Re: [O] converting people to Emacs and org-mode

[Bastien]

Hi John,

interesting topic.

My take on this is that *individual* attempts can be deceptive
(for reasons that Suvayu raised), but *collective* attempts are
always somehow successful.

By "individual attempts" I mean face-to-face demos and preaching,
which can help some Emacs users discover how they could use Emacs
more effectively for notes and TODO lists, but will surely fail at
convincing non-Emacs users.

(Oh, btw, the above is not entirely true: I recently participated
to a Vim-dedicated informal group, where I picked up many useful Vim
tricks, and I was surprised to see that many Vimers just love Org's
tables --- to the point that they have tricks to display Org tables
in Vim buffers...)

By "collective attempts", I mean contributions to the vast pool of
Org tutorials/demos/screencasts.  This is how we ensure potential
users will get an impression that "this is easy to do with Org",
which is the main feeling you need to have to test it.

Think of it as "low floor, high ceilings": power users push for
higher ceilings, while neebies push for low floors.  We can deal
with high ceilings by interacting on the list, but we are better
at lowering floors by contributing with tutorials, blog entries,
etc.

Just try to write something simple, it may convert more people 
you know that oral preaching near the coffee machine :)

My 2 cents of course,

-- 
 Bastien