Re: converting people to Emacs and org-mode

[Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com>]

42 147 <aeuster@gmail.com> writes:

> This might be considered off-topic.

Maybe not? I know of a fantastic Lisp dialect and
web/database programming-environment out there 

,------------------------------------
| PicoLisp
| http://picolisp.com/5000/!wiki?home
`------------------------------------

that suffers exactly from the rather low conversion rate of people to
it, which is kind of hard to explain given its quality. 

But maybe Paul Graham is right in
http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html, at least with regards to
programming languages:

,-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| A friend of mine once told an eminent operating systems expert that he
| wanted to design a really good programming language. The expert told him
| that it would be a waste of time, that programming languages don't
| become popular or unpopular based on their merits, and so no matter how
| good his language was, no one would use it. At least, that was what had
| happened to the language he had designed.
`-------------------------------------------------------------------------

And just like I try to spell the word about amazing PicoLisp with this
email, I wrote an Org-mode article in the student magazine of my former
German distance university with the title

,------------------------------------------------------
| Self-organization with Org-mode for distance students
`------------------------------------------------------

(in German)

Its in 

,-------------------------------------------
| "SprachRohr"-Ausgabe 04/2012 FernUni Hagen
`-------------------------------------------

and the cover can be seen here: 
http://www.fernstudis.de/node/1203

unfortunately only the cover, since download is restricted to
immatriculated students, but I reached some 50-60k readers with this
article and recieved very positive feedback, I cite from an anonymous
fellow distance student:

,----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| [...] ich gehöre normalerweise nicht zu den Leserbriefschreibern, aber hier
| muss ich einfach mal ein ganz großes Lob loswerden: Vielen Dank für den
| Artikel über Emacs Org-Mode - der erste Artikel [...] der mich wirklich
| weiterbringt und ganz sehr zum "Weiterforschen" anregt. Org-Mode scheint
| genau das Werkzeug zu sein, nach dem ich lange gesucht habe.
`----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(in English more or less: "normally I don't write reader comments, but
Org-mode seems exactly the tool I was looking for and I feel very
motivated to learn more about it after reading your article")

So maybe there are ways to reach more people with less effort than in
one-to-one conversion talks? Although, even with 50k readers, I will of
course never know if I really achieved a single conversion. 

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten