Open House tomorrow on home gardening, The Fifth Elephant CfP opens, updates from Rootconf, 50p hacknight, and more!
The HasGeek Newsletter ✉️ — Mar 9th
TL;DR
- Call for proposals for The Fifth Elephant is open. Submit a talk.
- Call for proposals for AnthillInside(formerly known as Deep Learning Conf) is open. Submit a talk.
- Some of us from Rootconf are coming to Mumbai(March 19th) and Belgaum(March 25th).
- Kilter Meetup in Mumbai with Mehul Ved and Pravin Dhake on March 19th. RSVP here.
- 50p hacknight with CashlessConsumer on 8th April. Details here.
- Kilter Open House tomorrow on growing your own food. RSVP here.
- HasGeek Open House next Friday on how to improve diversity in tech. RSVP here.
Call for Proposals for The Fifth Elephant and AnthillInside (AI)
Last date for submissions — 30 April, 2017
We have opened the call for proposals for The Fifth Elephant and AnthillInside (formerly Deep Learning Conf). Here are a few things to note:
- The Fifth Elephant is scheduled on 27–28 July, at the MLR Convention Centre, Whitefield. We simply need a venue with halls of equal sizes to accommodate everyone. We’re sorry that you have to commute to get to the conference, but we hope this will be worth your while.
- The Fifth Elephant is a three track conference this year. We have the usual two tracks — data engineering and application of Machine Learning across domains, in real life. Additionally, we have a third track on data and analytics in payments on day 1, and data in government on day 2. These focused tracks will help us address questions around diversity of data, and emerging concerns around privacy, in a more nuanced manner.
- Last year’s Deep Learning Conf is now emerging as a separate community. We have rebranded it as AnthillInside (AI). More on the backstory of the name in next week’s newsletter. :)
- Submit your proposals here: https://fifthelephant.talkfunnel.com/2017
- AnthillInside is the space for conceptual discussions around machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence. Effectively, AnthillInside brings theoretical advances closer to functioning reality, thereby bridging the gap.
- AnthillInside is on 30 June, 2017, at the NIMHANS Convention Centre. If you attended the Deep Learning conference last year, we really want to hear from you what we should differently with AnthillInside this year. This is your conference; you must participate in helping us put it together.
- Submit your proposals here: https://anthillinside.talkfunnel.com/2017/
- Over the years, we have had attendees tell us what topics to cover at The Fifth Elephant. Last year, one of our attendees — Vishal Gokhale — put together two talks on ML in environment and tiger conservation. This is the form of participation that makes The Fifth Elephant a vibrant space for discussing new, and unknown ideas.
- Lastly, we want to ensure that more women, persons of non-binary genders (including transmen and transwomen) and persons from Asia and Africa submit proposals for both conferences. Help us in this effort by promoting the CfP among communities where these groups congregate. Make introductions with potential speakers / proposers.
Rootconf updates; workshop tickets to open shortly
- Our promise was to come up with the draft schedule by 28 February. We are running two weeks late because one of our editors met with an accident. We promise to have more solid updates on selected talks by next week.
- Tickets for the following two workshops will open on Friday, 10 March. Limited seats are available for both. Make sure you reserve your seat before tickets sell out.
https://rootconf.talkfunnel.com/2017/35-saltstack-and-ansible-beginner-to-advanced
https://rootconf.talkfunnel.com/2017/3-deploying-and-monitoring-containers-with-kubernete - We have a new and happy addition to Rootconf this year. The Linux Foundation has joined hands with Rootconf to put together a track on platforms and technologies on 11–12 May. Next week, we will announce the plan for the platforms track — which includes talks, 101 sessions, and live coding at Rootconf to quash bugs and contribute to open source projects. Are you a contributor? Are you a committer? If yes, please send us a note on editorial@hasgeek.com so that we can involve you in putting together the coding space and 101 sessions at the Platforms track.
- The Platforms track CfP will open tomorrow. Watch https://rootconf.in/2017 for updates.
- The Rootconf CfP will close on 10 March. Proposals for round 2 have been few and have left us wanting for more. I hope we don’t have to extend the deadline again. Help us to release the schedule on 31 March. Submit your proposals and get those in your DevOps circles to do the same.
- Some of us from Rootconf are coming to Mumbai and Belgaum this month to talk about scaling, infrastructure and site reliability engineering. Drop by and help us in building a relevant conference, and understanding the concerns and challenges that DevOps face today.
- RSVP for the Mumbai meetup happening on 19th March here:
https://rootconf.in/2017/rootconf-mumbai-meetup - RSVP for the Belgaum meetup happening on 25th March here:
https://rootconf.in/2017/rootconf-belgaum-meetup - Finally, as members of the Rootconf community, we have one responsibility: we need to make sure that we have more and more women, persons of non-binary genders (including transmen and transwomen) and persons from Asia and Africa submit proposals for the conference, and for the Platforms track. Help us in this effort by promoting the CfP among communities where these groups congregate. Make introductions with potential speakers / proposers. If diversity is the mandate for our conferences, let’s take it upon each one of ourselves to reach out to people of diverse backgrounds, biologies and cultures.
Health and fitness for DevOps, in Pune
DevOps are among the most stressed lot in our technology industry. We are always dousing fires and responding to emergencies. As a result of this continuous emergency response system, our lifestyles are among the worst. We eat unhealthy food. Our sleep patterns are skewed to the point of our bodies bearing the impact constantly. Our habits are more or less sedentary because our bodies are no longer in shape.
On 19th March, Mehul Ved, a member of our Rootconf community, will speak about his journey towards health, fitness and metrics, in Mumbai. Mehul’s journey is an important indicator to us that we need to take our lives in our hands.
RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/165374023975716/
If you are in Mumbai, please make sure to attend Mehul’s talk. In general, let’s make a conscious attempt to start chalking our roadmap of health and fitness. Join the #Kilter channel on friends.hasgeek.com. Contribute to blog.kilter.in if you have a story (backed by evidence) to share. Let’s make our DevOps community healthy. Our lives are far greater than emergency responses.
Kilter Open House on Home Gardening
In today’s hectic lifestyle, it can be quite relaxing to pluck fresh vegetables from the garden. You can setup your own garden on a terrace or even a balcony. Nurturing your plants helps you develop a deeper relationship with food. Come join us tomorrow, 10th March to hear and share your wonderful experiences on growing your own food and composting.
RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/267251413710160/
HasGeek Open House on how we can build diversity in tech.
Susan Fowler’s story of discrimination and bias faced at Uber has clearly rocked the technology industry. Did we really have to wait until someone as competent and renowned as Susan Fowler brought the skeletons out of the closet?
We’ve heard several stories of bias and discrimination, and voices speaking up. What’s our roadmap for incorporating diversity as a culture in our companies? This roadmap simply cannot be about hiring more women engineers. It has to go beyond the usual CSR initiatives. We have to change mindsets.
What do we need?
- First, a recognition of the fact that for diversity to be a part of the organization’s culture, startup founders and company leaders have to recognize, accept and promote diversity actively.
- Second, recognize and acknowledge our personal biases. For e.g., when I think of an international speaker for a HasGeek conference, the figure that immediately comes to my mind is that of a white (engineer) man. And then I seek out white men to fill in the ‘quota’ of international speakers. Recognizing this bias in outreach has now made me sensitive about how I reach out, and who I reach out to.
- Lastly, at least two people said this to me in this week: one, engineers love the word meritocracy without recognizing that not all people are at the same starting points in their lives, careers and privilege. Women do have a disadvantage in this respect and that disadvantage is real. Trans sexuals perhaps have it worse than women. Second, hiring practices are wrong, in the first place. Confidence in an interview is not an indicator of competence. Again, in this respect, men have it easier than women.
The Diversity Open House is an open discussion to launch HasGeek’s diversity campaign across all our conferences, events and gatherings. We want our community to be involved in this effort, actively, and help us set the bar for diversity which can truly inspire startups and companies to take honest steps towards incorporating diversity in the mindsets of the organization. We need to move beyond numbers, and that onus is on all of us.
That’s it from us, have a great Thursday!
P.S. — Friends of HasGeek is our community Slack team — You can join the community here. You can find me as @karthik.
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