SFC will be hosting a community oriented conference this coming summer August 6th - 9th, 2026 at UBC in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Focused on the creation and impact of free and open source software, uplifting contributors of all experience. We plan to have 8 tracks of talks over 4 days and to dedicate a substantial portion of these track to community run tracks, similar to the DevRooms at FOSDEM or the miniconfs at LinuxConfAU. We'd like to invite you (and your small team, ideally 2 or 3 people) to run a track based on a topic you're all passionate about. If selected, your team will be responsible for inviting speakers, selecting talks and organising the schedule for your track. If that sounds good to you, please fill in the form to tell us more about your team's idea. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to email us at conference@sfconservancy.org.
Please understand that organizing a track is a signficant amount of work, and while we'll be so grateful for your contributions, depending on sponsor sign ups we are unlikely to be able to pay stipends or fund travel for speakers or organizers of your track (please let us know if travel is burdensome for you as an organizer). Given the high work load of organizing a conference track, we expect at least two people to be responsible (see primary and secondary proposer's below). Feel free to include more later, but we need at least two people for the proposal. Note when completing "Number of days" that there are normally 6 talks per day per track.
Please fill out the questions below to apply. We want the conference to appeal to a wide audience, so are looking for tracks ranging from specific technical topics and people-focused themes, to the collaborative future of free software. We'd like to see a diversity of both niche and general topics that allow people from different backgrounds to participate.
The deadline for submission is Friday March 13th 2026.