Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Call for participation

The call for participation of the Wikimedia Developer Summit has two objectives: If you have an interesting activity in mind, you are encouraged to propose it soon, gather interest around it inviting others to join, and update it often. The idea is to have a good conversation moving forward well beyond the Summit, allowing you to focus on the key discussions during the event. Your proposal might live after the event and until the problem you raised is solved, with further discussions and action points.
 * Pre-schedule the most appropriate sessions related to the main topics, based on the quality and interest of the proposals.
 * Gather interest around other activities hosted in the Unconference.

Propose an activity
By 2016-10-31, all proposals must have been submitted as public tasks following a common template in Wikimedia Phabricator. You will need a Phabricator account, which you can obtain simply by using your Wikimedia account. If needed, check Phabricator/Help.

Fill the form
"Note: You can also reuse an existing Phabricator task. Just apply the template and associate the task with the #wikidev17 milestone." Description:
 * Title: The catchy title that will appear verbatim in the schedule. No need to add context expressions like "Wikimedia Developer Summit session"
 * Assigned to: All sessions need an owner. If that person is you or someone you have agreed the ownership with, add the corresponding Phabricator username. Otherwise you can propose an activity and leave this field empty for now.
 * Tags: "Wikimedia-Developer-Summit (2017)" is automatically added. You should add other project(s) related with the topic of your proposal. Adding projects helps the people following those projects to know about your proposal. Again, avoid the risk of abusing this feature. If some project is missing, chances are that others will add it.
 * Subscribers: You can add here all the users you believe that should be aware of this proposal. Be respectful and avoid the risk of spamming people. In case of doubt, reach to the people you have in mind through other channels, inviting them to subscribe to this task themselves.

You will get a pre-filled template to help you structure your proposal:
 * Type of activity:
 * "Pre-scheduled session" (related to a main topic)
 * "Unconference session" (about anything)
 * "Social activity"
 * Main topic: Optional, only if your proposal is related to one of the main topics at Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Program.
 * The problem: A problem statement explaining why this is important and why it is appropriate for this event. Background information about previous discussions and attempts to solve this problems are crucial.
 * Expected outcome: What would be the ideal result after the Summit, the goal that anybody interested in this proposal should help pursuing.
 * Current status of the discussion: Explain where the discussion is at the moment of submitting the proposal. This field is expected to be updated as the discussion continues online before the event. When the event is finished, the conclusions should be added here.
 * Links: Connect this task to any related resources. If you want the discussion to happen in a place other than the Phabricator task itself, you have to link to the location for discussion prominently.

Promote your activity
As a submitter of a proposal, you are in a very good position to be the first one promoting it.
 * Invite the people, projects, fora that should be aware of your proposal and who should join the online discussion.
 * Encourage your peers to request an invitation to the event (there is an option to request travel sponsorship).
 * If your proposal is related to one of the main topics or another area emerging spontaneously, consider getting involved in their organization to assure that there is good participation and context around your proposal.

Selection process
The selection process is maintained by the Program committee.
 * 2016-10-31: Deadline for submitting a new proposal. Work-in-progress drafts are OK.
 * 2016-11-14: Deadline for defining a good problem statement, expectations, and links to relevant resources.
 * 2016-11-28: Deadline for consolidating a discussion, regularly summarized in the proposal.
 * 2016-12-12: The Program committee publishes the draft schedule. All participants registered are requested to sign up for pre-scheduled sessions that they would like to attend, and to report possible conflicts in the schedule.
 * 2016-12-23: The Program committee publishes the final schedule.

This selection process applies only to those sessions that aim to be pre-scheduled in advance. Unconference sessions will be scheduled by their owners on the spot, unconference style.

Proposals missing any of these deadlines will not be pre-scheduled. Their promoters will still be able to reshape them as Unconference sessions or topics to be discussed online, out of the Summit scope.