We are happy to announce the second run of CityFOSS conferences. The first FOSS India tour (2022-23) saw FOSS conferences in the following 12 cities:
- KochiFOSS 2022
- DelhiFOSS 2022
- KolkataFOSS 2023
- DurgFOSS 2023
- NagpurFOSS 2023
- MumbaiFOSS 2023
- BhopalFOSS
- ChennaiFOSS 2023
- PuneFOSS 2023
- VadodaraFOSS 2023
- JaipurFOSS 2023
- HydFOSS 2023
- SolapurFOSS 2023
CityFOSS 2.0 (2024-)
Call for proposals
We will be kickstarting the second run of cityFOSS conferences in Feb 2024.
Every city chapter that wishes to host a cityFOSS conference has to make a detailed proposal highlighting their plans, date/schedule of event, and requirements. Proposals will be approved after taking comments from the community.
You may use the Conference Proposal Template for the same. The proposals are to be posted here as a reply to this thread.
Deadline for submission of proposals is 20th December,2023
Conference Standards
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Here are some guidelines to be followed whilst organising a CityFOSS conference
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Onboarding Volunteers: Organizing a conference is hard work and requires a considerable amount of effort and time. It is necessary to have a group of people working together to plan the conference with a fair division of responsibility.
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Communication: The organizing team can start by creating a Telegram group or any forum of choice, having all the volunteers or key volunteers in the group.
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CFP Review Team: A few active members from the community are volunteering to review the talk proposals for the conferences. Once the CFP is closed, the volunteers will review the talks within a week and share the selected proposals with the organizing team.
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Design: FOSS United will curate branding guidelines and design templates to ensure consistent visual branding across conference materials
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Event Grant and Ticket Charges: FOSS United will grant INR 25k to the organising team to host the event. The ticket amount received from the participants will also be transferred post tax deductions. In addition to that, FOSS United can send some swags (stickers,tshirts) as required.
The event grant amount is not set in stone naturally, since every city may have varying requirements. While we can help with any additional expenses that arise, if the organising team feels there is a requirement for more funds, they should be raised through the community, by getting support from local sponsors, the ticket prices can be determined accordingly as well (
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Partnerships and Collaboration: Organizers are encouraged to collaborate with the local community to spread the word. FOSS United will share a community partnership template with the organizer to create their own partnership document. Refer to the IndiaFOSS 3.0 community partnership prospectus for reference.
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Eco Friendly events: FOSS United has partnered with Let’s Be The Change team to ensure that are events are low waste. One volunteer from the organizing team should take responsibility for ensuring minimal wastage at the conference. The LBTC team will be training volunteers for the same. Refer to the announcement here.
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Encourage the local city community: The first CityFOSS tour mostly comprised of speakers who had to travel from far away cities to give their talks. To make this model sustainable it is an absolute requirement for the organisers to encourage folks local to the community to propose talks for the conference.
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Conference Tasklist: Please refer to the Tasklist for Conference Organisers for a rough idea on how to go about organising a conference.
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Planning track: It is very important for the organizers to mantain a detailed planning thread of the conference so as to keep the community in loop.Please refer to the HydFOSS planning thread and Planning IndiaFOSS 3.0 thread
An extensive checklist will be made available on the upcoming FOSS United platform so as to help organisers schedule tasks, divide responsibilities and keep track of the various tasks at hand.
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Code of Conduct: FOSS United will share a conference code of conduct with the organizers. This is to be mailed to the participants a day or two before the conference (perhaps along with confirmation of their participation) and read in the opening note of the conference. The participants can report any violations of the code of conduct to the on-ground volunteers,who will write down a formal report of the incident immediately and share it with the FOSS United team.
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Post Conference report: One volunteer from each team should document the happenings of the conference and curate a Post Conference Report in the forum. Refer to Post Mortem Report - HydFOSS
It is very important to track any outages from our end during the conference, this may include minor issues like some delay at the venue during entry, mistakes in the food order and major issues like CoC violations. A detailed report of these outages helps other volunteers learn from our mistakes and ensure this is not repeated.
- Recurring Calls for updates: A recurring call should be set up between the organising team and FOSS United to catchup on updates,ask queries etc. There should be at least one bi-weekly call starting from the event planning (frequency can be increased as we move closer to the event.)
Important Links:
- FOSS Conference Standards
- Talk Proposal guidelines for a FOSS Conference
- Telegram group for queries
- Conference Organizer Handbook
- Planning IndiaFOSS 3.0 thread
- Post Mortem Report - HydFOSS
- Tasklist for Conference Organisers
- Making FOSS United events low waste.
- CityFOSS Proposal Template
Edits:
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In reference to the discussion [here] [RFC] Converging IndiaFOSS and FOSS Hack - #10 by rahulporuri , please note that the cityFOSS tour being wrapped up by april was a rough assumption at our end and volunteers are free to conduct the conference later in 2024,later if they deem fit.
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Sponsors for cityFOSS conferences are not eligibigle for a talk slot.
