The 2018 SeaGL CFP is open for business!
June 04, 2018
Calling all speakers or speakers-to-be! Our 2018 Call for Proposals is open!
We are currently doing weekly proposal review/feedback sessions as well as email proposal review and feedback. Please bring us your talk ideas and proposals and we’ll help you polish them before you submit them to the CFP. See the Help and mentoring for your proposals section for more information.
SeaGL is dedicated to supporting newer speakers. We welcome speakers of all backgrounds and levels of experience – even if you’ve never spoken at a technical conference. If you’re excited about Free/Libre/Open technologies or communities, then we want to hear from you!
Because we’re a community-focused event based in Seattle, we’re particularly interested in hearing from new and experienced speakers from the Seattle and Pacific Northwest region, but we welcome proposals from anyone no matter where you’re based.
Here’s what we cover in this CFP announcement. We know it’s rather a lot, so you can click to jump to the section you need (but we encourage you to read it all through at least once).
- CFP dates
- Audience profile
- Talk formats
- Talk categories (aka Tracks)
- Topic ideas
- PLEASE don’t do this…
- Proposal and public speaking resources
- Help and mentoring for your proposals
- Speaker travel support
- Code of Conduct
- Code of Practice
- Click here to propose a talk
CFP dates
- CFP Opens: June 4th, 2018
- CFP Closes: July 29th, 2018 - Midnight PDT
- Speaker Notifications: September 3rd, 2018
- Schedule Published: September 17th, 2018
- SeaGL!: November 9-10, 2018
Audience profile
SeaGL is honored to be hosted by Seattle Central College. Because our event occurs partly during their school week, we have not one but two audiences. Both audiences are present both days of the event, but each day has a larger proportion of one type of audience member:
- Friday: School is in session on this day, so many of our attendees are community college students. We try to schedule more “Free/open source 101” type talks on this day to help the students get a firm grounding in FOSS and its technologies.
- Saturday: Weekend! We have fewer students on this day and more professionals and hobbyists. This audience is more familiar with technology in general and often is looking for more advanced talks or introductory talks on more advanced topics.
Talk formats
Like last year, in 2018 SeaGL is looking for talks in two formats:
- 20 minutes: Introduce the audience to a new technology, concept, or just recap an older idea which you think is really neat.
- 50 minutes: Go more in depth! Do a demo! This is your chance to really educate the audience about something you enjoy.
Both of these time slots include the Q&A time. Please time your presentations accordingly. We suggest aiming for a 15 minute presentation for the 20 minute time slot and for 40-45 minutes for the 50 minute time slot, but as the speaker the final presentation time is up to you (as long as you don’t exceed your time slot).
We do not have workshop (60+ minute) slots available at SeaGL and will not be opening any. Please do not propose talks that cannot be presented well within the two time slot options above.
Talk categories (aka Tracks)
SeaGL doesn’t do “tracks” like many other conferences do, but we do use tracks to make sure we have a nice balance of subjects covered during the event. Think of them more like categories than tracks in the traditional tech conference sense. This year you can select from one of the following categories when creating your proposal:
- Data/AI/ML
- Design/UI/UX/Accessibility
- Documentation
- Education
- Hardware/IoT
- Legal/Licensing
- People
- Programming
- Security/InfoSec
- Something different
- Systems/Ops
Don’t worry if your talk isn’t a snug fit with any of these categories. It’s not a problem and we don’t mind at all. Just pick the one that’s the closest fit, and if nothing else please do use the Something different category.
Topic ideas
Not sure what to propose? Here are some ideas!
- How to get involved in free and open source software
- DevOps, system administration, infrastructure, CI/CD
- Career tips and strategies
- Web development tools and techniques
- Policy and licensing affecting free and open source software use or development
- Hardware, embedded Linux, or the Internet of Things
- The cloud and other distributed services
- Building free and open source communities
- Using free software at home, work, or school
- Security and privacy online
- Writing testable code, and testing in general
- Effective documentation patterns and strategies
- Free and open software on non-GNU/Linux platforms (Windows, macOS)
- Anything else that you think would be interesting to new or seasoned Free/Libre/Open source fans!
PLEASE don’t do this…
Our conference software doesn’t currently support concealed reviews (where the reviewers can’t see who proposed a talk), but we do the best we can to review everything concealed anyway.
Because of that, DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME IN YOUR ABSTRACT.
Your name is for your bio, not for your abstract. If you include your name in your abstract, you are at risk of having your proposal voted down and not accepted.
We really can’t stress this enough. Don’t do this. Really.
Proposal and public speaking resources
Never presented at a conference or meetup before? Presented but still not feeling confident? It’s OK, even the most experienced conference presenters aren’t necessarily confident at this stuff.
The Public_Speaking repository has collected a lot of resources to help you level up in your conference presenting.
Pay particular attention to the Proposing talks section of this page. Follow these tips and your talk proposals will stand a better chance of being selected.
PLEASE NOTE: Whether your talk is accepted or not often doesn’t have as much to do with how great your proposal is as it does with how many speaking slots the conference has available and the balance of the program the organisers need to craft. It’s nothing personal: we just don’t have enough time to accept all the great talk proposals we receive.
Don’t let that stop you from proposing! You can’t win a race you don’t even run, so click here to propose a talk.
Help and mentoring for your proposals
Want to propose a talk but want feedback on your idea, proposal wording, talk title or just on how to deal with nerves? The speaker committee is running CFP office hours during the CFP. We’ll do everything possible to help you be successful with your proposal and presenatation. Office hour times:
- 12-1 PM Pacific Time, every Thursday in July until July 29th (when is that in my local time zone?)
All office hours are held in the #seagl IRC channel on Freenode IRC. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with IRC. Just click here for the webchat, choose a nickname, and you’re good to go!
If you’d like assistance outside of the office hours, please email us at cfp-help@seagl.org. We welcome all questions that arrive between June 4th and July 29th.
Speaker travel support
As SeaGL is a free to attend community-oriented and -organized conference, we regret that we are unable to help with the cost of travel and accommodation for speakers at this time.
Code of Conduct
All speakers and attendees of SeaGL must agree and adhere to the Code of Conduct for the safety and enjoyment of all organizers, volunteers, speakers, and attendees. We ask that all prospective speakers review and confirm their willingness to abide by the Code of Conduct terms and expectations when interacting within SeaGL community spaces.
Code of Practice
All members of the SeaGL Program Committee have agreed to operate according to our Code of Practice.
No, really, click here to propose a talk. Please. We want to hear from you!
Our 2018 Keynoters
May 28, 2018
Did you miss the announcements of our four keynote speakers for 2018? We’re very excited and honored that these folks accepted our invitation! Click on each one below to learn more about them:
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We at SeaGL believe in sharing and openness. In that spirit, we’ve posted our keynote selection process. Learn all about how our community helped choose our keynote speakers this year.
Interested in being a part of SeaGL 2018? Our CFP opens a week from today on June 4th. If you’d like to volunteer, please drop us a line at participate@seagl.org. We can’t wait to see you in November!
2018 Keynote Announcement: Stephen Walli
May 04, 2018
Our final keynote announcement for 2018 is Stephen Walli!
Stephen is a principal program manager working in the Azure engineering team at Microsoft. Prior to that, he was a Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Stephen has been a technical executive, a founder, a writer, a systems developer, a software construction geek, and a standards diplomat. He has worked in the IT industry since 1980 as both customer and vendor, working with open source for 25 years. He blogs about open source and software business at Once More unto the Breach, opensource.com, and on Medium.
That’s four out of four 2018 keynoters now revealed. We’re thrilled to host these brilliant people and honoured that they agreed to present. Please join us on November 9-10 and hear for yourself what they have to say!
2018 Keynote Announcement: Tameika Reed
May 03, 2018
And now, for the third of four 2018 keynote announcements, we present Tameika Reed!
Tameika founded Women In Linux out of frustration that there were no other women or women of color represented at the workplace or tech events. Tameika is a self-taught Linux Administrator since 2000. She has provided countless of hours to helping others get started in Linux. She has spoken at conferences such as OSCON on Diversity in Education, Women In Linux Conference on various topics, and LISA on a Plenary Panel: “Scaling Talent: Attracting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce”. Since the the creation of Women In Linux, Tameika has inspired countless of women, men, and children to succeed in tech as well as in their perspective fields. She continues to explore outside the norm of just Linux by introducing Hyperledger, Kubernetes, Microservices, and High Performance Computing.
Our keynotes are nearly all revealed. One announcement remains. Come back tomorrow to learn who it is!
Older News
About
The 2018 Seattle GNU/Linux Conference is scheduled for November 9th and 10th at Seattle Central College (Maps). 9am-5:30pm both days.
SeaGL is a grassroots technical conference dedicated to spreading awareness and knowledge about the GNU/Linux community and free/libre/open-source software/hardware. Our goal for SeaGL is to produce an event which is as enjoyable and informative for those who spend their days maintaining hundreds of servers as it is for a student who has only just started exploring technology options. SeaGL's first year was 2013. The SeaGL web site is built with Jekyll and we use OSEM for event management.
The cost of attendance is free.
Attendee Registration will not require the use of non-free software.
You may attend SeaGL without identifying yourself, and you are encouraged to do so to protect your privacy.
Contact
IRC
Social Media
Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | YouTube
participate@seagl.org | press@seagl.org
or join the announcement mailing list.
Exhibitors
We will have a small hall available for exhibitors. Free tables will be available for free/libre/open-source software/hardware and non-profit organizations, and there are several sponsorship levels for everyone else. If your organization would like an exhibit table at SeaGL, please send an email to sponsor@seagl.org for our vendor prospectus.
Exhibitor space is limited, please contact us right away if you are interested in a table.
Sponsorship
We can't do what we need to do without the support of the community. If you would like to offer financial support but don't need an exhibit table, please send an email to sponsor@seagl.org.
Donate now
Our fiscal sponsor, Free Software Foundation, set up a donation page to support SeaGL. It accepts credit card or PayPal and provides instructions for donating via check or Bitcoin. Thank you for your support!
SeaGL is dedicated to a harassment-free conference experience for
everyone.
Our code of conduct can be found
here