Re: [DRAFT] EmacsConf 2020 Call for Proposals

[Amin Bandali]

Hi Karl, all,

emacsconf@Karl-Voit.at writes:

> Hi Amin,
>
> Thank you very much for writing the draft for the CfP!
>
> Here are some thoughts that crossed my mind:
>

Cheers!

And thank /you/ for your reply and your comments, Karl.  You have raised
some important points, which I tried to address below.

>
> Amin Bandali (bandali@gnu.org) wrote:
>
>> 1 Important dates
>> =================
>> 
>>    CFP opens              August 17, 2020          
>>    CFP closes             September 30, 2020       
>>    Speaker notifications  October 24, 2020         
>>    Schedule published     November 7, 2020         
>>    EmacsConf 2020!        November 28 and 29, 2020 
>
> Is there a reason why CfP closing and Speaker notifications are one
> month apart?
>
> If not, as a potential speaker I'd prefer more than one month for
> preparing the talk.
>
> Without knowing your experience from the previous EmacsConf events,
> I'd say that one week of potential CfP extension and one week for
> acceptance and notification should be sufficient. At least I'd say
> that we can manage the acceptance with one or two online meetings.
>

The reason is I thought I'd give us more time, compared to last year
where there was only one week between the CFP closing and sending out
the speaker notifications.  I thought I'd give us more time this year.
Did I overcompensate?

Do you suggest we move speaker notifications to October 14, to allow us
one week even if we end up extending the CFP by one week to October 7?
That would probably be fine by me, especially if we can get started with
looking at the submissions we receive by September 30, rather than
waiting for the CFP to fully close before beginning.

To be sure, can you include a concrete complete timeline with all the
dates you propose just so we are all on the same page, Karl?

Thoughts anyone?

>
>> 2 Talk formats
>> ==============
>> 
>>   The following are the main formats for EmacsConf 2020 talks:
>> 
>>   - *10 minutes* (Lightning talk): Quickly present a cool project,
>>     concept, or trick in 10 minutes or less!
>> 
>>   - *20 minutes* (Standard talk): Introduce the audience to a new Emacs
>>     mode, concept, or just talk about something not necessarily shiny
>>     and new but that you find really neat nonetheless.
>> 
>>   - *50 minutes* (Extended talk): Take your time going more in depth,
>>     and/or do a demo!  Extended talks are a great way of really
>>     educating the audience about something you enjoy.
>
> Did the orga team already discuss the topic of pre-recorded talks?
>
> Since there were some technical difficulties last year, from the
> view point of the organizers, it would be cool to have at least 50
> percent pre-recorded talks that can be used when live-talks get
> issues. 
>
> If the 50 percent margin is reached, pre-recorded talks can be used
> between live-talks in any case which gives us more time for speaker
> set-up.
>

We haven't yet discussed anything for this year, but judging by our
experience last year, I strongly think we should definitely have some
prerecorded talks.

I think we ask all Lightning talk speakers to submit a prerecording of
their talk.  As for Standard and Extended talks, we ask the speakers to
either submit a prerecording or otherwise do a tech check with us before
the conference, to make sure we are all on the same page and hopefully
reduce the likelihood of issues on the day(s) of the conference.

Thoughts?

>
>> 4 Submission
>> ============
>
> Is there a policy on orga team members and talk submissions?

There has not been a concrete discussion, but how we did it last year
was to have people email <emacsconf-submit@gnu.org> with their
submission, and it worked out reasonably well.  Sacha and I gathered all
the emails and went through them and selected/scheduled the talks.

Our <https://emacsconf.org/2019/organizers-notebook/> from last year
lists "Consider anonymized conference submissions to reduce bias." as a
possible improvement.  I agree, and I think we could make that happen.

So, my thinking is that for this year, now that we have more organizers
onboard than just me and Sacha, I can act as a proxy receiving the
submissions sent to <emacsconf-submit@gnu.org>.  I will then collect and
relay to you all the submissions, but without the name and email of the
speakers, so the selection of the talks could be done in an anonymized
way.  As for me, since I will necessarily see the names and emails for
each submission as I collect and process them, I will not participate in
the selection of the talks.  Also, I can also keep an eye on things like
if any of you and up submitting your own talk, I'll make sure to have
someone else review your submission. :-)

How does that sound?

Also, I wasn't sure how much of the above we should include in the CFP
and how much we should mention on the site or in separate announcements,
since the CFP is quite long as is.  I definitely think it will be
valuable to talk about and post to emacsconf-discuss with details about
these policies/decisions in the interest of transparency.  For instance,
SeaGL (the Seattle GNU/Linux conference) published an entry on their
site about their talk selection process for their 2019 conference:
<https://seagl.org/news/2019/11/04/talk-selection-process.html>.


Thanks again for the feedback, Karl; please keep them coming, y'all!

-amin

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