November 3rd & 4th, 2023
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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 at University of Washington 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 will be at UW Seattle
June 28, 2023

We are excited to announce that our venue contract has been finalized and we are well into planning the details for this year’s SeaGL conference experience!

Our return to in-person will be taking place at a new venue on the University of Washington Seattle campus in the HUB (Husky Union Building). Within the HUB, we will have an expo hall and lounge space, along with dedicated presentation rooms. This means that there will be different talks, tracks, and experiences to choose from depending on your interests!

As usual, we’re planning a variety of social events, organized and otherwise, to supplement the programming. These include a career expo, tea swap (TeaGL), and more. We’ll also be hosting a Saturday evening participant party (off-site venue TBD) for more socializing once conference presentations are complete.

Travel and wayfinding details about the UW Seattle campus can be found here:

The HUB has the following accessibility and diversity features. If there are additional ones that are important to you, please suggest them in this form and we will see if accommodations can be made:

  • ADA ramps and elevators throughout the building
  • single stall, all gender, family-friendly, and disability accessible restroom on the 3rd floor
  • baby changing and lactation stations

While this year’s event will be in-person, presentations will be streamed and we will strive to include hybrid components for social events so you will also be able to attend online. Please note that the Code of Conduct is enforced in all conference spaces and if you are attending in-person, so is the Health and Safety Policy.

We hope you will join us in November one way or the other!


SeaGL 2023 CfP Extended
June 01, 2023

Thanks to all who have submitted to our Call for Proposals so far!

This year, as we return to in-person activities, we experimented with moving up the selection period. However, due to delays in advertising this change and the release of our Health and Safety Policy, we’ve decided to extend the CfP.

Submissions will now be accepted until Friday, June 30 at 11:59 PT! So head to our talk submission portal, OSEM and submit today!

Hopefully this will give previous speakers enough time to put something in and lead to a more diverse selection of content for our reviewers to sift through.

Need some suggestions on what to submit? Check our our blog post outlining this year’s categories and the initial Call for Proposals post.

Have any questions about your submission or want to volunteer with the conference? You can contact us via email at program@seagl.org, Mastodon, or Matrix.

Looking forward to seeing many of you this fall in Seattle or virtually world-wide!


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 Friday June 30, 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;
  • submit a pre-recorded video to us by October 1st, and optionally be available after your presentation for live Q&A;
  • or be available to present via live-streaming on November 3rd and 4th, with a required technical check a week before.

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)
  • Atinuke ‘Bami’ Kayode
  • Monica Ayhens-Madon

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.


Older News

Contact

Chat

Please join us in Matrix or IRC.

Social Media

Mastodon | Pixelfed | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

An overview of SeaGL’s social media activity is available in #social-media:seagl.org.

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