I agree the potential is immense, though even as it stands it is quite unique in its aggregation of features. We will see. It’s has some influential backers, financially, influencers, and power users - curious.
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Totally agree — Roam’s ideas introduce a whole new concept layer on note-taking which is fantastic. Now we have other softwares like Obsidian who are taking on the challenge, too, so there will be lots of options in the space.
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Notion is planning something along those lines for the end of the year. Workflowy has bidirectional links in development. As mentioned a few weeks ago in this thread Bear has scripts allowing for backlinking today, and TiddlyWiki has a Roam variant that duplicates Roam’s behavior. And there are works in beta like NoteGraph and The Brane. Given the doubling-down on Roam’s management promoting and marketing its self-described ‘cult’ it’d better be prepared for the near future.
I’m reminded of Steve Jobs in 2011 buyout discussions with Dropbox, warning them that they had “a feature, not a product”, something that took about eight years to be proven mainly be true as cloud storage popped everywhere and in countless products. Roam has one very nice feature, wrapped in a service of unknown trustworthiness, and volatile stewardship, while that one feature is being replicated or iterated on by lots of competitors, some larger and more established, some more experienced, some more nimble.
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I agree generally with your comments. But I don’t agree that is has “one” very nice feature. Backlinks are foundational, but not the important feature - despite the narrative. As you say, and others in this thread, backlinks could reasonably be replicated in competitors - there are already many. Its the queries, extensive transclusion, filters, etc that are the “nice” features that differentiate it though. Certainly workflowy, dynalist, and notion or the brain have the ability to capture Roam’s magic - only time will tell. Until Obsidian or the others can do these more higher-level features, Roam will be out on its own. Whether that is a good thing or bad thing, only the future will tell.
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There are amazing and mature scripts which replicate that feature in DEVONthink automatically upon opening documents. Haven’t played with them yet, but they seem solid (using custom metadata).
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What feature? (Just for clarity) My previous tool for thinking was DEVONthink - for the last 3 years or so. In this thread some great use-cases/scripts could have worked very well for me in the past. Wish I would have known about them then. Roam, like any other hot tool will need to compete as the bandwagon begins to follow/traverse in Roam’s direction. The outliner space I think (as well as Notion since it is built on blocks as well) is really going to change in the coming months/years.
Well who says software is not a sporting event? I have not seen this much excitement since the Word Processor wars decades ago. My money is on Obsidian because it is the same software team as Dynalist so they have a few years of experience. I expect to see many of the features from Dynalist be incorporated into Obsidian and the software team there is rolling out revisions like no tomorrow.
The founders of Obsidian are directly opposite the mindset of the founder of Roam Research. My gut feeling is that Roam is intent on building something to scale big and fast for an eventual acquisition by one of the big four whereas Obsidian seems to want to grow its customer base and form a community. But that is my humble opinion. In any event, it will be an interesting show.
But shout out needs to go to @bowline for such elegant pose… “Volatile Stewardship” I have to put that one in my Obsidian notes 
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What feature?
Back links (several implémentations of that on the forums).
MPU discussions can be very meta and enlightening - a Robust Braintrust (if I am trying to channel my @bowline and @D_Rehak!-).
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I feel the same way.
(BTW, it does not support transclusion in any shape or form).
Should you feel inclined to give it a try…
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Not now. DT is still my file repository, but no longer my PKM system. Too rigid in comparison to Roam. Roam is agile and flexible in how I think. And transclusion is the feature I need the most. I was just suggesting when DT was my primary, I wish I would have known then. I would have had a much easier time.
Not really “new”. Ted Nelson was writing about the information-theoretical concepts underlying Roam several decades ago, as were others. Obviously the slip-box methods go back farther – or centuries. The technology to build Roam has been around quite a while – embedded in a lot of what the internet does. Discourse itself, for example, has its own forms of “transclusion”, suggests links, etc.
Maybe “new” in the sense of “hello, here’s an interesting new piece of consumer software”, perhaps? Combined with savvy marketing and trolling?
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Right - I was aware of this, but Roam added it in a layer that is accessible and makes sense in a personal note context. That’s more what I was referring to 
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Agreed. Not to mention that Connected Text does pretty much everything Roam does.
Except for cult part.
And the trolling.
And that part about not being able to keep your files offline.
And that other about charging a subscription…
@Robertson.historian, one of my main complaints about Roam is how slow it is. I find it sufferable the experience of outlining something using it. Especially in comparison with softwares such as OmniOutliner and Outlinely.
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Slow in what aspect might I ask. Once loaded (which is slow) it works rapidly for me - it is a web service though, so not as snappy as native. But if OmniOutliner does it for ya, I don’t think Roam is worth it for you.
Can some share or point to an example use case for Roam … for example, how are teachers/educators using it ?
I can’t speak for teachers or educators, but one cool use for me is building a cross-reference library of all my sermon notes. I recorded a quick video awhile back about how I do it: https://v.usetapes.com/g7QXJ8sEUq
Still building this out, but the more I put into Roam the more useful it becomes.
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I will have an article soon that will outline how I use it as a teacher on the front and back-end.
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This is great. Thanks
Looking forward to this !