Re: how do scientists use org mode?

[John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 3:21 PM, GMX Christoph 13 <christoph-13@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi
> this is my first post here and although I am evaluating org mode with great interest, I am also asking myself in which way other scientists are making use of org mode. It will take a while to get my head around how to accomplish certain things in org mode but for the moment I am intrigued by *why* one would want to approach the problem of organizing one's research with org mode and in which way.

[...]

> If this list is geared towards the proximate aspects of development and less towards philosophy of usage, I apologize
>
> Christoph

Perfect question for this list. I've asked some like it myself :) I
use org-mode in an engineering consumer product company environment.
If that doesn't qualify me as a "scientist," bummer... you'll have my
input anyway. I originally got into org simply for tracking todos. I
had looked into many, many other todo and note taking applications.
Intellectual Property documentation is a big deal in my organization,
so I was originally looking for a way to capture ideas and have a way
to print them out in a nice format for insertion into an IP notebook
for witnessing.

In my quest, I looked at Evernote, variants of wiki, TaskPaper, Google
Notebook, and some others. I actually settled on TeamTasks (a
TiddlyWiki variant) with many other plugins and custom scripts for
quite a while.[1] It was really neat and allowed me to do quite a lot
of things. Easily searchable (just like a wiki), and nice format.

I also hunted for todo applications: iGTD, Task Coach, todo.txt (Gina
Trapani's script), Tracks, and others.

What I liked about TeamTasks was the todo integration. Many people I
know rave about Evernote. It is pretty cool, but what I didn't like
was having outlines and notes in one place and todos in another. Todos
often come up *in the same context* as your notes. Somewhere in here I
stumbled across org-mode, and it's recognition of this fact is what
really appealed to me. I also really liked the export functions. I
seemed to have something that could do it all -- great notes that I
could search and export *as well as* a very todo-task-tracking focus
and the right "mechanics" to handle those things in a non-kludgy way.

I think this would appeal to me regardless of my job type.

Specifically for sciency stuff, however, I have come to love org-mode
for the ability to output my research into beautiful reports via
LaTeX. I also often use my notes to generate beamer presentations for
team meetings. I am leading my first product development team and will
be using taskjuggler -- I may be able to build exports of timelines
and deliverables into into my orgmode notes. I can run gnuplot or R
right from my files or beamer org files to generate the necessary
graphs or results for me. I can use TikZ to illustrate process flows.
I have access to great looking tables that can live where all my other
notes live rather than having to generate then in excel (or calc) or
something else and then try to insert them as pictures.

Essentially, *everything* can live in one place -- data, code,
outputted results/graphics, todos, project updates, links to other
files or websites that I can retrieve later...

I used to have a file per project, but migrated to having a structure like this:

-----
* Tracking
Misc todos go in here
* Project 1
* Project 2
* Project 3
* Misc Journals
Updates that don't fit into a project
* References
Stuff I just want to put somewhere and refer back to later
-----

I also have a file called devel.org that tracks any internal
technology classes I take and corresponding notes. I have a recurring
todo setup where I take notes on highlights of my progress each month
so that my end of the year review form is easier to fill out.

So, there's a snapshot into how I use it. I just used org-mode +
R-babel to create a beamer presentation on analytical test results for
a team progress update.

Hope that was at least somewhat helpful.


Best regards,
John

[1] http://getteamtasks.com/