SeaGL 2025 Call For Presentations

Our Call for Presentations (CfP) has officially opened! As announced last week during the 25th LinuxFest Northwest, our CfP will remain open until June 15, 2025. Please don’t delay; submit early, submit often!

As a small community event, our attendees tend to be university students, open-source hobbyists, engineers, security professionals, technical writers, and more, with a focus on community rather than corporate involvement.

We welcome introductions to free/libre/open (FLO) software, hardware, and tools, as well as more technical deep-dives. In addition to technical talks, we invite presentations on FLOSS alternatives to proprietary products, hacking for good, personal security and privacy, and open source in non-tech domains such as education and art.

Please note that we are not looking for sponsored talks. However, companies may review our sponsorship prospectus for details on how to participate through other means.

Updates for 2025

This year, we have updated one of our tracks. “Big Data and Machine Learning” felt somewhat outdated, so it has been split into two separate categories:

Open Source AI and Data Science: Explore the interplay between AI, data, and free/libre/open-source licensing. This topic includes ML frameworks, data tools, MLOps solutions, or open datasets. We’re interested in everything from technical deep dives to big-picture perspectives.
Cloud and Infrastructure: This category focuses on the systems that power computing environments. Topics include core infrastructure, both physical and virtual, such as servers, networks, and databases. It also covers cloud computing services, spanning everything from infrastructure and deployment to monitoring and telemetry.

For details on all our available tracks and to submit your application(s), please visit: https://seagl.org/cfp

Office Hours are back

SeaGL strives to be welcoming for first time (and veteran) speakers. Part of how we support this mission is by providing an opportunity for prospective speakers to receive real time assistance with their talks and/or CfP submissions.

Are you unsure which of your two talk ideas to submit (hint: submit both!)? Do you need help crafting an abstract for your talk? Or perhaps you are interested in adapting a talk you’ve presented before so that it fits SeaGL’s theme. We will have members of the SeaGL Programming & Flow Committee on hand to help answer these and any other questions you might have.

Office Hours will be taking place via chat on Matrix (#office-hours:seagl.org) at the following times throughout of CfP dates (this list will be updated if more windows open):

Mondays, 6-7pm PT (Tuesdays 01:00-02:00 UTC)

If none of the office hours time slots fit your schedule, or if you prefer to interact asynchronously, please email your questions to cfp2025@seagl.org.

About Keynotes

We’ve had some question about the keynote selection process that begins much earlier in the year. To clarify, anyone can submit a nomination via this form which is open year-round. We encourage you to take a look and submit anyone you would like to see keynote at SeaGL next year!

Since 2018, we’ve had four spots available for keynoters. Two are reserved for experienced keynoters, notable individuals from academia or industry who have given keynotes before. The other two spots are for first-time keynoters, notable community members who have given talks in the past but have never had the opportunity to keynote.

Candidates are invited after the current staff volunteers participate in a STAR voting poll. If you want to be part of that process, consider joining our volunteer team!

Spread the word

Another way to help our community would be by getting the word out, about the CfP and SeaGL in general. If you have a bulletin board, lunchroom, or other shared space at your office or community spot, please consider distributing some of our fliers. Also, we are still looking for partners, both fiscal and community. If you think your workplace or project would be interested, please share our prospectus. All contributions toward promoting the event are greatly appreciated!

That’s all for this update. Thanks for reading, and remember to submit early and submit often!