Call for Proposals

The DebConf Content team would like to call for proposals for the DebConf21 conference, which will take place online from August 22nd to 29th, 2021.

Submitting an Event

You can now submit an event proposal. Events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs): we welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be of interest to the Debian community.

Regular sessions may either be 20 or 45 minutes long (including time for questions), other kinds of sessions (workshops, demos, lightning talks, …) could have different durations. Please choose the most suitable duration for your event and explain any special requests.

In order to submit a talk, you will need to create an account on the site. We suggest that Debian Salsa account holders (including DDs and DMs) use their Salsa login when creating an account. However, this isn’t required, as you can sign up with an e-mail address and password.

Timeline

Late submissions are possible and will be considered on a case by case basis.

Recordings sent by the soft the deadline are guaranteed to be reviewed with enough time to be fixed if necessary. Videos sent later than that will get less attention the closer we get to the conference. Recordings will not be accepted after the hard deadline of August 18th; you will have to present live (and face the consequences of doing that).

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we have some broad topics on which we encourage people to submit proposals, including but not limited to:

Language-specific miniconfs

Following the success from DebConf20, this year we will again accept language-specific miniconfs as tracks inside DebConf21. If you would like to organize one, get in touch with the content team by email to content@debconf.org or on the #debconf-content channel on IRC. Note that for that to work, you will have to provide volunteers who speak the language to the content team (to review and approve talks) and to the video team (to operate the streaming tools live during the talks and review recorded talks afterwards), because those jobs will need people with knowledge of the language spoken in the talks. Also please inform us on the best times of the day (in UTC) for your track to be scheduled, and approximately how many talks you expect.

Time zones

As a global online conference, scheduling needs to fit around participants’ time zones. Please indicate the time zone from which you’ll be attending, as well as your availability. If you will be working together with people from other time zones (e.g. in a BoF session), please indicate a preferred time window for scheduling (using UTC times).

Online Talks

For regular presentation-style talks, like last year, there are 2 possibilities: you can either pre-record your talk and be available for a live Q&A session, or give it live over videoconferencing. Pre-recording with live Q&A is preferred, as it gives us less uncertainty with regards to connectivity and ensures a higher overal quality. If you choose to deliver your talk live, then we need to be prepared for it to fail if something goes wrong during the talk.

Of course, pre-recording makes little sense for BoFs and other types of interactive session.

Talk proposal help on IRC

If you want to submit a talk proposal but would like to discuss it first, feel free to pop by the #debconf-content IRC channel on OFTC, where the DebConf content team will be available to help potential speakers prepare their talk proposals for DebConf.

Just make sure you stick around the channel if you don’t get an immediate response, because it could be coming from the other side of the world.

Code of Conduct

Our event is covered by a Code of Conduct designed to ensure everyone’s safety and comfort. The code applies to all attendees, including speakers and the content of their presentations. Do not hesitate to contact us at content@debconf.org if you have any questions or are unsure about certain content you’d like to present.

Video Coverage

As an online conference, talks will be streamed live over the Internet. And unless speakers opt-out, all scheduled talks will be recorded and published later under the DebConf license (MIT/Expat), as well as presentation slides and papers whenever available.

Please note that, although we will make your wishes known to the participants, we cannot control whether attendees record and publish your talk from the live stream.

Closing note

DebConf21 is accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch with sponsors@debconf.org.

In case of any questions, or if you wanted to bounce some ideas off us first, please do not hesitate to reach out to the content team at content@debconf.org.

We hope to see you online soon!

The DebConf team