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, 2023Friday 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:
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.
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.
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!
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…
Welcome to the second and last day of SeaGL 2022! Be sure to check out our amazing lineup of events. Below, you will find the schedule for today (Saturday, November 5, 2022). As a reminder, SeaGL 2022 is completely virtual for the third year in a row. The conference is also completely “free as in tea” with no registration required. Everyone is welcome to attend!
As a reminder, our Code of Conduct applies during ALL SeaGL interactions. In chat, during one’s talk if you are giving one, social events during SeaGL, and on other platforms during or as a result of the conference.
Normal talk blocks are 30m. There are 20m for the talk, and 10m for optional Q&A as led by the Room Moderator. The Moderator will read questions from the text chat audience for the speaker to answer. There is no Q&A during Keynotes.
All times are listed in Pacific Daylight Time, which is UTC-07:00. (Note: The US time change happens the evening AFTER the conclusion of the conference early on Sunday morning)
9:30am-10:00am
9:30am Opening Announcements
9:35am Keynote by Lorena Mesa
10:00am-10:30am
Alanna Burke - The struggle of getting an open-source community off the ground
Atinuke Kayode - On Growth: Tips to Grow a Healthy Open Source Community
10:45am-11:15am
Aarti Ramkrishna - The Leaky Pipeline
Kaylea Champion - What’s Anonymity Worth?
11:30am-12:00pm
Wm Salt Hale - Ten years of SeaGL
12:10pm-12:40pm
No-Cook Lunch Hour
1:25pm-1:55pm
Deb Nicholson - Grow Your FOSS Project with this One Weird Trick
Bob Murphy - A brief introduction to the Fediverse
2:10pm-2:40pm
Brian Peters - VDO - Virtual Data Optimizer
Brian Raiter - Programmer Culture: The Odd Phenomenon of Recreational Programming
2:55pm-3:25pm
Bri Hatch - Tab completion for your custom commands
Adrian Cochrane - The Small Web
3:40pm-4:10pm
Matt McGraw - Self-hosting Simple Web Apps With Traefik and Docker Compose
Kaylea Champion - TIL 2022: FLOSS Research Roundup
Welcome to the first day of SeaGL 2022! Be sure to check out our amazing lineup of events. Below, you will find the schedule for today (Friday, November 4, 2022). As a reminder, SeaGL 2022 is completely virtual for the third year in a row. The conference is also completely “free as in tea” with no registration required. Everyone is welcome to attend!
As a reminder, our Code of Conduct applies during ALL SeaGL interactions. In chat, during one’s talk if you are giving one, social events during SeaGL, and on other platforms during or as a result of the conference.
Normal talk blocks are 30m. There are 20m for the talk, and 10m for optional Q&A as led by the Room Moderator. The Moderator will read questions from the text chat audience for the speaker to answer. There is no Q&A during Keynotes.
All times are listed in Pacific Daylight Time, which is UTC-07:00. (Note: The US time change happens the evening AFTER the conclusion of the conference early on Sunday morning)
9:10am-9:35am
9:10am Opening Announcements
9:15am Keynote by Aeva Black
9:40am-10:10am
Alexander Krizhanovsky - Building a CDN edge using open source
Neslihan Turan - Struggles and possible solutions of a local free software movement
10:25am-10:55am
justinribeiro - Free-Riders and the Motivations that Keep OSS Developers Writing Code
der.hans - Intermediate jq: sed for json
11:10am-11:40am
Alanna Burke - The struggle of getting an open-source community off the ground (Re-Scheduled to Saturday, November 5 at 10:00am)
jberkus - The Cloud Native Burrito
11:55am-12:25pm
TheyofHIShirts - The Fediverse @ Your Library
vavroom - The internet is unusable: The disabled view.
1:30pm-2:00pm
Deb Nicholson - Cross-Pollinate Your Volunteering
Bradley Molinaro - Accessible Data Visualization
2:15pm-2:45pm
Dawn Cooper - Finding the right tools for your new job
Richard Littauer - Gulls do gull: Using Node, D3, React and occasionally grep to get insight into bird subspecies distribution
We are extremely excited for the conference which begins… TOMORROW!
There are a variety of details regarding how to attend, what’s on the schedule, and an announcement that’s been a decade in the making below. Please take a moment to read and share!
Attending SeaGL
Since we’re fully online for the third time this year, let’s talk about HOW to actually get online to watch talks and have a super social conference-going experience.
To get started visit seagl.org/attend and follow the directions to join our virtual conference space hosted in Matrix. Once there, you will be able to join rooms where you can view talks, socialize, and get assistance. Throughout the event Patch—our friendly SeaGL seagull bot—will invite you to various spaces making navigation easier.
Each talk has its own room within the virtual conference space. These rooms will move between three subspaces: current, upcoming, and completed sessions. Attendees may join these rooms to chat anytime throughout the conference. Talks are expected to be 20 minutes and if the speaker would like, they have an additional 10 minutes for Q&A, which will be collected from the presentation’s chat room.
Presenters will be delivering their talk on a private video platform. They will be assisted by volunteer moderators (please reach out if you would like to help). Our tech team will then be directing that room’s feed to a continuous YouTube video stream that is viewable within the attend platform or website’s view page.
We had intended to use an alternative to YouTube this year, but ran out of volunteer bandwidth. If you have strong objections to viewing the content on YouTube, but would still like to watch live, we are hoping to provide a solution on a best effort basis. Please consider volunteering to better address this in future years!
As a reminder, our Code of Conduct applies in all virtual conference spaces. You can also read more details about the decisions that informed our tech stack in this blog post.
Scheduled sessions
SeaGL has been striving to bring excellent content from a diverse pool of speakers for ten years and we are so excited about this year’s schedule! Some highlights include:
Keynote speakers: Aeva Black, Sumana Harihareswara, Lorena Mesa, and Ernie Smith
Social food prep and snacking
Afternoon TeaGL tea-time break
Evening trivia and mock/cocktails
and so much more!
Group meal
As SeaGL continues to be virtual this year we’ve been challenged on how to provide social eating events.
The word “trebuchet” might have been hinted at, but interstate launches require more counterweight than we were willing to lift and there are probably laws against interstate food flinging.
Delivery by carrier seagull might be possible, but let’s face it, only the empty containers would arrive. Heck, just trying to fit them with basket french fry harnesses would probably bust a bunch of safety regulations.
In the end the attendee experience committee decided on revision controlled recipes from the SeaGL social-cookbook for food you can make at home. These recipes do not require cooking and can be made with ~30 minute of prep time. Choose what you’d like to make and gather the ingredients ahead of time, then come cook lunch together on Saturday!
This year’s theme
Last, but definitely not least, each year we poll the community for theme ideas and take a vote within the staff. This year that process led to…
Okay, that’s it for now. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read and share this post, and to all of the folks volunteering to make SeaGL such an amazing conference!
If you’d like to volunteer to help—this year or in the future—visit seagl.org/get_involved or send an email to participate@seagl.org. We hope to see you at SeaGL this year!
SeaGL is only two weeks away! We are therefore thrilled to be able to share that Ernie Smith
will be our fourth and final keynote speaker!
Ernie Smith is the editor of Tedium, and an active internet snarker. Between
his many internet side projects, he finds time to hang out with his wife Cat,
who’s funnier than he is.
We’re SO pumped to announce our next keynote speaker: the amazing Lorena Mesa!
Lorena Mesa is a political scientist turned coder, a GitHub data engineer, Director & Chair of the Python Software Foundation, JOSS editor, and PyLadies Chicago co-organizer. Lorena’s time at Obama for America and her subsequent graduate research required her to learn how to transform messy, incomplete data into intelligible analysis on topics like predicting Latinx voter behavior. It’s this unique background in research and applied mathematics that drove Lorena to pursue a career in engineering and data science. One part activist, one part Star Wars fanatic, and another part Trekkie, Lorena abides by the motto to “live long and prosper”.
Lorena is a tinkerer, explorer, martial artist, cat enthusiast, Trekkie, marathon runner, a “learn by doing”-er. You can find more ways to get in touch on her website.
If you’re looking for good news this week, we’ve got it: Aeva Black will be one of our keynote
presenters at SeaGL 2022!
Aeva Black is an incurably queer geek, passionate about privacy and ethics in
tech. They’re an open source hacker in Azure’s Office of the CTO, focusing on community safety and
supply chain security, and currently serve on the OSI Board, the OpenSSF TAC, and as a CNCF Board
Shadow. In a previous life, Aeva founded the OpenStack Ironic project, served on the board of the
Consent Academy, managed a few small MySQL databases, and lived on a tiny farm in the Olympic
Mountains.
