November 3rd & 4th, 2023
Love SeaGL and want to help out? Get Involved

About

Founded in 2013, SeaGL (the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference) is a free—as in freedom and tea—grassroots technical summit dedicated to spreading awareness and knowledge about free / libre / open source software, hardware, and culture.

SeaGL strives to be welcoming, enjoyable, and informative for professional technologists, newcomers, enthusiasts, and all other users of free software, regardless of their background knowledge; providing a space to bridge these experiences and strengthen the free software movement through mentorship, collaboration, and community.

When & where

November 3rd & 4th, 2023, in-person and online

Attend

SeaGL is free to attend, and you do not need to register—just show up!

You may attend SeaGL without identifying yourself, and you are encouraged to do so to protect your privacy.

All attendees must abide by the Code of Conduct, and if participating in-person, the Health and Safety Policy.

Stay informed

Sign up for our low-traffic announcement mailing list or subscribe to our RSS news feed.

SeaGL 2023 Call For Proposals
March 08, 2023

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


SeaGL 2023 Call For Proposals: What we want
March 08, 2023

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’.

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.


SeaGL 2023 kicks off!
February 20, 2023

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!


Thank you for ten years of SeaGL!
December 09, 2022

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…


Older News

Contact

Chat

Please join us in Matrix or IRC.

Social Media

Mastodon | Pixelfed | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Email

participate@seagl.org | press@seagl.org
or join the announcement mailing list.

Exhibitors

We will have a virtual expo hall available at SeaGL 2022. Free/libre/open-source software/hardware projects and non-profit organizations may request gratis space. There are several paid sponsorship levels and add-ons for other entities. If your group would like to exhibit at SeaGL, please review our Partnership/Sponsor Prospectus or send an email to sponsor@seagl.org for more information.

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.

Our fiscal sponsor, Open Source Initiative, set up a donation page enabling you to support SeaGL. These contributions may be tax deductible as OSI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Thank you for your support!

Donate to SeaGL