You can help ApacheCon evolve into a better event by offering your feedback and suggestions. What would you like to change or not change? Help the conference planners by providing detailed proposals and concrete suggestions. Or add your support to an existing proposal here.
I've started adding a few different ideas I've heard to get things started.
Hackathon Costs
Should the Hackathon be Free? (add your name to the list below)
- YES
- YES, but only to certain people/groups
- NO, but it should be cheap (costs for beer and t-shirts)
- NO, I don't care what it costs
Move the Hackathon
In order keep Hackathon costs down, particularly in Europe, the hackathon could be moved to a nearby, cheaper location. This might be a local hall, university, or office. Registration for the hackathon would be separate from the conference. The hackathon would shutdown during the three days of the main ApacheCon conference where we would still have an online lounge. The intention is to reduce the cost of the hackathon and increase the number of people who could attend.
Counter Argument
Moving the hackathon off-site is not only inconvenient, but limits the mixing of hackathon attendees and training attendees. It also adds complexity to running and promoting the event. A separate hackathon might also been seen as competing with, rather than working with, the main conference, siphoning away registration. We want a successful hackathon, but not at the expense of the main conference.
Open up Hackathon Registration
Traditionally, the hackathon has been reserved for Apache committers and members and special guests. This was due in part to the necessity of limiting the number of attendees given the space available. Rather than limit the audience, the hackathon should be open to any interested person.
Dedicated Project Mini-Tracks
Dedicate half a day, or a full day, to a specific project or group of closely related projects. Allow at least some of this time to be planned and organized by the project PMC (with assistance from conference planners). This could allow project mini-conferences, with coordinated talks, panels, demos, etc.
Un-Conference the Conference
We should have less (or no?) traditional 50-minute sessions, but instead have un-conference tracks. These could be dedicated to specific projects, or open to just about any topic.
Similarly, we could emphasize more Fast-Feather like talks over 50-minute sessions. (see How to include more projects?)
How to include more projects?
We have 60+ top level projects. How can we include more of them in the conference program?
Rather than have 50-minute sessions, we could have more Fast-Feather talks.
Focus on Training
We should have more full-day and two-day training courses and more directly promote and market these events. Successful training classes might allow the conference to remain profitable (or affordable) while the rest of the conference transitions to, for example, a more un-conference like format.
Run Two Conferences
Rather than try to run a developer/community focused conference and a user/business focused conference at the same time, have two different conferences. Perhaps alternate between US and Europe each year.
Conference of Conferences
Rather than run a single event during one week, run several coordinated events thoughout a week. For example, two days could be a hackathon at a cheaper location, one day could be an un-conference (or several project-focused un-conferences), and the last two days are a more expensive user/business conference at a nice hotel. Each day or event would be targeted at a specific audience (developers, specific project community, enterprise users, etc.).
Leave Things Alone
ApacheCon works. Why are we trying to change it?