cfpTracker.md

CFP Tracker

As (potential) speakers, we have a number of ways to track CFPs through the year - Joind.In, CallingAllPapers, Twitter Feeds and various other websites and sources.

However, as a rule these rely on the conference organisers submitting to the source you use, or tracking all the different sources. This probably results in us missing CFPs - having been speaking to fellow speakers at PHPUK this year, I certainly know I've missed a bunch of CFPs that I could have submitted to, but didn't know about them (particularly ones outside the #phpc)

As a second 'problem', I know I lose track of which CFPs I have and haven't submitted to (particularly if the conference doesn't use something like OpenCFP), and I know other speakers have similar problems...

A (potential) solution

As a community of speakers (regardless of technology), our combined knowledge of conferences in our area (both geographical and technical) would work for us all better if we could combine it.

So, I'm looking to build a crowdsourced database of CFPs, which doesn't rely on the conference organiser to submit to (although of course they can), but will also combine information from other sources and be open to submissions from speakers as well.

As a secondary feature, I'd like to allow speakers to have an account so they can 'check off' the conferences they have submitted to (and store a list of the talks they submitted if they so wish), so they can keep track of CFPs they have and havn't submitted to.

Count me in!

Perhaps we can use CallingAllPapers as it's already aggregating the CfP-Infos from different sources and it's also possible to add a CfP via an API (actually all gathered CfPs are added via the API). So the Conf-Organisers don't need to add their conf to a further tool but the conf gets added automatically. But we can make adding further ones a possibility. Also adding a "publish CfP to callingallpapers"-button in f.e. OpenCfP would be a possibility.

A user-list is already thought about - currently for authenticating write-access to the API but that could be extended. That could be extended to allow users to keep track of conferences.

Currently Callingallpapers tweets about a closing CfP 24 hours before closing. With user-accounts we could allow people to set up notifications for selectable CfPs within a defineable Timeslot.

Already available is an iCalendar file that contains all the currently running CfPs.

Yes, doing it in CallingAllPapers had crossed my mind - as you say it wouldn't exactly be a big change, just the ability for anyone to submit a CFP (perhaps they would need to be reviewed/approved in the same way we do talks on JoindIn, but as long as we have a few people who can visit a URL and confirm it's valid, that's not a big problem), so it's just the ability to check of your submissions :)

That needs a new interface on the website where anyone can add a CfP and a second - admin - interface where allowed people can "sign" them off. Also CfPs need to be markeable as "not signed off". And the parser should not overwrite informations from a manually added CfP.

Yes, and that is where it could get tricky. We need to ensure we don't end up with duplicates, as that would totally kill it's usefulness, so we'll need to think about that.