DebConf17/ContentTracks

What will tracks be like?

Tracks are a good way for conference attendees to plan their sessions, by choosing which topics they most relate to, and also to invite people to submit their talks related to others with a similar topic.

There are different ways of understanding tracks. Some people expect tracks to be pre-defined, and available for people to categorize their talk when submitting it. On the other hand, some people think of tracks as sub-conferences, where a person (the track coordinator) is in charge of a series of adjacent timeslots, and takes care of getting talks to fill the time they have, prepare the schedule of the track itself, and even rank the proposals and do talk selection in case they get more proposals than time.

We will try to do a middle road for this. Sketching out (this page should be finalised and reworded as such when the CfP is sent). Please help make the following list clearer and more readable:

• There are three track sizes: Full-day, Morning and Evening
  • Note that at this stage we haven't yet planned the schedule layout, but the durations will probably be 7, 3 and 4 timeslots — Or something similar.
• Track proposals are done by adding your track and your name(s) as coordinator to the table further down this page
  • Do send a mail to content@debconf.org to ensure we pay attention to your track as early as possible!
  • Track coordinators are expected to, well, coordinate the track during the conference itself — That is, to be a sort of moderators, to help flow from session to session, join as talkmeisters...
• Content team discusses and approves tracks as they appear — We will not hold the CfP until we get a final list of tracks.
  • You might want to suggest us already submitted talks to add to your track
• Content team will still review, rank and approve individual talks, regardless of tracks. Probably, the first set of announced talks will not include grouping by tracks — We have to discuss how to work out WRT schedule.
  • As a track coordinator, you can (should?) contact the content team by the time we do the talks rating and scheduling to see how the ideal lineup for your track would be. It will lighten the team's work, and make sure your opinion (as the expert on the matter of your topic) is considered.
• Content team might detect non-requested tracks as topics for which there are several grouped talks, and present them as a track (either with a coordinator or without)

Tracks for DC17

Track name	Coordinator	Notes
Blends	Andreas Tille
Debian Science	Michael Banck
Cloud and containers	Luca Filipozzi
Social context		Too many talks in it, will not be treated as a track
Packaging, policy and infrastructure		Too many talks in it, will not be treated as a track
Embedded
Systems administration, automation and orchestation
Security	Gunnar Wolf