This is a SOP for invited talks /speakers at FOSS United events. This is currently how talks happen at our events -
A public Call for Proposals (CFP) is opened and shared within the community.
Interested folks can submit a proposal.
A distributed CFP review team of volunteers goes through the submitted proposals, evaluating the quality of the content, and its alignment with our proposal guidelines.
The volunteers vote on the proposals (yes/no/unsure) and proposals are sorted by approvability.
The reviews are sent to the team of volunteers who then take the final decision on approving/rejecting the talks based on the duration of the meetup and other criteria.
While this has been working well for the most part, organisers some times want to invite speakers who have done exceptional work in the FOSS ecosystem and whose experience would make for a good talk at the event. In our experience, at times these folks may not
want to sign up on the platform/submit a talk
be familiar with our events and the review process
go through the proposal guidelines
This usually results in proposals that do not pass the review process. Since we conduct double blind reviews, and the foundation team currently acts as a bridge between the organisers and reviewers, this creates additional confusion.
We understand the difficulties it creates for the volunteers and reviewers, and to simplify this process, we are proposing a few guidelines for inviting speakers that may not submit (detailed) proposals.
The organiser will inform the review/foundation team about the speaker’s background and their work.
If there is mutual agreement that the speaker’s work is worth giving them the platform and that the talk will be valuable for the attendees, the organisers will then ask to send in a proposal. This could be through the platform or just sending the content on email.
While this is pretty much similar to the usual process, the only difference is that the review is not blind. The reviewers will know who the speaker is. This is also not awkward for organisers since there is already consensus that the talk is good to go. The standard review process still happens, but no such situation arises wherein you invite a speaker only for their proposal to get rejected. The reviewers will still share suggestions etc. on the content, but the talk is generally considered approved.
Note that the final proposal is still supposed to be well written and detailed, so participants know what they can expect from the talk.
This is actually a good idea. While the proposal can still be reviewed and edits suggested, it would make it easier to invite people who are doing exceptional work in FOSS without having the awkwardness of getting their proposal rejected blindly.
My only suggestion would be to either have a dedicated section in the events dashboard for invited talks or have a separate mailing list or something where we can propose and get them reviewed.
Typically, “invited talks” is an editorial decision in the first place. It should be taken with prior knowledge of the invitee’s known work, including presentation skills. Invited talks are typically in the speaker’s known areas of expertise.
I would recommend that a review for presentation be done if the review committee cannot find existing public speaking examples. In today’s world I would consider this is less likely, meriting a serious reason for invite. Review for content fit may be considered in case the invited speaker will speak in an area which they aren’t known for. Requests for such “change of subject” could come from the speaker. It may cover new work, or ideas they may be working on.
I think there used be a way to source suggestions for invited talks, direct from the audience. Effectively it’s like, “hey it would be great to invite XYZ to talk in this conference. ABC is their body of work and you can see some of their talks at DEF. And the reason this fits in the conference agenda is __”. Such suggestions can evaluated by the review committee.
All in all, a good program/review committee is a source in itself for suggesting invited talks, supplemented by external suggestions.
EDIT: independent of who suggests “invited talks”, the criteria is the same. Who is the speaker, their body or work, samples of presentation (ideally), and fitment of their work with the event agenda.
The below are suggestions based on my understanding and personal opinion.
Suggestions
Skip the Blind Review for Invited Speakers.
If an organizer invites a speaker, they should be able to approve the talk directly, since the organizer has already vetted the speaker and their work.
Proposal Management by Organizers.
Allow organizers to create or manage profiles for invited speakers, submitting the proposal on their behalf to ensure clarity and alignment with community expectations.
Slot Limitation.
If there are 3 talk slots and one is reserved for an invited speaker, the blind review team would review only 2 slots, leaving the third for the invited speaker.
This would simplify the process while maintaining transparency for the community.
I think there are people who have no interest in talking and it is the interest of the event to have them speak. A review in this makes no sense. You can have a process before you invite someone (maybe get the approval committee to say yes). Once you invite, there should be no confusion about if they will speak or not.
Thank you for the comments everyone, broadly summarising all suggestions here.
Display invited talks seperately in the proposals page.
Ensure mock reviews are done for the talks, invited or otherwise. (This has already become a hard and fast rule for IndiaFOSS, but I wonder if we have the bandwidth to carry this out for city conferences, and even meetups.)
There should be a way for the community to nominate speakers that can be invited to the events. (note - we already do this for IndiaFOSS [Planning] IndiaFOSS 2024)
Organisers/Volunteers should be able to manage profiles/proposals submitted by/on behalf of invited speakers.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I think it’s time to throw this into https://docs.fossunited.org/event-cfp/ - happy to add it myself if you don’t have the bandwidth @ansh
The “invited talks” tag is an honour and recognition - bigger the event, bigger the honour. It is not to be bestowed lightly. And it’s a sensitive topic. You can’t “invite a speaker” and then question their credentials by asking for mock review in their area of expertise - that’s plain disrespectful. Doing that can bring disrepute to the events/orgs as well. I’d advise not playing with that fire, especially when you deal with academia.
Happy to put you in touch with people who run reputed conferences (and deal with both academia and industry). Good invited talks can only happen with bandwidth and/or expertise. Happy to discuss this in-person!