Dream of hitting the stage and the beach? Your chance to shine—and skip winter—starts with Everything Open in sunny Canberra. Applications close soon, so don’t let this opportunity melt away.
If you like speaking at conferences — or just maybe always thought you would — you might want to give Everything Open 2026 a try. This is especially true if you’re the type person who spends all winter long pining for warmer climes.
This conference takes place in Australia on January 21-23, which is the height of summer in the land down under. I don’t think you need me to tell you what the end of January looks like for most of us here in the Northern Hemisphere — so that’s one thing that might get you packing to travel south to give a presentation or a workshop.
If you’re not familiar with the event, Everything Open is sort of a more local-to-Australia version of linux.conf.au, Australia’s gigantic open source event that attracted attendees for every corner of the Earth, as well as a few nooks and crannies that don’t qualify as corners.
Linux.conf.au started in 1999 and over the years featured everyone from Linus Torvalds to Jon ‘maddog’ Hall as speakers. It was finally laid to rest by the pandemic after its 2022 outing, and was replaced by a more ecologically sustainable conference geared toward regional — basically meaning Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania — attendees.
With the conference set to happen in just six months, this month the Call for Sessions is out but will close on August 31, which means you have something like six days left to apply. The good news is, you don’t have to worry about time zones if you’ll be applying at the last minute, since the deadline is on Anywhere on Earth time, which means if it’s still August 31 anywhere on the planet, your application won’t be returned.
“Everything Open welcomes submissions from first-time and seasoned speakers, from all free and open technology communities, and all walks of life,” the event says on its Call for Sessions page. “We respect and encourage diversity at our conference.”
If you’ve never spoken at an event before, the conference has some advice for you:
“Deciding what to speak about at Everything Open can be a tough challenge, particularly for new speakers. If you would like some ideas on how to write a talk and how to submit a proposal, we recommend watching E. Dunham’s You Should Speak talk from linux.conf.au 2018.”
The event is looking for two types of presenters:
- Talk (25 or 45 minutes): These are generally presented in lecture format and form the bulk of the available conference slots. We will have a few short talk slots available, which are an ideal way for new speakers to get an introduction to presenting at a conference.
- Tutorial (100 minutes): These are generally presented in a classroom format. They should be interactive or hands-on in nature. Tutorials are expected to have a specific learning outcome for attendees.
I attended the 2025 event virtually, which was held in Adelaide. I gotta say that it might be a smaller and more focused on Oz event than linux.conf.au had been, but there’s nothing about it that wasn’t world class. This year the event will take place in Canberra, Australia’s capital city.
If you want to speak, apply. You can find more information on the Proposals page of the Everything Open website.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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