SeaGL condemns racism in all its forms, systemic, personal, and otherwise. The organizers of SeaGL recognize the ongoing harm being done to the Black community and seek to support Black members of our community directly. To that end, we have allotted honoraria for all Black speakers at SeaGL 2020. We are also looking into the possibility of scholarships or other monetary support mechanisms for Black members of the FLOSS world. We are currently strategizing how best to support and amplify our sister technical organizations who focus on non-white members of our community — we welcome your suggestions of organizations to partner with and support!
In addition, we strive to not only make our community inclusive, but also to enforce BETTER behavior from our white community members. None of us are free from blame, including the nearly all-white organizing staff, and we are redoubling our efforts to combat institutional racism in the tech industry. Our goal is for SeaGL to be an equitable conference by seeking out BIPOC voices, and supporting the Black FLOSS community in every way we can.
Furthermore, we condemn in the strongest of terms, the actions of the Seattle Police Department’s unprovoked violence against the people of Seattle, particularly versus its Black community. We wholeheartedly support the collaborative spirit of the Capitol Hill protests. Our priority has always been to underserved and underprivileged communities, and we want to ensure that for anyone attending SeaGL, or participating in SeaGL-adjacent activities, there is agreement on this point. We recognize that all actions are political, and we will continue to stand by our Code of Conduct in our continuing effort to make SeaGL as free from racism as possible.
Thank you,
SeaGL Staff
We need YOU! To help us select keynoters for SeaGL 2020! Please use our form to nominate a keynote speaker. We are looking for open source community members with experiences and stories to share. We are, as always, looking for new candidates who have not keynoted before, who have a different perspective to share. Our community is vast, therefore our keynotes must represent our community.
Submissions are anonymous and you can fill in the (very short) form for as many wonderful humans as you’d like to nominate, one form per nomination. This form will be open til May 24, 2020.
So, please, share
- your pie in the sky picks
- your mentor from your local user group
- someone who has advocated for open source outside of traditional tech
- someone who has worked on bringing open source to traditionally proprietary-only models
- someone who has challenged social norms in open source
- someone who has lifted others up who have challenged those norms
- your tinker friend
- your friend known for
shitposting clever tweeting
- someone in your office who recently showed you a shortcut through your favorite tools
And anyone else you think would make a terrific guest of honor at our community-focused open source conference! You can let us know right here. SeaGL will take place virtually and all over the world, November 13 & 14 2020.
tl;dr
- SeaGL will be virtual
- November 13-14, 2020
- Volunteer at volunteer@seagl.org
We have made the exciting decision to take SeaGL entirely virtual. We are happy to follow in the footsteps of other terrific open source conferences who also want to keep our communities together during this time. The coronavirus has outlasted early predictions, so we are taking steps to ensure the longevity of SeaGL as a community in the event that we are still (or again) under shelter-in-place orders or need to avoid gatherings.
The committees are in deep discussion as to what this means, and we are throwing everything on the table to consider how to truly make this a community event for our speakers, attendees, volunteers, as well as the student walk-ins we welcome from Seattle Central College, our generous physical host. We discussed planning a hybrid event, but landed on full-virtual as that will be the easiest to plan for and predict, particularly for our speakers and keynotes who will know exactly the format they’ll be presenting in when they submit their talk. We want folks to have as much preparation and information as we possibly can offer, and that meant cementing this critical detail.
So! We are so excited to pilot a great virtual event that is community-driven, and we are so excited to have you along for the ride! We’re all new to this, but we really feel like SeaGL is the perfect conference for this adaptation - we’re already free, and the conference is now in its eighth year. Our legacy and our community are what we are. Keep your ears open and watch the twitter at @SeaGL for more info as we get closer to the date, which remains November 13-14, 2020. If you have anything you’d like to share, you can tweet at us up there or message us on IRC at #seagl on freenode, and info@seagl.org.
Also, we are looking for volunteers! Most immediately, we are looking for folks for the Program committee - you’ll be joining a fairly well-oiled machine, given discrete tasks, and get a view of how we run the program. We’re also looking for a dedicated social media human, as getting the word out will be more important than ever, and some dedication on this role will make a wonderful difference. We’ll also need room moderators for talks, and we want to hear your dreams for making an amazing virtual event. Please email us at volunteer@seagl.org to get started, whether for moderation, program, or general volunteer.
So watch this space as always, and until then, please take care of each other, check in, safely, with your neighbors, drink lots of water, and check if your favorite restaurant will do a curbside pickup!
Hi everyone, we’d like to give an estimation of what comes for SeaGL during the global pandemic. We are keeping a close eye on it and it may come to pass that we’ll have to postpone or cancel SeaGL 2020, as so many conferences, like our sister conference Linux Fest Northwest, have had to do.
We will give several months’ notice in the event we have to cancel.
However, we’re not ready to make that call yet. We will have more details soon, and we’re also working on a potential virtual solution in the event that it’s not safe to congregate (as it is unsafe to do so now, 20 March). In short, we’re working on an alternate plan, potentially multiple alternate plans. We’ll have more plans as the situation unfolds.
Until then, please take care of each other, check in, safely, with your neighbors, drink lots of water, and check if your favorite restaurant will do a curbside pickup!