Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
Nick Burch wrote: Hi All Those of you at ApacheCon NA 2011 in Vancouver may remember me standing on stage, announcing some provisional information on ACEU12, and saying more information on ApacheCons for Europe and North America would be along soon It's been a little while longer than hoped, but we do now have some firm announcements! Firstly, for Europe, SAP have kindly agreed to host us in Sinsheim, Germany on the week of the 5th-9th November 2012, for ApacheCon Europe 2012. We've got the venue confirmed, but we still need to decide on the many things, so please get involved in the organising if you can! (Details on getting involved below) That happens to be the (extended) area where I live. To get involved, send an email to apachecon-discuss-subscr...@apache.org in the usual way, and we'll look forward to seeing you get involved there soon! I would like to help - in particular if you would need a native speaker etc. Haven't been to ApacheCon before, though. -- Stefan^2.
RE: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
Hi All, I guess it's not carved in stone, but the contract with the venue is already signed. Anyway, I could try to change it, but I'm not sure if it will work out... However: The only other option left would be CW43 = 20-22 November - and this is clashing with US Thanksgiving. So moving the event to late November would more or less exclude US committers... Best regards, Paul -Original Message- From: Christian Grobmeier [mailto:grobme...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 12:55 PM To: apachecon-discuss@apache.org; Mark Struberg Cc: nick.bu...@alfresco.com Subject: Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved! oh actually I can only highlight the concerns by Mark and Peter. W-JAX gets a lots of attention. Its done by the creators of the biggest IT related magazines in germany and therefore they have great ads running. Usually many well known devs speak there. Is it possible to change that date or is it carved in stone? On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 6:57 AM, Mark Struberg strub...@yahoo.de wrote: Hi Nick! Obviously my mail 2 month ago didn't make it to the apachecon list (also sent it to members@ I think). 5.th to 9th is a problematic time for a conference in germany, because this is exactly the time where the biggest IT conference with ~5000 visitors takes place in munich: http://jax.de/wjax2012/ So many german speaking ASF folks as well as many visitors might not come to the ApacheCon. I know you cannot make it right for everybody, so just bad luck I guess. I'll try to at least attend 2 days. In general a big thanks for organizing the ApacheConEU again! txs and LieGrue, strub - Original Message - From: Nick Burch nick.bu...@alfresco.com To: committ...@apache.org Cc: Sent: Thursday, May 3, 2012 10:47 PM Subject: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved! Hi All Those of you at ApacheCon NA 2011 in Vancouver may remember me standing on stage, announcing some provisional information on ACEU12, and saying more information on ApacheCons for Europe and North America would be along soon It's been a little while longer than hoped, but we do now have some firm announcements! Firstly, for Europe, SAP have kindly agreed to host us in Sinsheim, Germany on the week of the 5th-9th November 2012, for ApacheCon Europe 2012. We've got the venue confirmed, but we still need to decide on the many things, so please get involved in the organising if you can! (Details on getting involved below) Secondly, for North America, following the RFP we've accepted a proposal from Open Bastion (producers of DjangoCon and PyCon) to run our next ApacheCon North America! The plan is for the event to happen in early 2013, likely in Portland, we'll be able to confirm the details shortly (once contracts are all signed). Again, we need people to help get involved in organising this too! The initial discussions and planning for both events will be taking place together, on the new-ish public list apachecon-discuss@apache.org http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-apachecon-discuss/ We need organisers who can help with the planning, with talk selection and track allocations, to help with planning non-talk events (hackathons, meetups, new kinds of sessions etc), as well as those able to help out on the ground. Please get involved if you're interested and able! To get involved, send an email to apachecon-discuss-subscr...@apache.org in the usual way, and we'll look forward to seeing you get involved there soon! Nick (On behalf of ConCom, the Conferences Committee) -- http://www.grobmeier.de https://www.timeandbill.de
RE: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
-- Rich Bowen rbo...@rcbowen.com On 2012 5 4 07:04, Goetz, Paul paul.go...@sap.com wrote: Hi All, I guess it's not carved in stone, but the contract with the venue is already signed. Anyway, I could try to change it, but I'm not sure if it will work out... However: The only other option left would be CW43 = 20-22 November - and this is clashing with US Thanksgiving. So moving the event to late November would more or less exclude US committers... Although I have no wish to be excluded, EU events should not be planned for the convenience of US attendees. Thats only bitten us in the past. Ignoring JAX seems like a bad idea, and ultimately a bigger deal.
RE: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
On Fri, 4 May 2012, Rich Bowen wrote: On 2012 5 4 07:04, Goetz, Paul paul.go...@sap.com wrote: However: The only other option left would be CW43 = 20-22 November - and this is clashing with US Thanksgiving. So moving the event to late November would more or less exclude US committers... Although I have no wish to be excluded, EU events should not be planned for the convenience of US attendees. Thats only bitten us in the past. Ignoring JAX seems like a bad idea, and ultimately a bigger deal. SAP are kindly sponsoring us the venue and for some food, which is amazing and gives us a chance to try something different, but sadly does mean we don't have quite the same range of possible dates as when we're paying a few hundred thousand to a hotel... I'm not an American, and I don't live there, so the thanksgiving thing doesn't affect me personally. However, my hope is that we can try out some new ideas and formats in Europe, and the North America conference can learn from that. (The event in Europe will be smaller and cheaper, so we should have more chance to experiment and innovate) If we clash with thanksgiving then we'll loose the bulk of our American attendees, which likely means we loose both those with experiences of organising past ApacheCons, and we loose much of the chance for the organisers of the next one to learn from us. I completely agree that clashing with JAX isn't great, and will cause us to miss out on some German speaking attendees, which is a huge shame. (Am I right in thinking that it's all in German, so we won't loose any other European language groups?) It's very hard to judge the two, but my feeling was that loosing all the Americans (especially the ACNA13 team) would be worse. I could be wrong though (it does happen!), so if you think we've weighed the two up wrong please explain why! Nick
Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
On 04.05.2012 13:24, Rich Bowen wrote: -- Rich Bowen rbo...@rcbowen.com On 2012 5 4 07:04, Goetz, Paulpaul.go...@sap.com wrote: Hi All, I guess it's not carved in stone, but the contract with the venue is already signed. Anyway, I could try to change it, but I'm not sure if it will work out... However: The only other option left would be CW43 = 20-22 November - and this is clashing with US Thanksgiving. So moving the event to late November would more or less exclude US committers... Although I have no wish to be excluded, EU events should not be planned for the convenience of US attendees. Thats only bitten us in the past. Ignoring JAX seems like a bad idea, and ultimately a bigger deal. For those who don't know those other events: Software and Support (a German publishing house) publishes Java Magazin which is a monthly german journal about Java development. They sure have the largest circulation of all similar media in Germany. They also run several conferences. The biggest is JAX, which is about Java development (and as far as I know in the early years A stood for Apache and X for XML, but that was long ago). JAX is in *May* and usually is located in the middle of Germany (close to Frankfurt). I guess the second largest one is W-JAX. That one clashes with the planned date for ApacheCon. It happens in Munich (in the south of Germany) and is roughly half the size of JAX (please correct me if my estimate is wrong), but still much bigger than ApacheCon. Software and Support very actively promotes those events via the Journal. Many Java developers in Germany go to one or the other of JAX and W-JAX. Attendance comes mainly from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Inernational attendance is low. Running ApacheCon the same week will reduce our attendance, but mostly for the local attendees. Most devs here are only able to attend one conference per year. As already mentioned there will also be some clash of possible speakers. The program for W-JAX is not yet announced although the CFP was closed on May 2nd. Regards, Rainer
Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
Hi Nick... On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 10:47 PM, Nick Burch nick.bu...@alfresco.com wrote: Hi All Those of you at ApacheCon NA 2011 in Vancouver may remember me standing on stage, announcing some provisional information on ACEU12, and saying more information on ApacheCons for Europe and North America would be along soon It's been a little while longer than hoped, but we do now have some firm announcements! Firstly, for Europe, SAP have kindly agreed to host us in Sinsheim, Germany on the week of the 5th-9th November 2012, for ApacheCon Europe 2012. We've got the venue confirmed, but we still need to decide on the many things, so please get involved in the organising if you can! (Details on getting involved below) Secondly, for North America, following the RFP we've accepted a proposal from Open Bastion (producers of DjangoCon and PyCon) to run our next ApacheCon North America! The plan is for the event to happen in early 2013, likely in Portland, we'll be able to confirm the details shortly (once contracts are all signed). Again, we need people to help get involved in organising this too! The initial discussions and planning for both events will be taking place together, on the new-ish public list apachecon-discuss@apache.org http://mail-archives.apache.**org/mod_mbox/www-apachecon-**discuss/http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-apachecon-discuss/ We need organisers who can help with the planning, with talk selection and track allocations, to help with planning non-talk events (hackathons, meetups, new kinds of sessions etc), as well as those able to help out on the ground. Please get involved if you're interested and able! To get involved, send an email to apachecon-discuss-subscribe@** apache.org apachecon-discuss-subscr...@apache.org in the usual way, and we'll look forward to seeing you get involved there soon! Nick (On behalf of ConCom, the Conferences Committee) I probably can attend both, but more probably the EU one. But in either case, as you know, I would like to help in both events. Is there any hints or TODO(s) list to start with ? -- Thanks - Mohammad Nour Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving - Albert Einstein
Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Nick Burch nick.bu...@alfresco.com wrote: On Fri, 4 May 2012, Rich Bowen wrote: On 2012 5 4 07:04, Goetz, Paul paul.go...@sap.com wrote: However: The only other option left would be CW43 = 20-22 November - and this is clashing with US Thanksgiving. So moving the event to late November would more or less exclude US committers... Although I have no wish to be excluded, EU events should not be planned for the convenience of US attendees. Thats only bitten us in the past. Ignoring JAX seems like a bad idea, and ultimately a bigger deal. SAP are kindly sponsoring us the venue and for some food, which is amazing and gives us a chance to try something different, but sadly does mean we don't have quite the same range of possible dates as when we're paying a few hundred thousand to a hotel... I'm not an American, and I don't live there, so the thanksgiving thing doesn't affect me personally. However, my hope is that we can try out some new ideas and formats in Europe, and the North America conference can learn from that. (The event in Europe will be smaller and cheaper, so we should have more chance to experiment and innovate) If we clash with thanksgiving then we'll loose the bulk of our American attendees, which likely means we loose both those with experiences of organising past ApacheCons, and we loose much of the chance for the organisers of the next one to learn from us. I completely agree that clashing with JAX isn't great, and will cause us to miss out on some German speaking attendees, which is a huge shame. (Am I right in thinking that it's all in German, so we won't loose any other European language groups?) many valid points, esp the point with the experienced organizers we would miss. Questions: - how many attendees from the US are expected (probably we know that from the past EU cons)? - how many speakers from the US are expected? - how many speakers from the EU are expected? - how many attendees from the EU are expected? - how many attendees in general are expected / can participate? Lets say the ApacheCon has room for 500 people and there are many speakers from the US then I think the problem with WJAX is smaller. Some people might want to see people they cannot see so often (WJAX has some superheros, but also many german speakers usually). In addition, not everybody in germany is excited about WJAX. Yes, JavaMagazin is popular. But I tend to think the community aspect of apache is not to underestimate. WJAX/JAX very often has speakers on architecture and other buzzwords. ApacheCon might have more technology related talks (I hope so). Probably we can address other people than WJAX then it would not be so worse. Is there a chance to get some estimations on the numbers below? Another question: talks are in english right? Most talks at WJAX are in german, at least to my knowledge. ACEU would then cause people from outside germany to come and this would also reduce the problems. Last year i was a WJAX speaker and I rarely have heard attendees speaking in english. BTW its great SAP supports the event. I will meet many friends up there, I hope. It's very hard to judge the two, but my feeling was that loosing all the Americans (especially the ACNA13 team) would be worse. I could be wrong though (it does happen!), so if you think we've weighed the two up wrong please explain why! Nick -- http://www.grobmeier.de https://www.timeandbill.de
RE: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
Hi, just some background on the venue constraints so far: We selected Rhein-Neckar-Arena Sinsheim to get the most out of the available budget. Sinsheim is not known for its famous nightlife (it's more like Knockree), but SAP gets a special price for booking the venue there + we have all the technical equipment available (and we're still trying to get some kind of beer run organized :o) Basic idea - at least as far as I understood - was to allow even those with a small travel budget to participate. With that in mind, I would agree with Noirin, that those interested in Apache might still get to ApacheCon EU, even if they went to W-JAX before (at least from a budget perspective, not so sure about the time required to be out-of-office). And back to the nightlife: Munich surely outperforms Sinsheim in this regards (maybe this is why everybody goes to Berlin Buzzwords and spends the budget there :o) Therefore, from my perspective, it seems better to have the ACEU date not clashing with W-JAX - if possible (even without knowing the detailed numbers). Anyway, getting numbers about the expected audience (EU/US/...) seems to be difficult. @Nick: Are there any numbers from the past? Although I'm not keen on asking our SAP venue staff at all (as they most probably will kill me for that), I could give it a try and ask on Monday. If it turns out, that we can't change the contract, we won't have a choice anyway... But: In order to do that, I need a decision - either move to the new date (20-22 November) or keep the original (6-8 November). And if possible by Monday next week... I assume that the longer we need, the fewer the probability that 20-22 November is still available. What can I do to get a quick vote or quick poll on In case we're able to change the date: Who prefers to move planned ACEU 2012 from 6-8 to 20-22 (November)? Best regards, Paul -Original Message- From: Nóirín Plunkett [mailto:noi...@apache.org] Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 6:55 PM To: apachecon-discuss@apache.org Subject: Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved! On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Mohammad Nour El-Din nour.moham...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Noirin Yes the we *might* loose some percentage of German speaking people who will attend W-JAX but what is the probability of them also attending ApacheCon EU ? People who are just curious about us will probably not come to ApacheCon two weeks after W-JAX, sure. But honestly, people who only get to go to one conference a year have probably blown that budget on Berlin Buzzwords already :-) The people I'm concerned with are our EU-based committers, proto-members and members, who have shown in the past a huge desire for an EU conference. These people are prepared to put in a sometimes-surprising amount of effort to get to ACEU--witness Mark in this thread saying he'll try to attend parts of both even if they're the same week. We should make it possible for those people to attend, even at the cost of not having US folks. Otherwise we're kidding ourselves that this is an EU show. Noirin
Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Christian Grobmeier grobme...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Goetz, Paul paul.go...@sap.com wrote: Hi, just some background on the venue constraints so far: We selected Rhein-Neckar-Arena Sinsheim to get the most out of the available budget. Sinsheim is not known for its famous nightlife (it's more like Knockree), but SAP gets a special price for booking the venue there + we have all the technical equipment available (and we're still trying to get some kind of beer run organized :o) Basic idea - at least as far as I understood - was to allow even those with a small travel budget to participate. With that in mind, I would agree with Noirin, that those interested in Apache might still get to ApacheCon EU, even if they went to W-JAX before (at least from a budget perspective, not so sure about the time required to be out-of-office). And back to the nightlife: Munich surely outperforms Sinsheim in this regards (maybe this is why everybody goes to Berlin Buzzwords and spends the budget there :o) Therefore, from my perspective, it seems better to have the ACEU date not clashing with W-JAX - if possible (even without knowing the detailed numbers). Anyway, getting numbers about the expected audience (EU/US/...) seems to be difficult. @Nick: Are there any numbers from the past? Although I'm not keen on asking our SAP venue staff at all (as they most probably will kill me for that), I could give it a try and ask on Monday. If it turns out, that we can't change the contract, we won't have a choice anyway... But: In order to do that, I need a decision - either move to the new date (20-22 November) or keep the original (6-8 November). And if possible by Monday next week... I assume that the longer we need, the fewer the probability that 20-22 November is still available. What can I do to get a quick vote or quick poll on In case we're able to change the date: Who prefers to move planned ACEU 2012 from 6-8 to 20-22 (November)? Usually you send a mail with the subject [POLL] ACEU Date and give the two options like: ACEU happens best on: [] 6-8 November (clashing with WJAX) [] 20-22 November (clashing with thanksgiving in the US) Yes, nobody will come from USA for sure, if the dates are moved to 20-22 November. I will be a very 'un-happy camper' as we say, since I plan to attend. The question is were to send it. I might sense the this mailinglist is the best place, because everybody interested in the event probably reads it... Cheers Best regards, Paul -Original Message- From: Nóirín Plunkett [mailto:noi...@apache.org] Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 6:55 PM To: apachecon-discuss@apache.org Subject: Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved! On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Mohammad Nour El-Din nour.moham...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Noirin Yes the we *might* loose some percentage of German speaking people who will attend W-JAX but what is the probability of them also attending ApacheCon EU ? People who are just curious about us will probably not come to ApacheCon two weeks after W-JAX, sure. But honestly, people who only get to go to one conference a year have probably blown that budget on Berlin Buzzwords already :-) The people I'm concerned with are our EU-based committers, proto-members and members, who have shown in the past a huge desire for an EU conference. These people are prepared to put in a sometimes-surprising amount of effort to get to ACEU--witness Mark in this thread saying he'll try to attend parts of both even if they're the same week. We should make it possible for those people to attend, even at the cost of not having US folks. Otherwise we're kidding ourselves that this is an EU show. Noirin -- http://www.grobmeier.de https://www.timeandbill.de
Re: ApacheCon's EU 2012 and NA 2013 - save the dates and get involved!
On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 8:56 PM, Donald Harbison dpharbi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Christian Grobmeier grobme...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Goetz, Paul paul.go...@sap.com wrote: Usually you send a mail with the subject [POLL] ACEU Date and give the two options like: ACEU happens best on: [] 6-8 November (clashing with WJAX) [] 20-22 November (clashing with thanksgiving in the US) Yes, nobody will come from USA for sure, if the dates are moved to 20-22 November. I will be a very 'un-happy camper' as we say, since I plan to attend. Actually I start to think that 6-8 Novembre is better. My Reasons: - as Mo mentioned, how likely is it that people can attend 2 conferences in one month? I consider it low. Not only from budget, from timing too. - ApacheCon is not only for outsiders, its also great for insiders. I think some projects get a turbo boost when people can meet face to face. Misunderstanding are reduce. Excluding the US would be a pity, because many of us cannot meet their friends (not every eu citizen has the money to go to na con). - Again, I think WJAX adresses different people. Last time were many talks on DevOps, Agile, How-To-Build-Your-Team and such. I never attended an ApacheCon, but my impression is it is more about the projects. Maybe we get ppl who never attend WJAX out of their holes - Somebody said, with EU con we can experiment. Let's try and see if we are really different or make up an attracting event :-) That being said, when we decide on 6-8 I strongly believe we need to get these news out through all channels asap before the WJAX ads start. Cheers
