Hello everyone, 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 4-5 February 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, 5 February * Submit your papers via Pentabarf at https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM17 *and* PaperCall.io at https://www.papercall.io/communitydevroom * 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 25 November 2016 and accepted speakers will be notified by 12 December 2016 == 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 4-5 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, 5 February. The purpose of the devroom is to provide concrete, useful advice on how to best enable contributors to be successful so more FOSS software gets written. == Why This DevRoom == 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 == Talk Topics == We are seeking proposals on all aspects of creating and nurturing communities for free software projects. Please submit a proposal on any topic of your choice, but here are some suggestions to help get your creativity engaged: 1) How to navigate the different cycles in the lives of contributors What happens when you’re just feeling bored with what you’re doing or burn out in general? How can we plan for the natural ebbs and flows of contributor interest and availability? 2) Compensating volunteers Is this important? How is it done well? Should we discourage people from “working for free”? 3) Career progression for community oriented professionals How do you level up as a community manager? Developer Advocate? What skills do you need to best serve your community and how do you acquire them? How do we explain what we do all day so people value this work? 4) Community health metrics How do you tell if your community is actually doing well? How do you gather real numbers to prove that your gut instincts are correct? 5) 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”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. 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 === In order to make review easiest for our program committee, we are reviewing sessions in Papercall.io to make comments and share feedback amongst reviewers. However, you still need to complete your submission via FOSDEM’s Pentabarf system so we can ensure accepted proposals are properly published on the conference website. Yes, we know it is a pain to do the same submission in two places but your Community DevRoom committee thanks you for your diligence and for making the review process easier for us! Pentabarf Submission URL: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM17 Papercall.io Submission URL: https://www.papercall.io/communitydevroom == Key Dates == * CFP opens 18 October 2016 * Proposals due in both Pentabarf and Papercall.io by 25 November 2016 * Speakers notified by 12 December 2016 * DevRoom takes place 5 February 2016 at FOSDEM If you have any questions, please let us know! Cheers, Leslie Hawthorn and Laura Czajkowski Community DevRoom Co-Organizers mebelh@gmail.com and laura.czajkowski@gmail.com -- Leslie Hawthorn http://twitter.com/lhawthorn http://hawthornlandings.org