FSFE European Summit

Imagine a European Union that builds its IT infrastructure on Free Software. Imagine European Member States that exchange information in Open Standards and share their software. Imagine municipalities and city councils that benefit from decentralized and collaborative software under free licenses. Imagine no European is any longer forced to use non-Free Software.

This is what we are seeking. And although this vision feels like a long road to go, we know that we are taking major steps along it today. To help unlock our full potential on this road, FSFE offers cross-border collaboration and its first European summit. Be part of it and join our movement.

Call for Participation

In 2016 the FSFE is celebrating 15 years of its existence and will celebrate this with its first ever European summit. This is the call for your participation in a unique environment where several vibrant Free Software communities will meet and share a weekend of knowledge sharing with a great participatory spirit.

The FSFE summit will take place from September 2 – 4, 2016, in the Berlin Congress Center. We aim at gathering Free Software enthusiasts and the FSFE community from all over Europe to exchange insights and outsides, to build new friendships and to find allies. It's time to connect and collaborate. We invite you to come together to use, study, share and improve your skills and knowledge; come network with Free Software and beyond.

Most important facts

• Idea & Environment: For mutual benefits and to facilitate the organisation, the FSFE summit will be a part of the QtCon16. It will offer a unique forum for talks and knowledge sharing in an event that gathers the communities and combines the summits from the FSFE, the KDE Akademy, Qt Contributors' Summit, KDAB and VideoLAN Dev Days. All of these communities holding their very own summits on one hand - and sharing with each other at the same time. As a key feature, all participants of any sub-conference will be allowed to listen to any other talk or workshop from the other sub-conferences. Yes, you can take part in all of them at the same weekend.

• Date: September 2-4, 2016 (subscribe from the Fellowship calendar)

• Location: Berlin Congress Center (BCC), Berlin, Germany. The venue provides an auditorium for keynotes, many large and small conference rooms, a great open area for breaks and presentations, a large eating area and good spaces for discussions

• Admission: Free of charge. However, capacity is physically restricted. To offer a peaceful and secure environment for all participants we need to run a registration process that we will provide in the upcoming weeks.

• Deadline: Deadline is extended to May 29, 2016. There is an another Call for Papers for the Qtcon in general, available at https://qtcon.org/cfp but its deadline might be different. This one is our deadline for the FSFE summit. You can either follow the Qtcon call or this one by the FSFE. However, please do not apply for both.

• Contact: Please send us all your inquiries and proposals to summit2016@fsfe.org and please let your subject start with the tag “[CfP]”

• Spread the word: Please spread the word, use the Hashtag #FSFEsummit, the current logo-picture (on top of this page and at http://polr.me/vfc) and link to this very same wiki-page: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/Summit2016/CallForParticipation

• Our summit will also be used to celebrate 15 years of FSFE. Prepare for something special.

We offer

A full weekend for and with the European Free Software community with Talks, Workshops, Lightning talks, FSFE meetings and much more ... (More details will follow in time)

Friday, September 2nd

On Friday, we are happy to offer what many people keep asking for: a full conference day with high quality talks and insights about “Successful business with Free Software”. A day for companies, politicians, developers, entrepreneurs and anyone else interested in business aspects of Free Software. While we teach and learn, we also try to bring closer clients and suppliers. In addition we expect a lot of attendees from our accompanying communities at the Qtcon.

Saturday / Sunday, September 3 – 4

Two full conference days dedicated to the FSFE, the European Free Software community, to Free Software and Free Society. We will have a diverse range of talks and workshops - technical and non-technical. You can have face-to-face meetings with the FSFE, get insights in our working groups, build new ones or listen the topics we all care about. These are the days to network across Europe, to get updated on political and societal progresses concerning our road to Freedom and to get inspired. If you have a Free Software related topic you like to talk about, a project you like to present or a network you like to build, these are the days to be filled by you.

We are looking for

In short: Talks, Workshops, Lightning talks, FSFE group meetings, moderators, volunteers, participants, Poster sessions, key signing party [...] we are definitely open for your input. Feel free to propose what you feel good at and that you think will also be in interest for other attendees. Inspire us and we make it happen!

As an input, these are some of the topics/content we and our community is interested in:

Talks

For Friday

• You know or you run a successful business model for/with Free Software? Tell us about it!
• You are hacking for freedom and make your living as a Free Software developer? Tell us about it!
• Running a Free Software company is no problem for you, because you can tell us about this traditional business model that works with every company ... ?
• Your company or employer is "open-sourcing" more and more of its software? Tell us how and why.
• You work in a public administration and you know about particular needs, do's and don'ts to compete with proprietary software vendors? Tell us!
• [...]

For Saturday/Sunday

• Free Software in education
• Threats to Free Software or actions to take
• Hacking politics: How to influence my politician
• Insights on successful (national) campaigns
• Federation and Decentralization: Free Software on a large scale
• Running or upcoming changes: "Cloud", "Internet of things", [...]
• The cultural aspects of Free Software as resource for commons, heritage, sustainability [...]
• Outreach: How to reach non-technical people with our message?
• Workshops for all the non-technical skills: rhetoric, negotiations, win an argument, run local campaigns, motivate volunteers to participate, attract new members [...]
• Insights, talks or strategies towards other communities and technologies that work with/need more/built on Free Software: Freifunk, 3D-printing, Open Educational Resources, Open Knowledge, Open Hardware, Open Design [...]
• [...]

Proposal guidelines

Please provide the following information to your submission in a mail to summit2016@fsfe.org latest by May 29, 23:59:59 CEST:

 * Title - the title of your session/presentation
 * Abstract - a brief summary of your presentation
 * Description - information about your topic and its potential benefits for the audience
 * A short bio - including anything that qualifies you to speak on your subject
 * Tags - add appropriate tags to your proposal to help the committee sort through the categories of proposals

The selection will be done by a committee and for that we are looking for volunteers. If you are interested in helping, read the next section.

Volunteering

A big event needs a lot of help. We are searching for volunteers who would help us to make this event a good experience for themselves and everyone participating. Although there will follow a separate call for volunteers, we would be happy if you already could let us know if you decide to volunteer. We need volunteers for the doors, for moderation, for setting up and dismantling, as contact persons and for so much more ... we do our best to find something that fits your interests and skills.

Right now we look for volunteers to participate in the committee. This is your chance to be part of the committee that chooses among all submissions of this call for participation and therewith directly influence the agenda of the first FSFE summit. To apply, please write to summit2016@fsfe.org and start your subject with "[volunteer]". Please state that you like to be part of the committee, your mother tongue and a brief summary of your professional background and your connection to Free Software.

Contact & Communication

Send all your inquiries and proposals only to summit2016@fsfe.org at the latest by May 29, 23:59:59 CEST and please start your subject with the tag “[CfP]”

• please spread our Call for Participation on the Internet, on mailing lists and by word of mouth. Use the Hashtag #FSFEsummit and the picture on top. Thank you!

• Any other input for the FSFE summit 2016 is welcome at the same address: summit2016@fsfe.org.

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