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 3-4 February 2018 at the Université libre de Bruxelles. You can learn more about the conference at https://fosdem.org. == tl;dr == * Community DevRoom takes place on Saturday, 3 February 2018 * Submit your papers via the conference abstract submission system, Pentabarf, at https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM18 * 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 2017 and accepted speakers will be notified by 11 December 2017 * 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 3-4 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 Saturday, 3 February 2018. 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) Balancing corporate and community interests How can you create a healthy and active community while still meeting the needs of your employer? Are their best practice strategies for building community around a corporate backed open source project? 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? 2) Compensating volunteers Is this important? How is it done well? Should we discourage people from “working for free”? How much value does open source work have in finding employment? Increasing one’s salary? For one’s professional development? For plain old personal gratification? Has the balance of what people get out of participating in free software projects shifted over time as FOSS has become more mainstream? If there has been a shift, is it good, bad, neutral? 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) Understand and revitalizing mature communities How do mature communities (re)gather momentum? Is there a time to call a community “done, purpose served”? Is it at the same time as a particular code base around a free software project becomes less popular? What are some of the lessons learned that mature communities can share with newer project communities? Should we really just get off your lawn? 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, 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. 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/FOSDEM18 == Key Dates == * CFP opens 10 October 2017 * Proposals due in Pentabarf 27 November 2017 * Speakers notified by 11 December 2017 * DevRoom takes place 3 February 2018 at 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 -- Leslie Hawthorn http://twitter.com/lhawthorn