Hi, Maybe for this year's ApacheCon this idea is a bit too late - but I thought it makes sense to get the discussion started anyway (maybe it even benefits myself at a later event ;) ):
I don't know about the US tech conferences, the trend I've observed in past years here in Europe is that more and more events are making an effort to be family friendly - in particular the community focused ones. There's events which provide complimentary child day care, conferences with special kids tracks, play and relaxation areas etc. For a more detailed overview see also: http://blog.isabel-drost.de/posts/on-geeks-growing-up.html As a side effect, the play areas often are occupied also by "older children" - three years ago I've seen geeks sort the balls in a ballpit at Chaos Communication Congress by colour - working out the most efficient algorithm to do that ;) For Berlin Buzzwords this year is the first year we are offering day care for children - financially this worked out really well as a local online babysitter service offered professionals in turn for visibility at the event. I'm happy to share experiences after BBuzz is over. I'm also happy to get you in touch with the people behind Chaos Communication Congress, FrOSCon (they even shipped their kids track to another interested conference this year), EuRubyCamp. On the Java side of things Devoxx (biggest EU Java community event) seems to have a similar offering. I have been told that in the US OSCON features a kids track. Lacking really deep knowledge about the US tech community I can only provide insight from a European perspective - would be great to see ApacheCon drive this trend. Cheers, Isabel
