We are happy to let everyone know that the Community DevRoom will be held this year at the FOSDEM Conference. FOSDEM is the premier free and open source software event in Europe, taking place in Brussels from 1-2 February 2020 at the Université libre de Bruxelles. You can learn more about the conference at https://fosdem.org. == tl;dr == - Community DevRoom takes place on Sunday, 2nd February 2020 - Submit your papers via the conference abstract submission system, Pentabarf, at https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM20 - Indicate if your session will run for 30 or 45 minutes, including Q&A. If you can do either 30 or 45 minutes, please let us know! - Submission deadline is 27 November 2019 and accepted speakers will be notified by 11 December 2019 - If you need to get in touch with the organizers or program committee of the Community DevRoom, email us at community-devroom@lists.fosdem.org == IN MORE DETAIL == We are happy to let everyone know that the Community DevRoom will be held this year at the FOSDEM Conference. FOSDEM is the premier free and open source software event in Europe, taking place in Brussels from 1-2 February at the Université libre de Bruxelles. You can learn more about the conference at https://fosdem.org. The Community DevRoom will take place on Sunday 2nd February 2020. Our goals in running this DevRoom are to: * Connect folks interested in nurturing their communities with one another so they can share knowledge during and long after FOSDEM * Educate those who are primarily software developers on community-oriented topics that are vital in the process of software development, e.g. effective collaboration * Provide concrete advice on dealing with squishy human problems * To unpack preconceived ideas of what community is and the role it plays in human society, free software, and a corporate-dominated world in 2020. We would seek proposals on all aspects of creating and nurturing communities for free software projects. == TALK TOPICS == Here are some topics we are interested in hearing more about this year: 1) Is there any real role for community in corporate software projects? Can you create a healthy and active community while still meeting the needs of your employer? How can you maintain an open dialog with your users and/or contributors when you have the need to keep company business confidential? Is it even possible to build an authentic community around a company-based open source project? Have we completely lost sight of the ideals of community and simply transformed that word to mean “interested sales prospects?” 2) Creating Sustainable Communities With the increased focus on the impact of short-term and self-interested thinking on both our planet and our free software projects, we would like to explore ways to create authentic, valuable, and lasting community in a way that best respects our world and each other. We would like to hear from folks about how to support community building in person in sustainable ways, how to build community effectively online in the YouTube/Instagram era, and how to encourage corporations to participate in community processes in a way that does not simply extract value from contributors. If you have recommendations or case studies on how to make this happen, we very much want to hear from you. We are particularly interested to hear about academic research into FOSS Sustainability and/or commercial endeavors set up to address this topic. 3) Bringing free software to the GitHub generation Those of us who have been in the free and open source software world for a long time remember when the coolest thing you could do was move from CVS to SVN, Slack ended in “ware”, IRC was where you talked to your friends instead of IRL (except now no one talks in IRL anyway, just texts), and Twitter was something that birds did. Here we are in 2020, and clearly things have changed. How can we bring more younger participants into free software communities? How do we teach the importance of free software values in an era where freely-available code is ubiquitous? Will the ethical underpinnings of free software attract millenials and Gen Z to participate in our communities when our free software tends to require lots of free time? We promise we are not cranky old fuddy duddies. Seriously. It’s important to us that the valuable experiences we had in our younger days working in the free software community are available to everyone. And we want to know how to get there. 4) Applying the principles of building free software communities to other endeavors What can the lessons about decentralization, open access, open licensing, and community engagement teach us as we address the great issues of our day? We have left this topic not well defined because we would like people to bring whatever truth they have to the question. Great talks in this category could be anything from “why to never start a business in Silicon Valley” to “working from home is great and keeps C02 out of the air.” Let your imagination take you far - we are excited to hear from you. 5) How can free software protect the vulnerable At a time when some of the best accessibility features are built as proprietary products, at a time when surveillance and predictive policing lead to persecution of dissidents and imprisonment of those who were guilty before proven innocent, how can we use free software to protect the vulnerable? What sort of lobbying efforts would be required to make certain free software - and therefore fully auditable - code becomes a civic requirement? How do we as individuals, and actors at employers, campaign for the protection of vulnerable people - and other living things - as part of our mission of software freedom. 6) Conflict resolution How do we continue working well together when there are conflicts? Is there a difference in how types of conflicts best get resolved, e.g. ”this code is terrible” vs. “we should have a contributor agreement”? We are especially interested in how tos / success stories from projects that have weathered conflict. We are now at 2020 and this issue still comes up semi-daily. Let’s share our collective wisdom on how to make conflict less painful and more productive. Again, these are just suggestions. We welcome proposals on any aspect of community building! == PREPARING YOUR SUBMISSION & DEADLINES ===== LENGTH OF PRESENTATION === We are looking for talk submissions between 30 and 45 minutes in length, including time for Q&A. In general, we are hoping to accept as many talks as possible so we would really appreciate it if you could make all of your remarks in 30 minutes – our DevRoom is only a single day – but if you need longer just let us know. === ANYTHING EXTRA YOU WOULD LIKE US TO KNOW === Beyond giving us your speaker bio and paper abstract, make sure to let us know anything else you’d like to as part of your submission. Some folks like to share their Twitter handles, others like to make sure we can take a look at their GitHub activity history – whatever works for you. We especially welcome videos of you speaking elsewhere, or even just a list of talks you have done previously. First time speakers are, of course, welcome! === SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS === - Submit your talk abstract(s) via FOSDEM’s Pentabarf paper submission system. - Pentabarf Submission URL: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM20 == KEY DATES == 1. CFP opens 11 October 2019 2. Proposals due in Pentabarf 27 November 2019 3. Speakers notified by 11 December 2019 4. DevRoom takes place 2 February 2020at FOSDEM If you have any questions, please let us know! Cheers, Leslie Hawthorn and Laura Czajkowski Community DevRoom Co-Organizers Community DevRoom Mailing List: community-devroom@lists.fosdem.org -- http://www.laura.community/