[Development Call]: Tutorial on Obsidian

[alexandervossen]

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Is your content request related to a problem you've encountered during your research process? Please describe.

I asked chatgpt "why should tilburg science hub have a tutorial about the note taking app Obsidian?". Here is the reply :

Obsidian is gaining popularity among researchers, students, and academics as a note-taking app due to its robust features and flexibility for organizing and connecting information. Creating a tutorial about Obsidian on Tilburg Science Hub could be beneficial for several reasons:

1. Research Workflow Enhancement: Obsidian's bidirectional linking and knowledge graph capabilities can significantly aid in organizing and connecting research notes, making it an effective tool for academic workflows.

2. Increasing Productivity: Understanding how to efficiently use Obsidian can enhance productivity by streamlining the process of taking, organizing, and retrieving notes. Researchers can benefit from learning effective strategies for utilizing the app within their workflow.

3. Collaborative Research: Obsidian supports collaboration, allowing multiple users to work on interconnected notes and projects. A tutorial could showcase how researchers can collaborate effectively using the app.

4. Encouraging Technological Adaptation: Introducing researchers to innovative tools like Obsidian aligns with the goal of promoting technological adaptation and innovation within academic settings.

5. Community Engagement: By providing tutorials on popular tools like Obsidian, Tilburg Science Hub can engage with a community interested in digital tools for research, fostering a sense of community and learning.

Incorporating tutorials on Obsidian into Tilburg Science Hub's resources can cater to the needs of researchers seeking more efficient ways to manage information, conduct literature reviews, and streamline their research process.

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Would you like this to be a Building Block or a Tutorial?

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• [X] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[alexandervossen]

@gbocsardi and @StefKirsch wanted to be part of this as well.

[StefKirsch]

Let me know if I can help!

[gbocsardi]

Hi @StefKirsch, sorry for the long wait :D Here is the structure I vaguely had in mind, let me know your thoughts:

Making the case for notetaking apps

As I see with many colleagues (and even more professors), some just open Word docs to take notes in them, without any real consistency or structure. I think it would be a good start to argue for the case of note taking apps (speed, structure, reliability, ease of use), especially when compared to MS Word.

Why Obsidian?

Here I would follow by outlining the advantages of Obsidian (offline-first, linked notes, MD-based, lightweight, fast, extendable, etc). Give some reasons why we care about the advantages (you own your notes, plain text edits, easy backups, etc).

Basic Tutorial

Here I would outline a simple tutorial on the UI, folders, editing notes, etc. I think there are many great ones online, we could probably also endorse one of those.

Advanced Usecases

Here we could do some academia-specific usecases (Citations plugin is the one I have in mind), or even include some must-have plugins (Omnisearch, Dataview, Custom Frames, etc)

How does this structure sound?

[StefKirsch]

No worries @gbocsardi!

Your structure sounds awesome! Employees of TiU also have OneNote at their disposal by the way. But with the advantages you mention, I think we can easily make a case that Obsidian is superior in many use cases.

Just a random other benefit is that the interface with writing code is sooo much better with Obsidian (like code blocks and just markdown in general) while One Note doesn't even come with all the features Word has.

I have to admit that I haven't used any of the "academic" plugins/features yet, but I have been using Obsidian actively as my private note vault and also recently for my work notes. So, I can definitively contribute to Section 1 and 2, but maybe somewhat less to section 3.

One thing we should maybe do first is brainstorm about the limitations that you have with Obsidian VS One Note. The main thing that comes to mind is that synch and backup is not "free" (in big quotation marks, because One Note isn't either, it's just paid for by TiU). For TiU employees this is not a big deal as you can either declare the cost or use your facility budget for it as a PhD. But that's just one we should address. Another one is sharing notes and collaboration, which is also not ideal.

Should we meet up over coffee one of these days or first start brainstorming by ourselves and then exchange ideas?

[gbocsardi]

The OneNote angle is genius, we definitely should showcase the two against each other. I also love the code style, I have a note titled useful code snippets and they are pretty and easy to copy, so we should definitely include that as a feature.

I'm still in Hungary for the time being (thanks Deutsche Bahn), so maybe to get started some async brainstorming would be best, then we can exchange them in a call over next week?

[StefKirsch]

@gbocsardi What's the best way to contact you so we can arrange a call?

[alexandervossen]

@StefKirsch @gbocsardi Any news on that front here?

[StefKirsch]

Not much unfortunately from my end, it's busy times. I can get back to this in July, maybe during summer recess times, where it's more quiet. Hope that works.