[FOSDEM] Call for Participation: "Modern Email" devroom

[Mechiel Lukkien]

Email is the workhorse of digital communication. It's one of the oldest
decentralized messaging platforms, and we must keep implementations up to date
with new standards/techniques/programming languages.

# Call for Participation

The "Modern Email" developer room seeks speakers, volunteers, and participants!
We want to get together as email developers/users, learn about each other's
projects, have technical discussions, exchange implementation/operational
experiences, and share plans and visions for the future of email.

The Devroom will be held on Saturday, February 1 2025, a full day, with primarily talks
on the schedule. The submission deadline for talks is December 1st, 2024. 

* Speaker: As a speaker, you're invited to present your work in the developer room.
* Volunteer: As a volunteer, you would be helping us out during the sessions.
* Participant: As a participant, whether introverted or extroverted, you
  are excellent to everyone and make the day!

Please distribute this CfP as widely as possible to interested parties!

# Topics

Some suggestions for talks:

* Overview of the current state of email (as a keynote)
* Your free/open source software project(s) related to email. From demo to details.
* Current developments, upcoming standards, e.g. JMAP (https://jmap.io),
  structured email (https://structured.email), ...
* Efforts to modernize our email ecosystem, e.g., through implementations in
  modern languages.
* Integrating email with other software, e.g., through APIs.
* Message/transport security/authenticity.
* Experiences with deliverability, email operations, anti-spam, hosting, ...
* Related technologies such as calendaring/PIM.
* Visionary talks
    * Where should email be in 10 years?
    * Can we add end-to-end encryption (to the masses) through, e.g., MLS?
    * Can we provide simple solutions for on-prem (private) hosting?
* ...

# Submission

We ask for a short talk abstract (+ proposed duration) and a speaker biography
(+ contact info). Any material that shows your affinity to the field is also
appreciated, e.g., a collection of links to your work, talks, projects, blog
posts, etc.

Submissions must be made through Pretalx
(https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2025/cfp) no later than December 1st (23:55
CET).

The suggested duration for a talk is 25 minutes (20 minutes presentation + 5
minutes Q&A). However, we explicitly invite you to propose the best duration
for your talk. If the best way to present your project is a 5-minute lightning
talk, we'll happily arrange a lightning session!

Depending on the proposals, we may contact you to adapt the time of the session
to fit the devroom schedule.

Important: Choose "Modern Email" in the track drop-down menu when submitting
your proposal.

Once the devroom schedule is finalized, we will contact you to help you prepare
your talk.

# Side events

## Pre-FOSDEM Hackathon (Friday)

Upon frequent request, we'd like to organize an informal pre-FOSDEM email
hackathon on Friday (31st of January). Please add your name and ideas to
https://hackmd.io/@ndFSGqY1SC6Cc0DEpHHU1w/r1dkwOAeyx if you're interested and
if you have ideas/proposals. It would also be great if someone could
provide/recommend a meeting space for the event (we'd expect some 10-20 people
probably?).

## Friends-of-Email Dinner (Saturday)

Following last year's good practice, we'd like to reserve a table for an
informal "friends of email" dinner/drinks session either on FRI or SAT evening.
Add your name to https://hackmd.io/@ndFSGqY1SC6Cc0DEpHHU1w/HyMUuORxye) or email
us if you'd like to join, so we can guess the group size (we were some 20+
people last time! Venue proposals welcome as well.

# Recordings

Talks and Q&A sessions at FOSDEM will be recorded. The recordings will be
published under the same license as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). By agreeing to
present at FOSDEM, you automatically give permission to be recorded. The
organizers will agree to make exceptions only for exceptional and well-reasoned
cases.

# Important dates

* October 30th, 2024: Modern Email DevRoom open for submissions
* December 1st, 2024: Modern Email DevRoom submission deadline
* December 15th, 2024: Announcement of final schedule
* January 31st, 2025: Modern Email Hackathon (TBD)
* February 1st, 2025: FOSDEM Day 1 - "Modern Email" DevRoom day! and Dinner in the evening

# Contact

For the latest details, see: https://github.com/modern-email/FOSDEM-25

Join the matrix room (also for coordination during FOSDEM):
https://matrix.to/#/#modern-email-fosdem-25:matrix.org

Contact the organizers:

* Benoit Tellier, btellier at linagora.com
* Damian Poddebniak, poddebniak at mailbox.org
* Hans-Jörg Happel, happel at audriga.com
* Mechiel Lukkien, mechiel at ueber.net

We are looking forward to a great day at FOSDEM with you!