We’ve been really blown away by how many talk submissions we got in the final 48 hours of early decision (more than 2/3 of last year’s submission total). We’ve only just now completed going through those submissions. As a result, SELF is announcing the call for speakers (which closes at midnight ET tonight!) will be extended until 11:59 PM ET Wednesday. Submit your talk here. After reviewing the results of our brief survey on talk content, we’d like to particularly encourage you to submit on the following topics, since our attendees average rating on these subjects was over 4.0 on a 0-6 weighted scale where not knowing about it is 0 and thus a big penalty:
- Information Security (Pentesting, Defensive Strategies, Exploit Response, etc) (4.96)
- Homelab (Homebrew Firewall/NAS/Servers/etc) (4.95)
- Systems Administration and Orchestration (4.88)
- Network Administration/Networking (4.76)
- Open Source A/V (Kdenlive, Blender, Audacity, etc) (4.69)
- Python (4.61)
- Smart Home and IoT (4.39)
- Smarter You (Body Hacks, Organization, Ergonomics, etc) (4.24)
- DevOps (4.20)
- Golang (4.11)
- Database Administration (4.09)
- Community (Building, Org, Outreach, etc) (4.02)
But if you have something cool not listed, don’t be discouraged! We welcome all kinds of content, and have had popular talks on WWI Battleships, Ergonomics, Knitting, and more. If it’s geeky, we’re listening.
With all that out of the way, SELF is proud to announce our first keynote out of early decision:
Eric S. Raymond – Long-Term Trends in Open Source
It’s been 22 years since “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. Where we’ve been might tell us something about where we’re going. Today’s challenges include the ephemeralization of computers, the decline of C, open hardware, and increasingly dangerous information monopolies. What’s a hacker to do?
Stay tuned to SELF through email or social media or our website as we release our first draft schedule in the coming week and open registration soon thereafter!
