GOAT Review Process

The number of attendees at each GOAT primarily depends on host-location and funding availability to support attendees.

We encourage people from all locations to apply, but due to funding constraints, we can only provide reduced-cost, no-cost, and travel support for U.S. participants. Historically GOAT conferences have revolved around topics specific to the U.S., but we acknowledge these are global issues and aspire to create a global fellows program that enables us to thoughtfully expand the scope of GOAT. We ask for your patience and input as we imagine this next phase.

We seek applicants  who are actively engaged in open hardware and software for agriculture as developers, users, inventors, tinkerers and thinkers, and who can contribute to growing the community and movement. This event is for people working in all different forms of agricultural technology (ag tech), from farmers and food coordinators, hackers  and food system activists, to those involved in academic research and industrial R&D.

We have applications to ensure there is a fair and equitable process to select which applicants will attend GOAT and/or receive funding, and to ensure good representation of the diversity of stakeholders working at this intersection. The role of this application form is to learn more about who you are, why you want to attend, and your vision for open ag tech below! This application should take between 15 to 30 minutes. Your responses don’t need to be long, but it matters that you are thoughtful and consider how your work intersects with the open ag tech movement, both within the existing GOAT community and ideally, beyond!

We typically have three volunteers review incoming applications and rank them on a five-point scale across three criteria, with space for comments / additional context. We meet as a group, average the scores from each reviewer, discuss places where decisions needed to be made, and sort applicants based on those scores. We then send out rolling approvals or requests for more information.

To ensure that there isn’t any unfair advantage to applicants, we review ALL applications using the same rubric, regardless of ticket type or funding request. Our rubric was developed in 2018, and has been refined with community consultation since. Applications are evaluated on the following qualities:

• Skills & Experience: Demonstrates skills and/or experience relevant to Open Ag Tech
• Commitment to Open Source: Engages in the topic of or demonstrates a commitment to open source or related concepts and values
• Uniqueness: Engages is relevant, novel, or underrepresented subject matters

The email you received is a template email that is sent to all applicants that did not provide enough information for the reviewers to be able to evaluate using our common review criteria. If you received this email, it means we would like to accept your application but want to ensure we understand your interests and background to ensure a good fit for GOAT and help inform the agenda. We have limited spaces, and your application is our window into who you are, how and why you can be part of the open source agricultural technology community. Specifically we want to avoid passing on applicants that are a good fit just because their application did not elaborate on the review criteria.

GOAT is not a company, not a formal organization, not an entity. We are a loosely connected group of people with some shared visions for the future; that’s it. Reviewers come from a range of professions and organizations, but are typically on that year’s organizing committee. While the reviewers are a subset of the GOAT organizing committee, the entire organizing committee works together to ensure that diverse perspectives are brought together to consider how to engage in deliberate community stewardship as our community itself is not a defined, fixed group.

Each year we ask for feedback on the application and registration processes as well as the event itself. We review and incorporate that feedback before the next conference. We also welcome in-time feedback, and often will make adjustments immediately. If you have any feedback regarding your experience so far this year that you’d like to see incorporated immediately, please contact us at goatech.org@gmail.com.