IndiaFOSS 2025 Proposal Reviewer Guide

IndiaFOSS Conference
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Your Role

As a reviewer, you will assess the proposal based on the checklist. The hope is that we will be able to have some back-and-forth with the speaker to help them improve their talks and get them to change their proposal into one we can accept, or to at least provide some valuable feedback (in the case we have to reject the proposal). Some speakers may not have read the guidelines at all or very carefully, this should not be sole grounds for rejecting their proposal, but we should reach out to inform the speaker how they can make some changes to their talk to meet our guidelines. Please note that this year especially we are trying to improve the technical depth of our talks at IndiaFOSS so don’t be reading these proposals only from the perspective of a first-year CS student.

Submission Quality & Guidelines Checklist

  • Proposal Content:

    • Concise, informative description.

  • Is the proposal overly long and clearly AI generated?

    • This isn’t grounds for rejection of the proposal. Ask the submitter to shorten and/or re-write it in their own words. We don’t want overly long proposals that AI wrote, we just need the essential details for the talk. We shouldn’t penalize people for using AI to help with grammar, spelling, organization, etc. But we don’t want to waste time putting more effort into reading a proposal than the proposer put into writing it.

  • Does the language seem inclusive? training.linuxfoundation.org/training/inclusive-speaker-orientation/
    heyguys.cc

  • Expected Talk Topics: Prioritize proposals that fall within these areas:

    • Projects: Introduction or updates on FOSS projects.
    • Tutorials: Practical tutorials on using FOSS tools.
    • Contribution: Guidance on contributing to FOSS (code, docs, community).
    • Development Practices: Insights into engineering practices (productivity, debugging) relevant to FOSS development.
    • FOSS Licenses: Analysis of FOSS licenses and policy.
    • FOSS stories: Compelling stories of FOSS project journeys.
    • FOSS involved in any of the following
      • Education
      • Social good
      • Science (we have a dedicated devroom for this, see below)
      • Public policy (we have a dedicated devroom for this, see below)
      • Government use
    • Dev Rooms: Quickly check if the proposal is a better fit for one of the devrooms. We have six of them each with a separate CFP detailing what type of proposals are accepted. If you sense a fit, you can refer this to the specific devroom.
      • Android Open Source Project (AOSP)
      • Compilers, Programming Languages and Systems
      • FOSS in Science
      • Geopolitics and Policy in FOSS
      • Open Data
      • Open Hardware

  • References: Did the speaker include relevant links to the software or other references?

    • Please evaluate these references! Is the project they are promoting really FOSS? What’s the license? Is it original work/code (if they are claiming it to be)?
    • If the speaker refers to a technology or project in the proposal they should link to. Please ask for links

  • Other Evaluation Criteria:

    • Speaker Expertise: Does the speaker seem qualified to present this topic?
    • Audience Fit: Is the topic appropriate and valuable for our expected attendees?
      • We want MORE technical talks at our conference this year. We do not want to water all of our talks down to make them more suitable for students/non-technical attendees.

  • Time allowance: Do you think this talk will fit in the allotted time, or should we suggest cuts or to shift it to lightning talk (10-15 min) or to move it up to a longer talk (20-25 min)?

Feedback Guidelines

Our goal is to provide helpful feedback but we aren’t responsible to give a defence for every talk that gets rejected. We have far too many proposals that come in for IndiaFOSS to have a full-on conversation with each submitter. We’ll aim to have at least 1 thorough comment on each proposal after our first round of rejections.

  • Content: Look for proposals that genuinely explore the benefits, challenges, and strategies for making FOSS accessible and beneficial to a wider audience, especially here in India.
    • Refer to the guidelines in your feedback as much as possible: Talk Proposal guidelines for a FOSS Conference & Meetup
    • Remember and refer speakers to the FOSS United mission statement or goals in your feedback: “FOSS United is a non-profit foundation that aims at promoting & strengthening the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ecosystem in India.”
      • To promote the spirit of hacking and tinkering.
      • To build quality FOSS for public good.
      • To evangelise the use of FOSS in different sectors.
  • Audience: Our attendees are primarily developers, software engineers, FOSS enthusiasts, educators, and students across various experience levels.
    • While there will be a diverse audience, we don’t want talks that just aim for the lowest common denominator. We should be encouraging and shepherding highly technical, world-class talks from experts at our conference. Even if some talks will go over the heads of 90% of the audience it will be very enriching for the dozens that will be able to follow along.
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