Our Call for Presentations (CfP) has officially opened! As announced last week during the 25th LinuxFest Northwest, our CfP will remain open until June 15, 2025. Please don’t delay; submit early, submit often!
As a small community event, our attendees tend to be university students, open-source hobbyists, engineers, security professionals, technical writers, and more, with a focus on community rather than corporate involvement.
We welcome introductions to free/libre/open (FLO) software, hardware, and tools, as well as more technical deep-dives. In addition to technical talks, we invite presentations on FLOSS alternatives to proprietary products, hacking for good, personal security and privacy, and open source in non-tech domains such as education and art.
Please note that we are not looking for sponsored talks. However, companies may review our sponsorship prospectus for details on how to participate through other means.
Updates for 2025
This year, we have updated one of our tracks. “Big Data and Machine Learning” felt somewhat outdated, so it has been split into two separate categories:
- Open Source AI and Data Science: Explore the interplay between AI, data, and free/libre/open-source licensing. This topic includes ML frameworks, data tools, MLOps solutions, or open datasets. We’re interested in everything from technical deep dives to big-picture perspectives.
- Cloud and Infrastructure: This category focuses on the systems that power computing environments. Topics include core infrastructure, both physical and virtual, such as servers, networks, and databases. It also covers cloud computing services, spanning everything from infrastructure and deployment to monitoring and telemetry.
For details on all our available tracks and to submit your application(s), please visit: https://seagl.org/cfp
Office Hours are back
SeaGL strives to be welcoming for first time (and veteran) speakers. Part of how we support this mission is by providing an opportunity for prospective speakers to receive real time assistance with their talks and/or CfP submissions.
Are you unsure which of your two talk ideas to submit (hint: submit both!)? Do you need help crafting an abstract for your talk? Or perhaps you are interested in adapting a talk you’ve presented before so that it fits SeaGL’s theme. We will have members of the SeaGL Programming & Flow Committee on hand to help answer these and any other questions you might have.
Office Hours will be taking place via chat on Matrix (#office-hours:seagl.org) at the following times throughout of CfP dates (this list will be updated if more windows open):
- Mondays, 6-7pm PT (Tuesdays 01:00-02:00 UTC)
If none of the office hours time slots fit your schedule, or if you prefer to interact asynchronously, please email your questions to [email protected].
About Keynotes
We’ve had some question about the keynote selection process that begins much earlier in the year. To clarify, anyone can submit a nomination via this form which is open year-round. We encourage you to take a look and submit anyone you would like to see keynote at SeaGL next year!
Since 2018, we’ve had four spots available for keynoters. Two are reserved for experienced keynoters, notable individuals from academia or industry who have given keynotes before. The other two spots are for first-time keynoters, notable community members who have given talks in the past but have never had the opportunity to keynote.
Candidates are invited after the current staff volunteers participate in a STAR voting poll. If you want to be part of that process, consider joining our volunteer team!
Spread the word
Another way to help our community would be by getting the word out, about the CfP and SeaGL in general. If you have a bulletin board, lunchroom, or other shared space at your office or community spot, please consider distributing some of our fliers. Also, we are still looking for partners, both fiscal and community. If you think your workplace or project would be interested, please share our prospectus. All contributions toward promoting the event are greatly appreciated!
That’s all for this update. Thanks for reading, and remember to submit early and submit often!
We are thrilled to announce that last year’s conference videos are now available on the SeaGL Archive! They can also be accessed directly via our Internet Archive collection. This release marks a significant achievement for our volunteer-run organization, and we couldn’t be more excited to share these valuable resources with the free / libre / open source community.
As a volunteer-driven conference, we rely on the dedication and hard work of our team members. Sometimes this means that tasks take longer to complete than we’d like. In this case, we had a single person working tirelessly behind the scenes. We are extremely grateful for their efforts and appreciate your patience.
A special shout-out to the Internet Archive for hosting our video archives. Their platform has allowed us to share the vast wealth of knowledge created by our community, and for that, we are incredibly thankful.
Regrettably, we encountered some technical issues during last year’s conference which resulted in a couple of videos not being recorded properly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate the understanding of our attendees and speakers.
We are committed to learning from these experiences and improving our processes. We’ve already begun addressing last year’s issues to ensure that all presentations are cleanly captured and made available for everyone to enjoy.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to announce that the Call for Presentations (CfP) for SeaGL 2025 will be opening soon. If you’re interested in sharing your knowledge and expertise with the FLO community, stay tuned for the CfP announcement. As usual, we welcome submissions from industry experts and enthusiasts alike. We can’t wait to see what exciting topics and ideas you’ll be sharing with us!
Once again, thank you to our volunteers, the Internet Archive, and everyone who attended SeaGL last year. Your support and participation are what make this conference possible, and we’re honored to be a part of such a thoughtful community!
As we shake off the winter chill and begin organizing this year’s conference, we wanted to share some things with the community.
New Theme
We’re excited to announce the theme for the 13th annual SeaGL: freedom is in the cards
Fliers Fly
The newest SeaGL handbill design has dropped and can be found here! You’re welcome and encouraged to share it around, whether in the printed or posted form. And keep an eye out at SCaLE (the Southern California Linux Expo), hosted this weekend in Pasadena, for the first in-person batch!
Newest Social Stand
It has been great to see so many people leaving walled garden social media networks lately! While we will continue to cross-post in an effort to reach those who are left, we’ve added a new network to our quiver: Bluesky
This network has grown quite a bit with the recent migration. It is built on top of the AT Protocol, an open source, open standard.
Our website will still be the primary place to look for all things SeaGL related, but we hope to keep the various social media profiles up-to-date. Please follow us and share what you see!
Keynote Nominations
One of the many things that sets SeaGL apart from other conferences is that the community helps us select our keynote speakers. In prior years we’ve asked for suggestions over a two-week period, but moving forward we’ll keep the form open year-round.
Nominees need not have prior keynote experience; we are interested in both new and veteran presenters. In fact, since 2018, we’ve been reserving half of our keynote slots to amplify the voices of speakers who may be presenting on the main stage for the first time.
While you are welcome to nominate yourself, we encourage you to take some time to think about people you have seen present, who you think have an important message to share. If they have been doing exciting work in the Free / Libre / Open (FLO) community, we want to know about them!
We challenge you to think about people who:
- Have done work to empower others and challenge social norms
- You go out of your way to read all of their Open Source posts on social media
- Might only have a small following, but are doing amazing work in their own little corner
- Are always tinkering with new and exciting projects that inspire others to try new things
- Are slowly, but steadily, working to make the FLO community and world a better place, for everyone
Submissions are anonymous and the form is open, so nominate someone today!
Volunteering
As always, we want to remind folks that SeaGL is an all-volunteer effort. Visit the get involved page for more details about how you can help!
As we look back on SeaGL 2024, we want to send a heart-felt thank you to the speakers, attendees, sponsors, and volunteers for making our 12th SeaGL such a success 🎉! We hope you had an opportunity to listen to some great talks and chat with other open minded folks. Here’s to continuing to ruffle some feathers and supporting a more free technological world in 2025!
Speaking of 2025, we have confirmed our dates and want to share them with you all! Please mark your calendars for SeaGL on November 7th and 8th. We are returning to the University of Washington for a third year in rainy, and proud of it, Seattle. And if you’re refraining from migration, we plan to keep you connected by live streaming our gathering as in past few years.
We also wanted to let you know that the A/V & DevOps team members are working hard to publish recordings on our archive and appreciate your patience. If you have opinions and would like to shape SeaGL for the better, we would love to have you join us! Please consider becoming a volunteer!
Cheers ✨ to all who have contributed to such a creative and inclusive community! We are looking forward celebrating the spooky thirteenth event with you at the beginning of November this year!