CFP

Southern California Linux Expo 2016 

The Linux Exposition of Southern California is proud to announce the 14th Annual Southern California Linux Expo -- SCALE 14X -- to be held on January 21-24, 2016 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles.

As SCALE has grown tremendously in the last few years, not only in terms of the attendee base but also the program tracks, events on Thursday/Friday, exhibitor booths etc., we have been looking at moving to a larger venue. This year marks a significant milestone in this direction. SCALE is going to be bigger and better than ever before!

SCALE 14X will have the following specialized tracks: 

  •  Developer - This track coves a broad range of topics related to kernel, file system, and application development.
  •  Hot Open Source Projects - This highlights popular Open Source projects started in the last year or two. 
  •  Cloud - This caters to to topics related to various Open Source Cloud related projects including but not limited to Openstack, Nebula, OVS, etc.
  •  Container and Virtualization - This track caters to Open Source virtualization including containers.
  •  Next Generation - This gives the Free and Open Source community youth leaders of tomorrow and users of today, the opportunity to spotlight their talents and ideas. This track is open to potential speakers aged 18 years and under.
  •  Newbie Speaker - To promote first time speakers, we have specifically added a new track to provide a forum for exposure and gain feedback from a large diverse audience. 
  •  Legal and Licensing - This track aims at educating and creating awareness on Open Source licensing and associated legal issues to be aware off when adopting or contributing to Open Source.  
  •  Mentoring - This track presents an opportunity for community leaders and experts from a variety of projects to share the knowledge and experiences they have gained from their respective projects.
  •  Security - This track covers all topics related to Open Source and security
  • Embedded - This track covers all topics related to Open Source Embedded hardware & software

In addition, we will have general tracks covering a wide range of topics related to Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) and open hardware. We invite you to share your work on FOSS programs and open hardware projects with the rest of the community, as well as exchange ideas with some leading experts in these fields. Details about previous presentations and activities at SCALE can be found at http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale13x.

Topics of Interest

We have listed some topics of interest below, with the caveat that depending on the talk content, any of the topics mentioned below could fit into any of the program tracks. The final placement of the accepted talks in specific tracks will be done at the discretion of the SCALE review committee. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Open Compute
  • User Experience 
  • Open Software Defined Networking
  • Open Source Security
  • Open Source Provisioning tools
  • Open Source Configuration Management tools
  • Open Source in the medical field
  • Open Source Web Development (Examples include PHP, Apache, mySQL, Zope, Jserv, Roxen, Zend,  etc.)
  • Open Source Mobile Device Development Platforms
  • In-depth Programming/Scripting with Open Source Languages (Examples include Perl, Ruby, Python, Shell-programming etc.)
  • Desktop/Server Operating Systems
  • Linux/Unix/Windows Inter-operability
  • Open Source Applications for BYOD 
  • Open Source Productivity Applications
  • Open Source Multimedia and Gaming
  • Tools for Profiling and Performance Tuning
  • Open Source Animation Tools
  • Open Source Database Platforms
  • Open Source Promotion and Adoption: Current State
  • Open Source Success Stories
  • Open Source for Big Data 
  • Commercialization of Open Source
  • Open Source Embedded Hardware & Software 

How to Submit a Proposal

If you are a registered speaker from a previous SCALE event, you can re-use your account from the previous SCALE submission and you don't need to sign up for a new account (and you can skip the next two paragraphs).

For first-time submitters, visit the "Create a new account" page and create an account to register the speaker by entering various details in the form such as name, affiliation, bio, email address of the speaker. Please ensure that the personal biography is not more than 1000 characters; focus on relevant experience to your proposal topic and write from the third-person perspective. Note that the contact email-address is the one that will be used to confirm the account creation and speaker registration. 

Once registration is complete, an email will be automatically sent to the email-address to set the password for subsequent access.

To submit a talk, please go to the link labeled Submit a presentation:

Enter the title for the talk, the intended audience, the proposed track for this talk (Cloud/System Admin/Developers/General etc.). Then provide a brief description of the main points to be presented. Provide additional details in the space provided. Also, include the names of all speakers that will present this session. Each speaker must be registered with the system before they can be entered in the "speaker" field.

Once the talk has been submitted, further edits to the submission can be made, if necessary, up to the CFP closing date by logging into the account with the credentials provided during registration. Be sure to include an email for the primary contact for the presentation. Important information will sent to that address.

For submitting multiple talks for the same speaker, the step above may be repeated; note that you don't need to register the speaker again.

Please notify us if the presentation will require a special technical set-up. The setup provided will include:

  • microphone
  • overhead projector
  • a laptop running Linux with a postscript viewer as well as OpenOffice

Presentations will be allotted a time slot of about 45 minutes. Please ensure that presentations are done in open non-proprietary format. In case you run into any problems during the submission process, for help, please email info@socallinuxexpo.org.

Proposal abstracts are reviewed by an expert committee and evaluated solely on merit. Given the number of high quality submissions received every year, we request that submission dates be strictly honored in order to provide the committee enough time to choose the best set of proposals.

Important Dates:

  • 10 June, 2015: CFP Opens
  • 30 Oct, 2015: Deadline for abstracts/proposals submissions
  • 30 Nov, 2015: Last date for notification of acceptance
  • 21 Jan, 2016: Conference starts