IMPORTANT : OpenWest 2015 Call for Papers Redux

[Victor Villa]

Hello all,

I'm pleased to announce the Call for Papers is open for the OpenWest 2015 conference! The CFP will run from Dec 1, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015. You can submit your papers at:

http://cfp.openwest.org

The OpenWest conference is a community driven conference that focuses on all things Open Source, Open Hardware and Open Standards.  The community feel of the conference comes in a few ways:

1. Most of the presentations are from members of the local tech community.  While we do fly in national level speakers, the focus is on local community members working with awesome tech.

2. Many of the local User Group Leaders are or have been a member of the organizing group - Core Team.  This keeps the conference relative to the communities we represent.

3. Presentations are selected by the community.  Using only the Presentation Title and Description, attendees are able to vote on presentations they’d like to see.

To further enhance the community feel of the conference we're so happy to announce a few new initiatives:

* Speaker Mentoring - on request, we’ll pair you with somebody who can coach you to new levels of awesomeness! Your presentation will be a homerun!

* Focus Groups - a new type of presentation that is a break from the v. large presentations of 80+ people, a focus group is a CAPPED attendance presentation with a max of 25 attendees.  This type of presentation is for those who learn better working interactively with the presenter.  The room is configured in a circle for everybody to talk.

* OpenWest Unconference - sharing the spotlight with the normally scheduled conference we are dedicating space for spontaneous conference presentations by members of the community.

Lastly, as a community event, we feel strongly about our Code of Conduct ( http://www.openwest.org/code-of-conduct/ ) and our commitment to Diversity ( http://www.openwest.org/diversity/ ). 

Thanks to the community for helping us put this on!

Victor Villa

Utah Open Source