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!
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!
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
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.