[[!meta title="Call for Proposals"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2020 Amin Bandali, Sacha Chua, David Bremner"]]
Update 2020-09-14: Added timezone information (9am to 5pm
Toronto/EST). Moved CFP end date to October 7, 2020.
**EmacsConf 2020 | November 28 and 29, 2020 | Online Conference**
The Call for Proposals for EmacsConf 2020 is now open, until
**October 7, 2020**.
After a successful [[EmacsConf 2019|2019]], we are back again this
year and are once again calling for your participation!
EmacsConf is the conference about the joy of [Emacs][emacs], Emacs
Lisp, and memorizing key sequences.
We are holding EmacsConf 2020 as a virtual (online) conference again
this year, especially now, given the current state of the world with
the ongoing global pandemic. We remain fully committed to freedom,
and we will continue using our infrastructure and streaming setup
consisting entirely of [free software][freesw], much like the last
EmacsConf.
We welcome speakers of **all backgrounds** and **all levels of
experience**, including newcomers submitting a proposal to give their
first talk!
### Important dates
Mark your calendars: EmacsConf 2020 will take place on November 28-29!
We're planning for 9am to 5pm Toronto/EST (2pm-10pm UTC, 3pm-11pm
Zurich/CET). Depending on people's availability, it might be two
half-days.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left">CFP opens</td>
<td colspan="2" align="right">August 24, 2020</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left">CFP closes</td>
<td colspan="2" align="right">October 7, 2020 (new date)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left">Speaker notifications</td>
<td colspan="2" align="right">October 14, 2020</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left">Schedule published</td>
<td colspan="2" align="right">November 7, 2020</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left">EmacsConf 2020!</td>
<td colspan="2" align="right">November 28 and 29, 2020</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Please note that although we will try our best to stick to the above
dates in the coming months, given the current state of the world, we
may have to move things around a bit in case of unforeseen events.
Thank you for bearing with us as we all navigate these trying times.
<a name="formats"></a>
### Talk formats
The following are the main formats for EmacsConf 2020 talks:
- **10 minutes** (Lightning talk): Quickly present a cool project,
concept, or trick in 10 minutes or less!
- **20 minutes** (Standard talk): Introduce the audience to a new
Emacs mode, concept, or just talk about something not necessarily
shiny and new but that you find really neat nonetheless.
- **50 minutes** (Extended talk): Take your time going more in depth,
and/or do a demo! Extended talks are a great way of really
educating the audience about something you enjoy.
We hope to have lots of great submissions this year, just like last
year. In order that as many people as possible can present, it helps
if presenters can be flexible about their time slots. So, for
non-lightning talk submissions, please let us know besides your main
preferred format if a shorter format would also work for your talk.
Q&A time is **included** in the Standard and Extended time slots;
please time your presentation accordingly. If you would like to take
questions live, we recommend aiming for a 15-minute presentation for
the Standard time slot, and for 40-45 minutes for the Extended time
slot. However, as the speaker, the exact allocation of your time is
up to you, so long as it does not exceed the allocated time slot.
Other session formats such as tutorials, workshops, and hangouts are
welcome as well, especially considering all that is going on around
the world, in case you would find those other formats preferable to a
traditional talk format. If you are interested in these or other
session types, please get in touch with us publicly or privately; we
will be happy to work something out with you.
To help minimize disruptions in case of potential technical issues
that may arise during the conference, we ask that our speakers either
schedule a short tech-check with us, or submit a prerecording of their
talk (especially for lightning talks, where the allotted time slot is
rather small and any issues that cannot be resolved quickly will
greatly detract from the presentation). We will send an email about
this with more details further down the line.
Keynote speaker(s) for EmacsConf 2020 will be introduced in a future
announcement.
### Topic ideas
Not sure what to talk about? You might find some neat ideas on the
[[ideas]] page. Feel free to add yours there too! If you're still
not sure, come by our IRC channel `#emacsconf` on `chat.freenode.net`
and say hi. You can join the chat using
[your favourite IRC client][freenode-emacsconf], or by pointing your
web browser to [chat.emacsconf.org][chat] which runs our self-hosted
instance of [The Lounge][thelounge] free software web IRC client.
A great way to get started with writing a proposal is to start by
exploring the programs from previous years: [[2019|2019/schedule]],
[[2015|2015/schedule]], [[2013|2013#program]].
### Submission
Once you're ready to submit your proposal, the [[submit]] page has the
instructions on how to submit your talk.
All kinds of people use Emacs for all kinds of things. We would love
it if EmacsConf 2020 could highlight interesting perspectives and
reflect the diversity of our community. If you know someone who might
have a good idea for a talk, please reach out to them and encourage
them to submit a proposal. Many people (especially from
underrepresented groups such as women, people of colour, and
non-developers) might not consider themselves expert enough to share
their thoughts. If you let them know that you value their knowledge
and maybe even suggest something that you think others would like to
hear more about, they may realize that they have something worth
sharing and that we would love to hear from them.
This year, we are experimenting with an anonymized submission process.
Identifying information will be removed from submissions by a
conference organizer who will not participate in talk selection. The
anonymized submissions will then be reviewed by a selection committee.
We hope this will help reduce bias and encourage contribution. We
look forward to hearing from you (and the people you want to nudge to
speak)!
### Getting involved
If you would like to get involved with the various aspects of
organizing the conference, such as planning the sessions and helping
with the infrastructure, see our [[planning]] page and come say hi to
us at `#emacsconf` on `chat.freenode.net`.
Don't forget to subscribe to our mailing list,
[emacsconf-discuss][emacsconf-discuss], for discussion and
announcements about the EmacsConf conference.
We look forward to your ideas and submissions!
[emacs]: //www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html
[freesw]: //www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[chat]: //chat.emacsconf.org
[thelounge]: //thelounge.chat
[freenode-emacsconf]: ircs://chat.freenode.net:6697/emacsconf
[emacsconf-discuss]: //lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-discuss
