We are now accepting proposals for talks.
We’ve also added discussion about what we like to see in a proposal, and what makes us reject proposals.
Web Site, CFP, and Sponsors
We need you.
While sponsorships have started to arrive, we have several potential large sponsors and are honing our pitch to them. They want to know how BSDCan has changed both people and organizations. I don’t know how often I’ve seen some bewildered first-time attendee asking someone about their problem and be led to the person who created the code responsible. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen that same newcomer standing in a tight group with a handful of other users and developers discussing exactly how the software should function. Many times, I have seen that same “bewildered newcomer” return the next year to present on their solution for the problem.
I know many people who found employment via BSDCan.
I know of many companies that decided to use BSD software, came to BSDCan seeking guidance, and learned we could solve not only the problems they knew about but ones they hadn’t yet considered.
Potential sponsors want these testimonials.
If you or your organization are one of them, and you’re willing to go on the record saying that BSDCan changed your life for the better, please send us a brief testimonial. You can comment below (please sign your real name, not “DeathDaemon1999” or whatever your handle is), or email it to me at mwl at mwl dot io.
In other news: all web sites are painful, but sites from 2004 are differently painful.
We now have a functional 2024 web site on the new team’s infrastructure. It’s the same old BSDCan web site we all know and, supposedly, love. I’m not knocking Dan; this is how it was done, back in the day. Bringing this site up has really driven home that the operations team includes zero front end people. We would really like to archive the historical sites and start over, but have no good options for doing so. (Yes, we could slam up WordPress and get something running, but I said good options.) We need something that can easily be replicated and archived year after year, but works well on mobile devices. If you’re a web designer who regularly attends BSDCan and want to get involved, do drop Lucas a note at mwl at mwl dot io.
The CFP was supposed to be live 1 December. You’ve probably noticed it isn’t. David is working hard, and we should have a submission system ready soon. When it’s ready you’ll see it here, and on the announcements mailing list and the various social media sites.
At a vendor meeting last month, Dexter spoke with several prospective sponsors. We’ve implemented their suggestions, and simplified the sponsorship tiers and created a handy brief explaining why people should sponsor BSDCan. We’re approaching potential sponsors hat in hand, but you can do that same. If your employer uses any BSD-adjacent technology, such as OpenSSH or OpenZFS, our conference aligns with your business interests. While I’d love to have a single $50,000 sponsor, ten $5,000 sponsors is far more sustainable. Getting your company immortalized in the conference videos is the kind of publicity money can’t buy—except it can. If you’d like to help us restart without full-on sponsoring us, we’re taking donations via Paypal at funding@bsdcan.org.
BSDCan is now an Ontario non-profit corporation. This simplifies a whole bunch of stuff, at the cost of Allan and Colin doing extra paperwork. Everybody but Colin and Allan are fine with this, and those two don’t mind too much.
Things are coming together. I expect this month to have an extra blog post once the CFP launches.
(MWL, for the ops team)