As we shake off the winter chill and begin organizing this year’s conference, we wanted to share some things with the community.
New Theme
We’re excited to announce the theme for the 13th annual SeaGL: freedom is in the cards
Fliers Fly
The newest SeaGL handbill design has dropped and can be found here! You’re welcome and encouraged to share it around, whether in the printed or posted form. And keep an eye out at SCaLE (the Southern California Linux Expo), hosted this weekend in Pasadena, for the first in-person batch!
Newest Social Stand
It has been great to see so many people leaving walled garden social media networks lately! While we will continue to cross-post in an effort to reach those who are left, we’ve added a new network to our quiver: Bluesky
This network has grown quite a bit with the recent migration. It is built on top of the AT Protocol, an open source, open standard.
Our website will still be the primary place to look for all things SeaGL related, but we hope to keep the various social media profiles up-to-date. Please follow us and share what you see!
Keynote Nominations
One of the many things that sets SeaGL apart from other conferences is that the community helps us select our keynote speakers. In prior years we’ve asked for suggestions over a two-week period, but moving forward we’ll keep the form open year-round.
Nominees need not have prior keynote experience; we are interested in both new and veteran presenters. In fact, since 2018, we’ve been reserving half of our keynote slots to amplify the voices of speakers who may be presenting on the main stage for the first time.
While you are welcome to nominate yourself, we encourage you to take some time to think about people you have seen present, who you think have an important message to share. If they have been doing exciting work in the Free / Libre / Open (FLO) community, we want to know about them!
We challenge you to think about people who:
- Have done work to empower others and challenge social norms
- You go out of your way to read all of their Open Source posts on social media
- Might only have a small following, but are doing amazing work in their own little corner
- Are always tinkering with new and exciting projects that inspire others to try new things
- Are slowly, but steadily, working to make the FLO community and world a better place, for everyone
Submissions are anonymous and the form is open, so nominate someone today!
Volunteering
As always, we want to remind folks that SeaGL is an all-volunteer effort. Visit the get involved page for more details about how you can help!
As we look back on SeaGL 2024, we want to send a heart-felt thank you to the speakers, attendees, sponsors, and volunteers for making our 12th SeaGL such a success 🎉! We hope you had an opportunity to listen to some great talks and chat with other open minded folks. Here’s to continuing to ruffle some feathers and supporting a more free technological world in 2025!
Speaking of 2025, we have confirmed our dates and want to share them with you all! Please mark your calendars for SeaGL on November 7th and 8th. We are returning to the University of Washington for a third year in rainy, and proud of it, Seattle. And if you’re refraining from migration, we plan to keep you connected by live streaming our gathering as in past few years.
We also wanted to let you know that the A/V & DevOps team members are working hard to publish recordings on our archive and appreciate your patience. If you have opinions and would like to shape SeaGL for the better, we would love to have you join us! Please consider becoming a volunteer!
Cheers ✨ to all who have contributed to such a creative and inclusive community! We are looking forward celebrating the spooky thirteenth event with you at the beginning of November this year!
It is with great pleasure that we present the schedule for our 12th instance of SeaGL (the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference).
The conference starts on Friday, November 8th at 9am PST and will run through Saturday, November 9th at 7pm PST. We have four keynotes, two opening on Friday and two closing on Saturday. We will also have three tracks running concurrently each day.
The full schedule can be found here: https://pretalx.seagl.org/2024/schedule/
Some highlights of the year
Opening keynotes on Friday, November 8th:
Closing keynotes on Saturday, November 9th:
Performance events:
Special events:
- Relax with a cuppa delicious, and not so common tea, each afternoon at TeaGL
- Friday, 3:30pm to 4:30pm
- Saturday, 3:00pm to 4:00pm
- Enjoy an evening of post-conference socializing
- Saturday, 5:20pm to 7:00pm
- Give your public speaking skills a shot with presentation roulette
- Saturday, 5:30pm to 6:30pm
The schedule is made possible by the work of our volunteer Programming & Flow Commitee. If you are intereseted in contributing or joining this, or another committee, do not hesitate to get involved.
We look forward to seeing you all next month!
Our twelfth annual conference is just a few weeks away! This year, we are continuing with the hybrid in-person/virtual format, offering remote participation options throughout the event.
Last year, we reached out to our community through the post, IDEA Sharing at SeaGL, seeking insights on how to make our event more inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible (IDEA). We extend our heartfelt thanks to all who responded, participated, and contributed to making the conference more welcoming to everyone.
One significant change we have made this year is the promotion of pronoun visibility within our community. We have incorporated a pronoun field into our speaker proposals, which has been well-received. From the responses we discovered, 12.5% of our speakers identify as they/them, 15% as she/her, 37.5% as he/him and 35% preferred not to disclose. This is a small but meaningful step toward ensuring that all voices are heard and respected.
| Pronoun |
they/them |
she/her |
he/him |
prefer not to say |
| Percent |
12.5 % |
15% |
37.5% |
35% |
We recognize that fostering an inclusive environment is an ongoing process. Your feedback is important in helping us make continuous improvements. If you have suggestions on how we can further enhance inclusivity and accessibility, especially for underrepresented groups, we encourage you to share your suggestions in our anonymous feedback form. If you would like to discuss your feedback in more detail, there is an option to provide your contact information, and we would be happy to follow up with you.
Our goal is to make this event not only accommodating for those already established in the tech community, but to also welcome and provide space for those individuals who feel they are on the outside looking in. If you know someone who could benefit from attending or participating, we encourage you to share this opportunity with them. Personal invitations often have a profound impact, and can reach a wider audience.
Some ways to get involved include:
- Attend the conference on November 8th and 9th, either in-person or remotely.
- Share the event with your networks and encourage others to participate.
- Volunteer to help shape the event and its programming by signing up at https://seagl.org/get_involved.
For those attending in person, please be advised that our Code of Conduct and Health & Safety Policy will be in effect to ensure a safe environment for all.
Last but certainly not least, cheers to Google for joining our IDEA sponsors this year, we’re so grateful for your support!
Regards,
The SeaGL 2024 IDEA committee