Call For Proposals (CFP)

Open Source Days, hosted by Academy Software Foundation, is the leading event dedicated to open source software for visual effects, animation, and digital content creation.

Join us in person or virtually to hear from visual effects/animation studios, software vendors, and other professionals about emerging open source projects, best practices, and the latest updates to popular open source projects.  

We welcome submissions on any topic related to open source software for visual effects, animation, or digital content creation. Talks should not be sales pitches or product promotions.

The Open Source Days audience is mainly software engineers and developers working on vfx and animation. 

If you aren’t ready to submit, view the Call for Papers form to help you prepare.

Contact cfp@linuxfoundation.org with any submission questions.

• CFP Closes: Friday, June 9 at 11:59 pm PDT
• CFP Notifications: Tuesday, June 20
• Schedule Announcement: Wednesday, June 21
• Slide Due Date: Thursday, August 3
• Event Dates: Sunday, August 6

• Pipeline tools and technologies
• Computer graphics and imaging 
• AI and machine learning
• Virtual production
• Metaverse
• Open source software in production
• Open source project updates 
• Emerging or new open source projects that are relevant for vfx and animation (submit as a lightning talk)
• Open source best practices  
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Education and mentorship

• Session Presentation (30 minutes in length)
• Multi-presenter Session (30 minutes in length)
• Panel Discussion (40 minutes in length)
• Lightning Talk (10 minutes in length)

• All presentations will be recorded and posted publicly after the event.
• All speakers are required to adhere to our Code of Conduct. We also highly recommend that speakers take our online Inclusive Speaker Orientation Course.
• Complimentary Passes For Speakers – Complimentary passes for the event will be provided for the accepted speaker(s) per submission.
• Avoid sales or marketing pitches and discussing unlicensed or potentially closed-source technologies when preparing your proposal; these talks are almost always rejected due to the fact that they take away from the integrity of our events, and are rarely well-received by conference attendees.
• All accepted speakers are required to submit their slides prior to the event.
• You can view the submission form to help you prepare and contact the cfp team with any questions.

While it is not our intention to provide you with strict instructions on how to prepare your proposal, we hope you will take a moment to review the following guidelines that we have put together to help you prepare the best submission possible. To get started, here are three things that you should consider before submitting your proposal:

1. What are you hoping to get from your presentation?
2. What do you expect the audience to gain from your presentation?
3. How will your presentation help better the ecosystem?

There are plenty of ways to give a presentation about projects and technologies without focusing on company-specific efforts. Remember the things to consider that we mentioned above when writing your proposal and think of ways to make it interesting for attendees while still letting you share your experiences, educate the community about an issue, or generate interest in a project.

How to Give a Great Talk

We want to ensure submitters receive resources to help put together a great submission and, if accepted, give the best presentation possible. To help do this, we recommend viewing seasoned speaker Dawn Foster’s in-depth session titled Overcoming Imposter Syndrome to Become a Conference Speaker!

Have More Questions? First Time Submitting? Don’t Feel Intimidated

Linux Foundation events are an excellent way to get to know the community and share your ideas and the work you are doing, and we strongly encourage first-time speakers to submit talks for our events. If you aren’t sure about your abstract, reach out to us, and we will be more than happy to work with you on your proposal.

The Linux Foundation is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for participants at all of our events. We encourage all submitters to review our complete Code of Conduct.