This is the official Call for Participation for FOSS.IN/2010. The CfP closes 10-Oct-2010 (23:59 GMT+5:30)

About FOSS.IN

FOSS.IN is a 10 year old series of annual events that focuses on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) development and contribution, especially from India. From a “small, regional event”, it has grown to a large, well attended international conference, whose participants often represent a “Who is Who” of the FOSS world. You can find out more about the event at http://foss.in.

Event Dates and Venue

The event will be held at the NIMHANS Convention Center in Bangalore, India, on December 15/16/17, 2010.

Important Dates

What we are looking for

We are looking for talks about cutting edge aspects of FOSS and technology – talks that will give the audiences solid substance, and a deeper understanding of the FOSS project of technology the speaker is involved with. We are not looking for “introductory” talks such as “What is MySQL” or “How to compile the Linux kernel” – i.e. topics that are widely covered by material that can be found on the internet, but for talks that go beyond the basics, including taking a technology and making it go beyond what it was designed to do (which is, by the way, the classic definition of “hacking”).

Speakers must be prepared to interact with the audiences – not just from the stage during the talk, but after the talk and throughout the event, at FOSS.IN’s famous “WorkOuts“.

Below is a list of areas of interest and topics. This by no means an exhaustive list. The underlying questions would be

• “What topic would attract a hard-core technical person (aka hacker) like me?”
• “How will FOSS benefit and get enriched by a discussion about this topic?”
• “Am I sure that I am not replicating stuff easily found on the web, or taught in college?”
• “I created something with existing tools, but applied in a novel way. Is it worth sharing with others?”

So here is a list of suggested areas of interest, provided by a bunch of well known hackers. An updated version of this list can be found at http://foss.in/register/speaker/topics:

• Security
• System hardening (protecting against memory attacks, kernel bugs etc.)
• Filesystems & storage
• Networking, including IPv6
• Power efficiency
• Mobile development and power management
• Virtualization (low level) and Containers
• Audio hacking
• Embedded multimedia
• FOSS OS design & low-level systems programming
• Real Time
• Fast Booting
• Flicker-free boot, from bootloader to window manager
• FOSS based Telephony, including GSM, VoIP
• Security infrastructure for mobile platforms
• Scalable architecture – Memcache v/s rdbms v/s non rdbms
• Open source game engines
• Home brew solutions & embedded devices based on beagle board, arduino, etc
• HTML5 platforms
• Managing multiple form factors for your s/w stack
• Cloud computing: the missing pieces
• Consolidating kernel embedded code better
• Next generation UIs – thinking beyond Windows UI emulation
• Porting Qt to new platforms and languages
• Dealing with new UI paradigms, e.g. Touch
• Mobile telephony
• Radio communications
• Signalling intelligence
• Surveillance, privacy & data protection
• Drones
• Rebuilds of vintage computers
• Open cores (FPGA)
• Reverse engineering techniques for hardware and software
• DIY electronic music software / synthesizers
• Electronic Art
• Hacking popular mobile devices to do more
• Scaling your FOSS-based web app to 10K concurrent users
• Building Highly Concurrent Applications using FOSS
• Test-driven FOSS development
• Education solutions for the 21st century
• Open Source Robotics
• Building Cloud Infrastructure using FOSS

Like we said, this is not an exhaustive list – just suggestions to get you started.We also want to hear from people what topics they would be interested in – mail or tweet them to us, and we will add it to the list of suggested topics at http://foss.in/register/speaker/topics.

And if you have an idea but just want some crowd validation, or throw it open for discussion – the “5 Minute Incubation Lightning Talks” that will happen throughout the event will get you there – you don’t even have to register them now!

How to submit a proposal

To submit a proposal for FOSS.IN/2010, head to http://foss.in/register/speaker

Please note that WorkOuts and BoFs no longer require formal registration – please read the related announcements that will follow for instructions about these.

Important: FOSS.IN is not a business conference – audiences are developers, contributors and hard-core technology people. With this in mind, we do not accept any marketing or product-oriented talks, nor do we accept talks about proprietary technologies/products. We also do not accept any “newbie” or advocacy-style talks – there are other conferences for that. Please keep this in mind when submitting your proposal.

Travel and Hospitality

We provide hospitality (accommodation and food) for outstation speakers, and of course all speakers will have the conference fees waived. We cannot, however, provide travel costs, as these costs have risen to a level beyond our ability to gather funds for.

Publication Rights

The conference requires non-exclusive, unrestricted publication rights to submitted presentations 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 under a Creative Commons License.

If you have questions, get on Twitter and ask us (@fossdotin), hop onto the mailing list, or use the contact system.

Quick Reference:
http://foss.in
http://foss.in/contact
http://foss.in/register