Event is over. See you at FOSS.IN/2007!

From FOSS.IN/2006

Invitation

FOSS.IN/2006, November 24-26th, 2006, Bangalore, India

FOSS.IN is the premier technical event focusing on Free and Open Source Software. Developers and users explore the latest developments and learn about what will be cutting-edge.

We invite you to submit a proposal to present a technical paper or tutorial, or to host a meeting (BoFS, or Birds of a Feather Session).

Focus

Unlike its predecessor events, which have all had wider focus, FOSS.IN/2006 will have a much greater focus. The prime objective will be to promote involvement in projects, so talks about actual contribution to FOSS projects would be of primary importance.

Contribution can be defined as actual coding, design, documentation, testing, etc. Our primary criteria for selection of talks (especially for the high-profile morning sessions) will be whether the speaker is actually involved in the project she is talking about - as a contributer, not solely as a user.

This change in orientation has been a result of constant feedback from FOSS stalwarts who have attended the previous events.

In the past, the event has had topic ranging from community building to advocacy. Although this approach has achieved considerable success, it has also run its course. FOSS.IN/2006 will be dominated by project and technology talks.

Session Descriptions

Morning sessions

Invited talks (in the main auditorium)

These will be talks by invited speakers - speakers of note. There will be no more than 3 such talks every day, each about 45 minutes long, with a 15 minute break between them. This means there will be a total of 9 such talks over the three days.

The first of these will be a daily keynote address, and during this period, no other talks will happen.

Project talks (in the 120, 90 and 60 seater halls)

These will be talks by people who are actually part of a FOSS project and contribute to it in a meaningful fashion, either in the form of code or in the form of documentation. There will be no "third-party, not actually involved in the project" talks. Here too, each talk will be of about 45 minutes, with 15 minute breaks between them. However, the first of these will start only after the daily keynote completes. Therefore, there will be two such talks in each hall on every day in the morning session, for a total of six a day, and 18 over the three days.

Post Lunch sessions

Heavy Tutorials (Main Auditorium)

These will be of about 2 hours duration, with 15 minutes between them. Depending on the topic, these could also be 4 hour tutorials, but the subject and public interest will decide this. People will be able to "vote" in some fashion for such tutorials (process to be decided), which themselves are going to be selected on the basis of the completemess of the abstract, tutorial material, submission of complete slides and related stuff, depth of the treatment and qualification of the speaker(s).

There will be at the most 6 such tutorials over the three days.

Note that there will be no *printed* material handed out for tutorials. All material will be available on the conference servers and from the conference website.

General FOSS talks (120 and 90 seater auditoriums)

These will be talks of 45 minutes duration, with 15 minute breaks between them. They will address any FOSS-related topics, including talks on open standards, FOSS community, egovernance, education, technology, business and licensing, and of course any FOSS projects.

There will be a total of 24 such talks over the three days.

These talks will be selected on the basis of proven experience by speakers. Speakers will have to qualify themselves. Previous experience of speaking at LUG meets and LB/FOSS.IN events will be taken into account. This can also work against speakers who have in the past misused their slots to try and sell their services or products.

Workshops (60 seater auditorium)

Workshops are hand-on sub-events, and assume practical content that the audience can get involved with. No PCs will be provided to the audience - to participate, you will need to have a laptop. Wireless networking will be available, as well as wired connections for up to 48 connections, on a separate switch, with a dedicated subnet for this hall.

Workshops can be either 2 or 4 hours in length, depending on the depth and material. Only qualified people will be permitted to conduct these workshops, and quality experience of the workshop lead and of the material will decide whether the workshop actually gets selected.

There will be max 6 such workshops.

Free-schedule events

In addition to the above, there will be freely scheduled talks, discussions and other events, barcamp-style, in 15-20 seater tents behind the the main auditorium. These will be available throughout the day.

No projectors or amplification will be available in these tents, however wireless networking and power will be available.

The length of each session is going to be variable, but in general look at about an hour, though any session that is proving to be a hit will be allowed to continue longer, while it would also be OK to have 15 minute sessions. Granularity will be 15 minutes.

As a rough figure, we expect that about 30 such sessions will happen over the three days. None of them will be proposed or scheduled before the event, and will be decided on the spot. Sessions will start after the daily keynote.

CfP Process

Step 1. Submit Proposal

The review committee assesses the relevance of your proposal to the Linux community, your qualifications to be presenting your proposed topics, and your rationale.

Proposals are between 1000 and 1500 characters in length.

You will also be required to submit a personal biography of up to 1000 characters concurrently with your proposal. Focus on the experience relevant to your proposal topic and write in third-person. A list of references showing your affiliations and similar activity at other international conferences would help.

Proposals will be accepted from September 19th, 2006 until October 8th, 2006.

To begin the process, go to http://foss.in/2006/cfp/speakers

Step 2. Committee Review

The programme committee will review your proposal per the guidelines above. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent from October 9th, 2006.

Step 3. Submit Abstract

If your proposal is accepted you will be required to submit an abstract of up to 500 words. Try to capture the essence of your paper in your abstract. You will be able to edit your abstracts on-line until October 22nd, 2006.

Step 4. Paper and Slides Submission

Papers and presentation slides must be submitted in print-ready (and screen-ready) format - in PDF only. No other format will be accepted and if you require assistance you MUST request it a minimum of two weeks in advance of the submission deadline.

Final papers and slides must be submitted in PDF and must include any and all images required.

Specific to the paper - colour images may be used if the addition of colour adds to the impact of the image. Please do not use colour unless it is required. Papers should be a minimum of 5 pages (rendered) and a maximum of 15 pages.

Final papers and slides must be submitted by October 27th, 2006. Final slides required for the presentation must be submitted by November 14th, 2006.

Step 5. Talks

Talks will be 45 minutes in length including time for questions followed by a 15 minute break. Tutorials may occupy multiple timeslots.

An true XGA (1024x786) LCD projector will be available to display output from a laptop computer. If you will require additional AV equipment or desktops on stage for demonstrations, please specify this in your proposal.

Note: While you have to submit your slides as PDF, you are free to use whatever format you wish for the actual presentation if you are using your own notebook computer.

Review Guidelines

The talk selection committee would focus on the following when deciding on the talk:

• Specific Affiliation to the project: It is important for most speakers to have project affiliations. We intend to act facilitators for these projects to involve new developers.
• Speakers involvement in the project: We need project insiders talking about the topic to make a substantial impression on the audience. So it is paramount that speakers have detailed experience in working on the project.
• Contribution is king: Every talk should publish what is the sort of contribution it wants out of the listeners. This will help match project requirements v/s listeners interest.

This does not mean that we will not consider introductory talks or talks by non-contributors. Advanced topics, especially tutorials and workshops, are acceptable even if presented by non-contributors. However, we will not consider talks that essentially present material that one can easily find on the web.

As an example: "An introduction to Linux (or MySQL, PHP, Perl, etc.)" will not be considered, but "An introduction to secure programming practices using PHP" may be acceptable provided the treatment is not shallow and extremely basic.

Similarly, "Introducing OpenOffice.org" is not acceptable, but "Maximising your OpenOffice.org experience" could be.

From this, it should be clear that what we are looking for are talks that are of practical nature.

Important Dates

Review Committee

• Dr.Swami Manohar
• Dr.Vinay V.
• Gopi Krishna S Garge
• Mahendra M.
• Shreyas Srinivasan
• Atul Chitnis

Travel Support for Speakers

Speakers should make every effort to arrange for their own travel and accommodation first. They could seek sponsorship from their organisations, many of whom have budgets for employees presenting at technical conferences.

There will be limited funding available for outstation speakers from FOSS.IN. Support would be available as part funding of the travel costs and accommodation for some outstation speakers. Should there be enough funding available for travel support the quantum of the part funding will increase.

Speaker travel funding commitments will be made to invited speakers, or to deserving speakers who have requested for such support.

We request all potential speakers to seek travel sponsorship from FOSS.IN only after they have tried all other avenues. Travel sponsorship is NOT guaranteed in any way, and if we have to make a choice between speakers, we will probably choose speakers who do not seek travel sponsorship, as FOSS.IN is not a commercial event and funds are extremely limited.

Therefore, PLEASE try to make your own arrangements first. Seek travel sponsorship from us ONLY after all else has failed.

Publication Rights

The conference requires non-exclusive, unrestricted publication rights to submitted papers including the publication of audio and video recordings of the proceedings. Copyright is retained by the author.

To ensure this, no speaker will be allowed to present without first signing a permission document, allowing us to use the material (slides, video and audio recordings of the presentation, supporting material, etc.) in a non-exclusive, unrestricted manner, preferably licensed under a Creative Commons License.