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The CFP is closed. Long live the CFP!

Thank you, everyone, for participating in and sharing our CFP. It closed this past Monday, which means now is a good time for an update. So, how have we done so far this year?

CFP by the numbers

This year we received a grand total of 138 proposals. This is slightly fewer than last year’s 149, but we suspect that what we’ve lost in quantity we’re making up in quality.

We tried something new in 2017: both 50 and 20 minute time slots. This seems to have been a good idea, since 36 of the 138 proposals (26 percent) are the shorter 20 minute format. This leads to some really interesting possibilities for scheduling, but of course it will depend on which talks our reviewers select.

As far as topics, we have a nice distribution in the proposals:

  • Systems/Ops: 29
  • Programming: 24
  • Something different: 22
  • People: 20
  • Security/InfoSec: 18
  • Hardware/IoT: 7
  • Documentation: 6
  • Data/AI/ML: 5
  • Education: 4
  • Design/UI/UX/Accessibility: 1

It’s disappointing that we received so few proposals on Design/UI/UX/Accessibility, but that just shows where we can spend more effort in outreach next year. That Something different category is very exciting though. We can’t wait to see what sort of treasures are hidden in there.

This year for the first time the CFP form included checkboxes for whether the proposer is a first time speaker or self-identifies as a member of a group under-represented in tech. Unfortunately (due to a bug) that data wasn’t collected despite being on the form, so this is another place where we can do better next year.

Overall though, we’re really pleased with how the CFP went and how it ended. So far 2017 is a success!

So what’s next?

Now what? Well, for starters we’re starting to work with our reviewers to organise that process. Next week we start reviewing talks and… Wait, this is probably easier if I just give you a timeline:

  • August 6th: CFP closes (done!)
  • August 14-ish: Reviewers start voting on proposals
  • August 14 (or before): Schedule talk review call
  • August sometime: Have talk review call with reviewers
  • August 28th: Speaker notifications
  • September 4th: Schedule published

So if you’re waiting to hear back about your proposal: hang tight. You should hear back from us by the end of the month.

Last year we had 50 50-minute speaking slots. We don’t know how many speaking slots we’ll have this year since it will depend on how many of the new 20-minute proposals the reviewers accept. But at 138 proposals, even at the fewest number of time slots (50) we’ll still probably be accepting a nice proportion of them. Will yours be one? We’ll find out on August 28th!

Registration is now open

SeaGL is a free-to-attend conference. No registration is required to join us on October 6th and 7th. That said, it’s really handy when people register. It allows us to do better planning for our catering, coffee, and conference party.

If you would like to RSVP and be a part of our fifth year, create an account and register today. We can’t wait to see you!

This post is copyright VM Brasseur and licensed CC BY-SA.