Welcome to the thirteenth year of our free—as in freedom and tea—grassroots technical summit!
Below are a variety of details regarding how to attend, what’s on the schedule, and where you can help. Please take a moment to read and share!
How to Attend
You can join us in-person on the University of Washington campus at the Husky Union Building (known as the HUB). Those not in Seattle, or otherwise occupied, are encouraged to participate remotely via Matrix.
As always, both options are free/gratis and registration is optional—just show up! However, this year we are providing an option to register without identifying yourself, which helps us estimate attendance.
Do note that all staff, presenters, and attendees of SeaGL are expected to obey the Code of Conduct not only at SeaGL but also in all SeaGL-associated spaces including but not limited to associated social events and virtual channels.
In-person attendees are also expected to obey the Health and Safety Policy for the duration of the conference. This includes requiring masks inside some but not all presentation rooms and encouraging them in other areas. If you don’t have your own we are providing them gratis.
Schedule
Each day of SeaGL will be packed full, with doors opening at 8am Pacific Time (PT) (16:00 UTC). There will be two keynote presentation per day at 9am PT (17:00 UTC), followed by over 40 presentations until 6pm PT (02:00 UTC).
For those attending in-person, on Friday Ada’s will be hosting an on-site Tech Book Sale running from 1:30pm to 4:00pm PT. On Saturday Resist Tech Monopolies will be hosting a DiscoTech from 1pm to 4:30pm PT where you can bring your devices and discover surviellance-free FLOSS tech alternatives. Additionally, each afternoon the Tea Tavern will host a tea break (TeaGL) at 3:30pm PT in the Expo Hall.
Friday night’s social will be at Ada’s Technical Books & Cafe beginning at 6:30pm PT and a cash bar will be available. There will be a live jazz band starting at 7:30pm PT, with pizza arriving shortly thereafter. The evening will end with a fundraiser auction for Seattle Community Network.
Saturday night’s social will begin with an hour long security mixer and keysigning party at 6:00pm PT, transitioning to Big Time Brewery & Alehouse which is walking distance from the event at 7:00pm PT.
Additional detail can be found in the schedule.
Please note, both of the evening socials have a capacity of approximately 80 people. If you find it too crowded, check-out the Hallway Matrix room to connect with other attendees who may be flocking to nearby venues.
We encourage everyone to get together, chat, and just generally share their SeaGL experiences. After all, people are the best part of Free Software.
If you share anything on your social network of choice, please use the #SeaGL2025 hashtag so everyone can follow along. You can also follow us on or for announcements and updates.
Volunteering
Don’t forget, SeaGL is a 100% volunteer run conference and we are always looking for more help! If you are interested in helping out during the event, please fill out our volunteer form.
Here are some of the at-event positions we’re looking for more help with:
- Room Monitors: introduce speakers (with their permission), perform room head counts, make sure speakers have everything they need, and ensure sessions run smoothly and finish on time.
- Sign-Wranglers: post up and take down signs in and around venue.
- Refreshment Aides: help with the set up, tear down, and clean up of coffee and tea breaks.
- Information Attendants: register attendees (if they want), check-in speakers and exhibitors, hand out programs, and provide directions and answers to questions.
- Virtual Hosts: keep an eye on the Matrix channels, identify content in need of moderation, reach out to in-person staff as needed.
We are also excited to welcome year-round volunteers who would like to continue helping out after the conference. If you’re interested in joining the flock, please reach out via Matrix or email.
See You Soon
That’s all for now. We hope to see you at SeaGL today, tomorrow, or in the not-too-distant future!
SeaGL tea-lovers rejoice, we are bringing back the TeaGL tea swap this year! Sign-ups are now open and will close on Friday, October 31st. The swap itself will take place during the afternoon TeaGL break on Saturday, just as people’s adrenaline is wearing thin from two straight days of talks and FLOSS fun. However, we welcome everyone to gather during the TeaGL break both days to enjoy a nice hot cuppa.
If you would like to participate in the tea swap, fill out this form and we will contact you before the event with details about your TeaGL buddy’s preferences. If you would prefer anonymi-tea, you can choose to keep your name private from your trade buddy.
We’re so excited to share this SeaGL tradition and all the keeping calm it entails!
We’re turning over our cards and revealing the schedule for SeaGL 2025!
While there may be some shuffling over the next week or so, you can find the full deck at:
https://seagl.org/schedule
With that, we hope to see you Friday, November 7th & Saturday, November 8th for SeaGL 2025, both virtually and in-person at the University of Washington!
As always, SeaGL is completely free to attend and no registration is required. However, if you would like to let us know that you’re coming, please fill out this brief attendance form. Also, if your company would like help to keep SeaGL’s mission going, we have a limited number of exhibition hall spots and would welcome their support. Reach out to sponsor@seagl.org for more details.
All speakers, sponsors, volunteers, staff, and anyone else involved in SeaGL are required to abide by the Code of Conduct, as well as the Health and Safety Policy.
Keynote Details
Both Friday and Saturday will begin with keynotes at 9am in Room 145 at the University of Washington HUB.
They will also be streamed live online for our remote attendees!
Evan Prodromou presents: “Free the Social Web”
Friday, November 7th, 2025. 9:10 am
As Free and Open Source Software enthusiasts, we sometimes concentrate on our own experiences with software, hardware and data. But in the world of social networks, our own computing is deeply intertwined with that of our friends and family, colleagues and neighbours. Open Web standards let us stay connected to people that matter to us while using and building free, private, and technically enhanced systems. And we might even change some hearts and minds along the way!
About the speaker: Evan Prodromou, @evan@cosocial.ca, he is the Research Director at the Social Web Foundation, where he helps develop and promote the ActivityPub standard.
Nadya Peek presents: “Challenges When Building Open Source Hardware”
Friday, November 7th, 2025. 9:40 am
Manufacturing hardware (devices, machines, objects) is a challenging task. High-volume sales can offset costs of production, but niche products struggle with viability. Distributed production of open source designs—having people build their own niche products—is a possible alternative.
In this talk, I will describe how digital fabrication like 3D printing, CNC milling, etc. can be used for distributed production and contrast that approach with centralized production. Through example open source hardware projects I will highlight design features that work well and less well, how community support is crucial for replication, and give recommendations for how to make more distributed production possible.
About the speaker: Nadya Peek, https://www.hcde.washington.edu/peek/, is an associate professor in the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington.
Saturday, November 8th, 2025. 9:10 am
The Seattle Community Network is a volunteer-based, grassroots, nonprofit community ISP with a small operating budget (currently averaging $10-$50K in grants, donations, or in-kind contributions per year) that installs and provides internet access for homeless shelters; the services we provide to our users is critical infrastructure for their daily lives. This talk discusses some of the core operational challenges we face, the software infrastructure we use to meet those challenges, and its limitations.
About the speaker: Esther Jang, https://estherjang.com/, she is the Director at the Local Connectivity Lab and founded the Seattle Community Network.
Allison Randal presents: “The River Has Roots: Lessons in Open Source”
Saturday, November 8th, 2025. 9:40 am
Open Source is software, hardware, a community, a development methodology, a resource, a charity, a business, a philosophy, and more than the sum of its parts. This reflection on decades of engagement in free and open source software and open hardware mixes a dash of history with an ounce of hope for the future.
About the speaker: Allison Randal, @allison@muon.social, is a free software and open hardware developer and the chair of the board at Software Freedom Conservancy.
Thank you to all who submitted a proposal for SeaGL 2025! We’re so delighted at the caliber of ideas we received this year!
Looking Ahead
The Programming & Flow Committee has begun the review process, with evaluations continuing through mid-August. We plan to notify all proposers of their proposal status by the beginning of September.
- August 1st - August 15th: Reviewers vote on proposals asynchronously
- August 15th - September 1st: Reviewers meet to decide which presentations are accepted
- September 1st: - Speakers are notified via email
Track Breakdown
Here is a peek behind the curtain at the distribution of topics proposed this year. In total, there were 90 submissions with the following counts for each track:
- Cloud and Infrastructure (27)
- Languages and Tools (14)
- Open-source AI and Data Science (10)
- Community and Culture (8)
- Systems and Platforms (8)
- Security and Privacy (7)
- Open-source Careers (6)
- Education (5)
- Performance Art (2)
- Everything Else (2)
- Hardware (1)
Although Cloud and Dev tools led the way, part of SeaGL’s magic is made by the wide diversity of ideas shared. From hard-hitting security deep dives to whimsical explorations of performance art; we enjoy hosting a collaborative mix spanning the practical, the social, and the creative!
Mask Policy
The SeaGL team continues to take health and safety concerns seriously and we are proud of our community’s care for one another. This year we asked for speaker preferences and with only 3 out of 90 proposals requesting a masked room, we’ve decided to lift our mandatory room masking requirement. However, we will continue to support sessions where the speaker request masks and we will continue to provide masks to anyone requesting them.
Details can be found on the health and safety policy page of our website. Please note that we will continue to monitor risk levels. Any policy updates that we publish before the event will not be less-restrictive.
FOSSY
SeaGL will be at the third annual Free and Open Source Software Yearly (FOSSY) conference in Portland, OR this year. If you’ll be at the event anytime between July 31st and August 3rd, please be sure to stop by our booth and say hello!