event. We also lean into the benefits that we gain from being pushed online. The value of getting onto IRC and having platform that can connect to anyone means there is no reason our group cannot extend beyond New York.

Our hope is that even when(if?) we are able to have meetups in person we can maintain this moment and encourage people to join us and develop a hybrid group that allows for a base in New York, but welcomes people around the globe to participate.

We will see you online!