The talks working group has been working on clarifying of terms, a general call for contributions and we we have been discussing the idea of inviting speakers to Debconf. We wanted to write to the larger team about the invited speakers concept. The idea of inviting speakers to Debconf[0] is different from people proposing talks that they themselves intend to give. Rather invited speakers are those that we, as the organizers of Debconf, invite because we think that these people may bring an interesting perspective to the conference. The surrounding area (Boston, etc.) has a number of interesting people related to Free Software that have useful perspectives to share with the Debian community. They may not be working with Debian specifically, but are working on issues, or projects that are very closely related to Debian in significant ways. We would like to ask the larger localteam to brainstorm other people that you would like to see as invited speakers. The talks team then can work on coordinating that invitation, scheduling and logistics, etc. Think big, don't worry about the details, but remember that everything is only a *possibility*, so you should not be disappointed if whoever you really want to come cannot be invited, or cannot come at all. We'll work out the implementation details later, right now we are just looking for your unrestrained brainstorming ideas. There are a lot of details still to be worked out, and we will be working on those, for now we are just interested in other ideas from the larger community. Due to the scheduling nature of potential speakers, we decided that the earlier that invited speakers were invited the better. The talks working group has decided it wants to invite Eben Moglen as a speaker, but who do you think might be an interesting addition to Debconf? Micah 0. It should be noted that invited speakers are *not* keynotes. We had a long discussion about the idea of keynotes at Debconf, and felt that earmarking a specific person as a luminary, who is not necessarily part of Debian, and giving them a prominent talk slot, was too strange for the tight community that is Debconf.
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