This year (2008) at the ApacheCon conference in New Orleans on
November 3-7 here will be a special "track" of the conference that is
dedicated to OFBiz.
This OFBiz Symposium @ ApacheCon will include:
* a 2-day training course covering the OFBiz Framework (Mon, Tue)
* a 1-day training course covering the OFBiz data model and related
functionality at a high level (Tue)
* 6 business oriented conference presentations (Wed)
* 2 business oriented BOF sessions (Wed)
* 6 technical oriented conference presentations (Thu)
* 2 technical oriented BOF sessions (Thu)
The Apache Conference Committee (ConCom) is still working on some of
the details related to this, but registration is planned to be the
same as for the rest of the conference, and those who attend can
freely choose among the OFBiz Symposium sessions and the general
conference sessions (they'll have around 4-5 other tracks in the
conference).
This is an exciting opportunity for OFBiz and for all of us involved
to gather as a community, and reach out to a wider audience than has
been possible with previous conference efforts. We have had OFBiz-
specific conference that are mostly of interest within the community,
and various people have attended and presented at larger conferences
and reached a wider audience. This is a nice combination of the two
because the OFBiz Symposium will be featured in conference materials
and advertisements, and it sounds like there may even be
advertisements specific to the OFBiz Symposium @ ApacheCon.
What we need:
1. There are a number of presentation and BOF sessions open for people
to fill. I'll be contacting certain people individually who have
participated in this way in past OFBiz conferences, but this is also
an opportunity for anyone who wants to get involved and share their
experience with, and knowledge of, OFBiz and by so doing gain exposure
and recognition. We have 12 presentations to line up, and 4 BOF
sessions. I have some candidates for 3 business oriented presentations
so far... so things are wide open. If there is room for it I'll do one
or two technical presentations in addition to the business oriented
one I plan to do, but I'd rather give other people the chance to get
involved as this really is a great opportunity. If you are interested
please contact me ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and send along a title and
abstract for the presentation (or BOF), and a short bio for each
presenter. BTW, the timeline on this is short, so even if you're not
totally confident in what you want to present, please contact me
immediately. We need to have the schedule finalized in about 2 weeks
(by June 25th).
2. There are various sponsorship and promotion opportunities related
to this. Those who sponsor the conference will receive various
benefits depending on the level of sponsorship. This will include
promotion at the conference itself including signs, t-shirts, hats,
meals, exhibition space, and possibly even special presentations that
are allowed to be offering oriented. This will also include being
featured in advertisements in print ads and on the ApacheCon site, and
that's especially a big deal because of the special advertising and
other promotion that the OFBiz Symposium part of ApacheCon 2008 will
receive. If you're interested in this and would like to chat about it,
feel free to contact me. If you're ready to go for it or want to see
the prospectus (which has just been finalized, BTW) then contact the
conference sponsorship coordinator, Delia Frees ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
We've been talking for quite a while about doing some group
advertising, and having a big event to rally around, and pool our
dollars around, in order to get the best effect possible. Well, this
is it! I'm excited and pleased by this and plan to not only attend but
contribute as much as I can to this effort, and I know others at
Hotwax feel the same way... and we do plan to do some significant
sponsorship at this event, recognizing that our sponsorship will be of
more value to the community, the project, the conference, and to
Hotwax with more and more sponsorship and involvement from others.
And of course for those who aren't interested in presenting or
sponsorship this is still a great opportunity to meet others in the
OFBiz community, and the general ASF community, to learn a lot about
OFBiz and other ASF projects, and of course to have a good time. :)
Registration details are not final yet, but the registration site for
ApacheCon 2008 should be up fairly soon.
I'm looking forward to seeing ALL of you there! That's right all 400
of you receiving this message (or however many are on this list these
days...)!
-David
