Welcome to the 2023 SeaGL Call For Proposals! We’re always looking for new perspectives, and this year, we want to hear from you. Our Call for Papers closes on Wednesday May 31, 2023.
How to submit
Go to our talk submission portal, OSEM, and create an account or log in with your account from previous years. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click Submit your proposal now.
Fill in your talk title and abstract, without including biographical information. When you have submitted, you will be taken to a page called Proposals for SeaGL 2023, with a list of your talks. Click on the Edit button, and add your bio, talk category, and difficulty, then click the Update proposal button to save the details.
What we’re looking for
This year, we’re accepting both 20-minute and 50-minute talks from in-person and virtual presenters. We welcome uncommonly heard perspectives, and like to watch presenters get out of their comfort zone to apply lessons across technical disciplines. We also want to see submissions from first-time speakers and members of under-represented groups in tech.
For more information on talk topics and structure, go here.
What we expect from speakers
The SeaGL Code of Conduct applies to staff, presenters, volunteers, attendees, and sponsors alike. The content of your presentation, and your behaviour at the conference, must abide by the Code of Conduct.
To present at SeaGL, you’ll need to be able to do one of the following:
- be in Seattle on November 3rd or 4th to present live
- or submit a pre-recorded video to us by October 1st
Office Hours
SeaGL pioneered the idea of CfP Office Hours, so stay tuned for details. If you need help in the meantime, please email us at cfp-help@seagl.org, or join the General Discussion room in SeaGL’s Matrix channel.
Who we are
The Program Committee is the group responsible for selecting and scheduling all of the great talks you enjoy at SeaGL. This year, the Program Committee consists of:
- Dawn Cooper (chair)
- Ruth Ikegah
We operate using the SeaGL Program Committee Code of Practice.
If you need help, or want to volunteer with the Program Committee, you can contact us via email at program@seagl.org, Mastodon, or Matrix
If you’re thinking of submitting to SeaGL 2023, you’ve come to the right place to learn more! For details on how to submit, go here.
Talk Categories
We’re looking for talks related to open-source which fall broadly into the ten categories below. We’ve added examples of past talks for each to give you an idea of what we might be looking for.
If you have a great idea for a talk on open-source which doesn’t fit into these categories, then submit it under ‘Everything Else’.
- Community and Culture: Open-source hardware and software wouldn’t exist without the communities that build and maintain it. This category covers the open-source community and tech communities in general, as well as the cultural aspects of working with technology.
- Education: This category covers both the use of open-source software in education and technical education in general, from elementary school to university.
- Hardware: This category is for adventures in open-source hardware, whether it be about building your own or developing on top of projects created by others.
- Languages and Tools: This category is all about the languages and tools that we use in our day-to-day work. It covers everything from shell scripting to open-source languages such as Rust and Python, as well as tools built for the open-source ecosystem.
- Machine Learning and Big Data: Data isn’t just the domain of large tech companies. From open-source tools for machine learning to data management strategies, this category covers everything related to machine learning and big data.
- Open Source Careers: If you want to talk about building a career in open-source technology, or leveraging your experience with FLOSS communities in a work context, you’ve come to the right place. We welcome discussions on how FLOSS can benefit everyone from a career point of view.
- Performance Art: This category encompasses both performance art about the tech community, and art projects which are supported by open-source software. From stand-up comedy to generative art to knitting with software, we would love to see what you can come up with!
- Security and Privacy: Open-source communities have been at the forefront of security and privacy for many years. As well as securing your tech stack, talks in this category will look at the human side of security, and the privacy impacts of today’s tech ecosystem.
- Systems and Platforms: How does old-school systems administration fit into the IT industry of today? What do we need to do to run platform teams using open-source software? This category covers everything related to the systems and platforms on which we build, from systems architecture to DevOps to CI/CD.
- Everything Else: Have a great talk that doesn’t fit these categories? Submit it here!
What we are and aren’t looking for
SeaGL is a community-focused Free/Libre/Open-Source annual event in Seattle. Since 2020, we also broadcast all over the world virtually! We’re an independent bunch, but we still like to take care of each other.
We like to see specific introductions to open-source software, hardware, and tools, as well as technical deep-dives. Outside of technical talks, we welcome talks on FLOSS alternatives to big tech companies’ products, hacking for good, personal security and privacy, and open-source in non-tech domains such as education and art.
We are not looking for sponsored talks; you can take a look at our Sponsorship Prospectus for details on how to reach our attendees in other ways. As a small community event, our attendees tend to be university students, open source hobbyists and engineers, security professionals, technical writers, and more, skewing toward community rather than a corporate feel.
After migrating south for a few months of winter, the SeaGL flock is back together!
We’ve just wrapped up our first all hands kickoff meeting, meaning that the conference organizing season is officially here. But if you missed it, fear not - we’re experimenting with two all hands meetings this year to better accommodate people’s schedules, so you’ll have another opportunity this Friday, February 24th, at 11 AM Pacific Time! We’ll be meeting every other week in the future so if you can’t make the Friday time, that’s totally OK too.
We’re always looking for more volunteers to staff conference committees, especially since SeaGL is back in person this year, with the option to attend remotely for those who can’t make it! Everyone on our all-volunteer staff is super excited to see everyone in Seattle again, but we know it’ll be a lot of work so if any of the committees listed on our Get Involved page interests you - or if none of them do, but you’re still interested in contributing - please reach out to participate@seagl.org or get in touch with us via Matrix or IRC, both of which are linked from the Get Involved page. We’d be thrilled to have you on the team with us.
And lastly, if you missed the memo last November, the dates for this year’s conference are November 3rd and 4th. Go double-check that it’s on your calendar - we can’t wait to hang out with the SeaGL flock again. We’ve gone too long without photos of people with Patch!
SeaGL 2022 marked off our tenth year running this big and little F free conference. Thanks to all who helped make it a reality!
I’d like to extend a special thanks to our keynotes and other presenters for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Also a hearty thanks to our attendees old and new alike who took a moment to expand the free software community. And of course thanks goes to our sponsors (especially Schedules Direct and Extra Hop who have been with us all ten years!) for keeping on the lights. Finally, and absolutely not least of all, thanks to the volunteer staff who poured their hearts (and hours) into organizing SeaGL!
Looking forward, please save the date for SeaGL 2023: November 3rd and 4th. We are currently planning on gathering in-person in Seattle. However, to keep those who aren’t up for such a flight in the flock, we will be hosting this as a hybrid event. We’ll need to bolster our staff numbers during this transition, so please get involved and tell your friends!
Until then, please enjoy the video archive of past SeaGL presentations. Patch heard a rumor that the 2022 videos are already available…