[FOSDEM] [CfP] Community DevRoom 2020

[laura.czajkowski at gmail.com]

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 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 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 at lists.fosdem.org


-- 
http://www.laura.community/
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