saul initial brainstorming on form factors for spaced repetition/tools-for-thought/etc event

updates February 3, 2025 :

• talked with ronny — tentatively holding nov

SRS-tival

a conference/festival celebrating spaced repetition and other tools for thought. 100-300 people, 2.5-days.

example sessions:

• deliberately practicing knowledge ankification
• SRS in the age of LLMs
• how to teach people anki

alternative names:

• good ones:
  • ??
• bad ones:
  • memory culture conference
  • memory skills festival

why?

to build a memory culture. my thoughts are best captured by michael nielson’s excellent essay, but roughly speaking:

• SRS (& related tools for thought) is cool — some of the most impressive generalized advances in our ability to learn
• there’s already a pretty big community of people doing anki/remnote/etc, but:
  • there’s a pretty big barrier to entry (500 blog posts & videos, trying & failing at ankifying knowledge well, etc)
  • a lot of knowledge is tacit — would be good to get ppl in the same room, talking, looking over each others shoulders, sharing decks, etc
  • it’s almost entirely one or more of:
    • online (!!!)
    • small (<5 ppl or something)
    • irregular
    • silo’ed/doesn’t build on each other
• the people i notice being super into SRS are all really cool — i think they’d all get along independently of SRS, and i’m totally bought into the frame of “throw a bunch of cool people in a room together and you get awesome results”

who?