GUADEC call for papers announcement draft

Hello
We agreed a while back that the GUADEC call for papers would close on
23rd April this year, so we need to announce the call for papers very
soon. We are hoping to put out an announcement on Monday (20th March).

The regcfp instance at https://registration.guadec.org/ is ready to
accept paper submissions, in fact it already accepts them so feel free
to submit a test talk or two. Let me know who should be able to view
all talk submissions and I can add the relevant permissions, all I
need to know is the person's email address. If you're not sure which
one to use, log in to registration.guadec.org and check the header at
the top which will show what email address you're logged in with.

The local team want to make sure that we receive a broad range of
talks; some folk I've spoken to locally think that GUADEC talks must
all be directly related to GNOME which I don't think is true. It's
also interesting to hear about other desktop environments, other work
to do with digital rights and software freedom, other industries that
use similar technologies, etc. So I wanted to write a draft CfP based
on last year's that emphases that, but I got totally stuck and gave
up. Instead, here's a draft which is basically last year's
announcement with the dates and location changed. The announcement
last year was great already but I am interested if anyone has thoughts
on how to make it clearer that you don't have to be an established
GNOME contributor to give an interesting talk at GUADEC.

Currently in registration.guadec.org the options are for 30 minute or
45 minute talks. I notice in the call for papers it offers 25 or 45
minute talks. Which should we do this year?

Also, when will we notify about accepted talks?

Here's the draft (based on
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2016-April/msg00030.html
)
----------

Hello everyone,

This year, the GNOME project's annual European conference will be
taking place in Manchester, UK. Happening between 28th July and 2nd
August, it will be the biggest and most important GNOME event of 2017.
Everyone is welcome to attend - see the GUADEC 2017 website [1] for more
details.

GUADEC brings together GNOME users and developers for discussion and
debate of current topics, including:

* Design of the user and developer experiences
* Integration of the operating system plumbings into the core UX
* Application development and deployment
* Use of GNOME technologies outside of the desktop
* Outreach to new contributors
* Organisation and governance of the project

Talk proposals outside these categories are also welcome, provided that
they are relevant or inspirational to the GNOME community.

You will be able to chose between a short (approximately 25 minute) and
long (approximately 45 minute) talk slot when submitting your proposal.

The call for talks will have the following timeline:

  1. Sunday, April 23th: deadline for submitting your talk proposals
through registration.guadec.org
  2. ??????????: speakers will be notified if their talk has been
accepted
  3. July 28th-30th: core conference days in Manchester, England

Please submit your proposals before April 23rd through the online
submission system available on the GUADEC website:
https://registration.guadec.org

Talk proposals will be reviewed by the papers team between April 23rd
and ??????

A separate call for lightning talks, birds of a feather sessions and
hackfests will be made later.

The papers team is looking forward to your talk proposal. In case of
questions regarding the call for talks, please contact the papers team
at guadec-papers@gnome org. For general questions regarding the
conference, please consult the GUADEC web site[1] or contact the local
GUADEC organizing team at [email protected].