[FOSDEM] Call for Participation: Community DevRoom at FOSDEM 2018

[Leslie Hawthorn]

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 at 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 at lists.fosdem.org

-- 
Leslie Hawthorn
http://twitter.com/lhawthorn