SB V2 as a project Managment tool in academia

[Christoph (Kreisleriana)]

Hi there
I am asking this question because I have dabbled with Silverbullet mostly in order to get to grips with the question if it might be a suitable tool to look after the many responsibilities I have as a research scientist.

Some tools for important responsibilities such as writing papers are dictated by the context: No matter what I choose, I‘d be collaborating with colleagues used to send Word files back and forth, the furthest I could stretch that paradigm is suggest collaborating on a shared Google Doc, so that‘s that.

However, taking notes, keeping track of my ideas, tasks, managing students, meetings, admin, etc, is something that I could very well see Silverbullet do a very good job in.

I would like to start cautiously and try it with one or two projects that don’t have a mission critical deadline approaching next month, and see how that goes. In the past, changing too much at the same time has made me shoot myself in the foot.

Also, I have learned the hard way, that completely open systems, such as orgmode or Tiddlywiki, whilst almost limitless in their capabilities, are not for me because I can be distracted by exploring a technical rabbithole in the system when I really should be working on my actual job not the system meant to facilitate that.

In that sense, the fact that (I think that) Silverbullet has dedicated strengths without trying to achieve everything might pose a good middle ground for me. I am not ignoring the fact that a lot can be added to it if you know what you are doing, but it is not so glaringly obvious as with some other tools and what works does so in a way that makes me use it as is with more peace of mind than the steampunk world of, say, orgmode (no disrespect, I love org, the shortcomings I have described are mine).

In SB, I like that stuff I use always is easy, with minimal friction and sometimes even unexpectedly low friction (why is simply pasting a link on top of highlighted words not the norm for creating a markdown link?), folding, simple outlining etc.
Also, it is pretty and works much better on mobile than orgmode.

Currently, I have a few open questions. I am using a Pikapods hosted instance of Silverbullet. In the long run, I would need to have all the managed documents at hand along with my notes and tasks (proposals, PDFs, papers, travel documents, expense forms, analysis reports etc). This would probably be best in a tool such as DEVONthink. Could this access documents in the file system on the server and what would be the prerequisites? I understand that Pikapods has SFTP, not Webdav. Would this be an argument in favour of hosting Silverbullet on my own server?

I have many more questions, but let‘s not get ahead of ourselves too much. I am not the most experienced server admin as you might have guessed, so I would benefit greatly from advice and expert judgment if what I am trying to achieve is a justifiable use case for SB or trying to shoehorn SB into something it really does not try to be.

So: SB as a place for ideas, thinking about several long-term projects all running in parallel, tasks in the context the care arising from but collected from multiple locations and viewable in one location, with links to relevant documents managed elsewhere, bonus points for Macs as well as iOS devices being acceptable (at least for capturing information and tasks) - doable in Silverbullet or am I trying to chase unicorns?

Much appreciated!
Chris

[Krishna-Sivakumar]

I'm running a my instance on a local server with tailscale for access, have been finding that pretty nice.
afaik PDFs can be inserted into silverbullet and synced across all devices, but you do have to consider that these documents are pretty large and can take a while to sync over time.
Any documents would need to be within the designated silverbullet directory.

[Christoph (Kreisleriana)]

Thank you very much for your response, good to hear that it is working for you. I have in the meantime installed SB on my own server but there are some things to figure out with embedding images, this is taking way longer than in Pikapods. Do you experience much of a delay or are you working mostly with text?
Thanks again
Chris

[zef (Zef Hemel)]

@Christoph

Some tools for important responsibilities such as writing papers are dictated by the context: No matter what I choose, I‘d be collaborating with colleagues used to send Word files back and forth, the furthest I could stretch that paradigm is suggest collaborating on a shared Google Doc, so that‘s that.

Yeah, I think SilverBullet can't be of much help here. It's not built for multi-player collaboration. You could theoretically do that a little bit, but I wouldn't recommend it. What I sometimes do in similar situations is write a first draft in SivlerBullet, then through its export command (Cmd-e or Ctrl-e) export it as rich text and paste that into Google Docs. That works. It's a one-way operation though.

@Christoph

Also, I have learned the hard way, that completely open systems, such as orgmode or Tiddlywiki, whilst almost limitless in their capabilities, are not for me because I can be distracted by exploring a technical rabbithole in the system when I really should be working on my actual job not the system meant to facilitate that.

This is a super common trap. I think a lot of us get side tracked into working on the system than actually using it. In this context, sadly, SilverBullet gives you virtually unlimited power. It's up to you to restrain yourself

@Christoph

Currently, I have a few open questions. I am using a Pikapods hosted instance of Silverbullet. In the long run, I would need to have all the managed documents at hand along with my notes and tasks (proposals, PDFs, papers, travel documents, expense forms, analysis reports etc). This would probably be best in a tool such as DEVONthink. Could this access documents in the file system on the server and what would be the prerequisites? I understand that Pikapods has SFTP, not Webdav. Would this be an argument in favour of hosting Silverbullet on my own server?

Yeah, I tried SB on Pikapods and indeed you can enable SFTP access, which seems to work fine. I don't know Devonthink and if you see that as a replacement for SB or companion.

If you just need the certainty that you can get your files out of Pikapods, you should be fine with their SFTP access (you can just download everything whenever you want). I think they also have S3 backups. What you can also do is backup/sync your files to e.g. Github: Backup your space to Github

If you host SB yourself on your own server, you have a bit more flexibility of course, but it all depends on what you need.

@Christoph

So: SB as a place for ideas, thinking about several long-term projects all running in parallel, tasks in the context the care arising from but collected from multiple locations and viewable in one location, with links to relevant documents managed elsewhere, bonus points for Macs as well as iOS devices being acceptable (at least for capturing information and tasks) - doable in Silverbullet or am I trying to chase unicorns?

I think this is all doable, it's more or less what I also how I use it.

[Christoph (Kreisleriana)]

Thanks @zef for taking the time to respond!

I think I did not make myself clear enough. The Google Docs reference I provided only for context, it is clearly not something Silverbullet is designed to do. In fact, I am hopeful that this time around I am much clearer about what it is I am looking for. Not wanting everything in one tool without ending up in a flea circus of disconnected apps is probably the most important bit I have learned in my journey

In this context, sadly, SilverBullet gives you virtually unlimited power

True, but it is not only about the power itself but also how the tool presents itself. I cannot open orgmode without being exposed to the technical underpinnings as well as my shortcomings in mastering them, it is easy to be frustrated although I have learned to make orgmode do what much of what I need.

But whilst orgmode often feels like a punch in the face, Silverbullet presents itself in a more pleasant disguise (to me). I can look at just the text without having to hope that this beast will not turn against me the next instant. I can concentrate on my writing in a way in SB that I cannot in many other similarly capable tools. Silverbullet (to me) strikes a balance between simplicity and power that is reassuring (I can probably make it do what I want, with a little help from my friends perhaps) rather than unnecessarily frustrating or too limiting.
Also, I like the fact that Silverbullet feels light. Very subjective, but nonetheless important to me.

With regard to my other questions, I have in the meantime set up my own server and got Silverbullet up and running there. I will ask more to the point questions about how to improve certain aspects of my experience later. However, I think I have learned enough to commit to SB more fully and see how it fares.
Thanks again!