Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Ross Gardler rgard...@opendirective.com wrote: ...I think there is a need to define what this conference is. Is it a developer conference, a user conference, a hacker etc. ... And it would be good to clearly differentiate with http://jax.de/wjax2012/speaker/ Their tagline is a conference for Java, Architecture, Agile and Cloud - maybe those of us who are familiar with that conference can help steer ours so that it's clearly different instead of competing on the same topics (or maybe at least competing on the same topics on the same days, see http://jax.de/wjax2012/specialdays/ ). -Bertrand
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
On May 30, 2012, at 14:05 , Nick Burch wrote: On the everyone front, we need to decide exactly what kind of conference we want to fill this lovely SAP sponsored space with. Do we want big tracks (200/300 people), or small ones (5*100), or some days with one setup and some days others? What sort of tracks do we want to put on? Do we want to do a day or two for certain popular project areas, or do we want to do one track for the whole time for a popular area, with smaller ones around it? What things (if any) do we want to put on in the evening? What things might we want to try in Portland next year, which we should be attempting to test/pilot in Europe? I am in favor of having more smaller tracks, and I'd like to be as diverse as we can, instead of just focussing on a few more popular projects and leaving the rest of them out. Learning about the all the different projects Apache has to offer to me is one of the primary reasons for going to ApacheCon. Also because it encourages people involved in those projects to meet, exchange ideas and work together. The bigger projects have their own, more targeted conferences anyway, so I would not want to give them preferential treatment over the any other projects for ApacheCon. For the talks, I would even propose to consider doing 30 minute instead of 50-60 minute talks. If structured well, a 30 minute talk can deliver a lot of information already. Downside might be that we need more budget this way (because we end up with more speakers) so that might not be practical!? Greetings, Marcel
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
On May 30, 2012, at 16:56 , Steve Holden wrote: On May 30, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Marcel Offermans wrote: For the talks, I would even propose to consider doing 30 minute instead of 50-60 minute talks. If structured well, a 30 minute talk can deliver a lot of information already. Downside might be that we need more budget this way (because we end up with more speakers) so that might not be practical!? This implies that there is a significant cost to adding speakers. I'd be interested to know what you would expect these costs to be … I am assuming that speakers get free access to the conference, which is what has been the case so far. Greetings, Marcel
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
On 05/30/2012 05:18 PM, Marcel Offermans wrote: On May 30, 2012, at 16:56 , Steve Holden wrote: On May 30, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Marcel Offermans wrote: For the talks, I would even propose to consider doing 30 minute instead of 50-60 minute talks. If structured well, a 30 minute talk can deliver a lot of information already. Downside might be that we need more budget this way (because we end up with more speakers) so that might not be practical!? This implies that there is a significant cost to adding speakers. I'd be interested to know what you would expect these costs to be … I am assuming that speakers get free access to the conference, which is what has been the case so far. Yep. More talks means also more work to build the sessions in the tracks and take that all speakers are getting ready. Of course I want to see 5 tracks ;-) Cheers Jean-Frederic
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
Hi, this is just a rough idea and I have to admit, that I have never been to any ApacheCon so far, yet. How is the Apache incubator normally represented at those confs? I am a member of Apache Stanbol (incubating) and there are quite a number of other young projects at Apache around the topic of semantic web and natural language processing technologies. I am thinking of OpenNLP, Jena, Clerezza. Maybe this would be an interesting track, too. Best, - Fabian 2012/5/30 jean-frederic clere jfcl...@gmail.com: On 05/30/2012 05:18 PM, Marcel Offermans wrote: On May 30, 2012, at 16:56 , Steve Holden wrote: On May 30, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Marcel Offermans wrote: For the talks, I would even propose to consider doing 30 minute instead of 50-60 minute talks. If structured well, a 30 minute talk can deliver a lot of information already. Downside might be that we need more budget this way (because we end up with more speakers) so that might not be practical!? This implies that there is a significant cost to adding speakers. I'd be interested to know what you would expect these costs to be … I am assuming that speakers get free access to the conference, which is what has been the case so far. Yep. More talks means also more work to build the sessions in the tracks and take that all speakers are getting ready. Of course I want to see 5 tracks ;-) Cheers Jean-Frederic -- Fabian http://twitter.com/fctwitt
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
On Wed, 30 May 2012, Fabian Christ wrote: How is the Apache incubator normally represented at those confs? It's not normally its own area. Instead, Incubating projects tend to talk in the tracks for the areas they're in (eg a hadoop related incubating project would talk in a hadoop/big data track). Additionally, incubating projects have tended to feature heavily in things like the BarCamp and the Fast Feather Track I am a member of Apache Stanbol (incubating) and there are quite a number of other young projects at Apache around the topic of semantic web and natural language processing technologies. I am thinking of OpenNLP, Jena, Clerezza. Maybe this would be an interesting track, too. I think we'd welcome a pitch from a cluster of projects for a semantic web / nlp track! Nick
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
+1000 for an AOO track. Note that, assuming we work out a few details AOO will have budget to assist with speakers and TAC for AOO related activities. Furthermore there are people in the community eager to help with organisation, all they need is someone to lead the activity (from behind), Don is your man for that and I'm happy to help too (I won't be taking a leadership role, but happy to help Don keep it moving). Ross Sent from my mobile device, please forgive errors and brevity. On May 30, 2012 3:04 PM, Donald Harbison dpharbi...@gmail.com wrote: Nick, Thanks for jolting this topic to the top. We certainly can benefit by having a more clear plan by the end of June, before many people will go off on their summer holidays. So here goes: I propose that the the Apache OpenOffice project be one of the large projects that can easily fill (1) day worth of sessions, plus generate activity in side sesssions; e.g. hacking, etc. Germany is the epicenter for OpenOffice skills since the original team began work in Hamburg over 15 years ago. I'm confident we can build an exciting one-day program that will have good participation. OpenOffice.org conferences in the past were entirely volunteer driven with corporate sponsorships from the likes of Sun, IBM, Novell, Google, etc. Volunteer teams competed for the honor to host the conference(s). CFPs were issued, and selected, etc. We could use the past OpenOffice.org conference structure as a template for modification to harmonize with the larger conference themes that will emerge in this discussion. It would be great to group projects like Chemistry, POI, PDFbox, Tika, ODF Toolkit along the other available time slots since all of these project combined provide value propositions that relate to documents, content management. This might emerge as one of the conference themes. Thoughts? I am happy to volunteer to lead the 'conference within a conference' idea, or whatever the ConComm team finalizes as the model for ACE in Sinsheim. There are Apache OpenOffice guys in Hamburg and other places in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. who could help on a local level. HTH, /don On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:05 AM, Nick Burch nick.bu...@alfresco.com wrote: Hi All I did send an email a few weeks ago about the next steps, but as a few people have contacted me privately to ask about what needs doing, I fear it may have got lost in the noise... Plus it didn't have everything, so here goes again! There are currently several things that anyone can (and needs to be!) helping with, and a few bits largely specific to those near the venue. On the everyone front, we need to decide exactly what kind of conference we want to fill this lovely SAP sponsored space with. Do we want big tracks (200/300 people), or small ones (5*100), or some days with one setup and some days others? What sort of tracks do we want to put on? Do we want to do a day or two for certain popular project areas, or do we want to do one track for the whole time for a popular area, with smaller ones around it? What things (if any) do we want to put on in the evening? What things might we want to try in Portland next year, which we should be attempting to test/pilot in Europe? (Once we have answers for these, then we'll have the structure around which to run the CFP) For those in Germany, we need to start putting together some resources for attendees, especially around accommodation. I know there isn't much near the venue, but it'd be good to get / find a list of what that is. We also want to provide information on what bigger towns/cities nearby people could be looking at for staying it, and how long (+ how late!) they'd be looking at for public transport. We may also want to look at hiring something nearby that's cheap for people to stay in (especially TAC funded attendees, committers who are paying for themselves etc). It'd be good to know what options there might be (hostels, church halls etc). For now, I'd suggest we start capturing this sort of information on the wiki[1], and we can worry about if that's the best place or not later! Cheers Nick [1] http://wiki.apache.org/**apachecon/ http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/
Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU
In addition to the items below I think there is a need to define what this conference is. Is it a developer conference, a user conference, a hacker etc. How many people are we trying to attract, what profile etc. There's not much time, we don't yet have any real clarity about what the event is. Without a vision for the event it is hard to think about concrete plans. In the past we've always had problems trying to be all things to all people. This is one not the problems within organising the conference by committee, it simply gets watered down to the lowest common denominator. The ASF brand is strong enough for a lowest common denominator event to be successful, however we can do better. In my view, in order to do better job we need someone to make a few firm statements and provide some solid guidance about what tracks should look like and what they should contain. This programme chair should hold the power of veto over any abstracts that look poor and be willing to work with track chairs on fine tuning their tracks. Is this something we want to do for ApacheCon EU? If so who will provide this driving force? Ross Sent from my mobile device, please forgive errors and brevity. On May 30, 2012 1:06 PM, Nick Burch nick.bu...@alfresco.com wrote: Hi All I did send an email a few weeks ago about the next steps, but as a few people have contacted me privately to ask about what needs doing, I fear it may have got lost in the noise... Plus it didn't have everything, so here goes again! There are currently several things that anyone can (and needs to be!) helping with, and a few bits largely specific to those near the venue. On the everyone front, we need to decide exactly what kind of conference we want to fill this lovely SAP sponsored space with. Do we want big tracks (200/300 people), or small ones (5*100), or some days with one setup and some days others? What sort of tracks do we want to put on? Do we want to do a day or two for certain popular project areas, or do we want to do one track for the whole time for a popular area, with smaller ones around it? What things (if any) do we want to put on in the evening? What things might we want to try in Portland next year, which we should be attempting to test/pilot in Europe? (Once we have answers for these, then we'll have the structure around which to run the CFP) For those in Germany, we need to start putting together some resources for attendees, especially around accommodation. I know there isn't much near the venue, but it'd be good to get / find a list of what that is. We also want to provide information on what bigger towns/cities nearby people could be looking at for staying it, and how long (+ how late!) they'd be looking at for public transport. We may also want to look at hiring something nearby that's cheap for people to stay in (especially TAC funded attendees, committers who are paying for themselves etc). It'd be good to know what options there might be (hostels, church halls etc). For now, I'd suggest we start capturing this sort of information on the wiki[1], and we can worry about if that's the best place or not later! Cheers Nick [1] http://wiki.apache.org/**apachecon/http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/
