After the really great July Emacs Carnival on the writing experience hosted by Greg Newman, Jeremy Friesen has stepped up to host the August carnival. This month the subject is “The Emacs Elevator Pitch”. The idea is that you have a captive audience in an elevator for the short time it takes the elevator to get to its destination and you have to explain why they should be using Emacs.
There’s some latitude. As Friesen says, maybe the elevator is just going to the next floor so your time is severely limited. But maybe it gets stuck so you can harangue your audience for the time it takes for the maintenance people to rescue you all from the elevator.
Regardless, you have some limited time to convince people they should be using Emacs. What would you say? What reasons would you offer that taking the time and making the effort to learn Emacs is a worthwhile endeavor?
My own thoughts are that Emacs is a wide ranging program that does many things and can be used in many ways. I’m not sure that I could form a convincing argument “in 25 words or less” as the TV contest ads used to say. In any event, it will be interesting to see what people come up with. If you have some ideas about the matter, write them up and let Friesen know.