India Foss 4 -what's happening behind the scenes around talk selection?

[Ganeshaaa]

I was wondering the org could start publishing the logic behind talk selection for IndiaFOSS 4? In my view FOSS United has a unique opportunity to lead in this front.

I really loved seeing various submissions for the bengaluru chapter city event. As per my limited knowledge, no other conference in India does this.

Is this a reasonable ask?

[ansh]

I really loved seeing various submissions for the bengaluru chapter city event

This is what you’re looking for -

All

The talks are reviewed by an independent review team. The reviews were previously public but we have now hidden them since some proposers started reaching out to the reviewers on social media in response to feedback on their proposal. The team is working on making reviews anonymised

[ansh]

We also conducted mock presentations this year to make final decisions. More context in this post -

Talk Proposal guidelines for a FOSS Conference

The final step in selecting talks for IndiaFOSS 2024 was mock presentations from the potential speakers. On a tangential note, we invited the community to sit in on the mock presentations and provide feedback to the potential speakers. It was a last-minute decision but given the response we received, we will be actively seek a larger reviewer pool, who can also sit in on the mock presentations for IndiaFOSS 2025. I attended almost all of the mock presentations to provide feedback to the speakers…

[Ganeshaaa]

The reviews were previously public but we have now hidden them since some proposers started reaching out to the reviewers on social media

Fair enough,

–
Minor feedback:

I was unable to navigate to the CFP page from the event page, or the schedule.

For future events an acknowledgement of all the talk proposals in a privacy friendly way would be nice. I feel FOSS communities will become stronger by acknowledging contributions.

[Ganeshaaa]

Amazing! I’m not sure how I missed this, but the guidelines are solid!

Improving public participation mentioned by @rahulporuri is also a cool idea

@rahulporuri

It was a last-minute decision but given the response we received, we will be actively seek a larger reviewer pool, who can also sit in on the mock presentations for IndiaFOSS 2025

[rahulporuri]

@Ganeshaaa

As per my limited knowledge, no other conference in India does this.

We aren’t leading but simply following in the footsteps of people who have paved the path before us. See https://in.pycon.org/cfp/2024/proposals/ for PyCon India proposals and for all PyCon India proposals Welcome to junction. HasGeek has also been publicly displaying proposals for the various conferences that they organize e.g. सबमिशन – Continuous Reliability - CFP

[rahulporuri]

@Ganeshaaa

I was unable to navigate to the CFP page from the event page , or the schedule .

The event landing page was recently updated to redirect from the proposals page to the schedule landing page. After the event is complete, we will re-add the full proposals page back to the event landing page.