April 2009 Conference Planning Committee Board Report

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Status report for the Apache Conference Planning Project (April 2009)

General News

• New Blog

The conference planning committee has started using
http://blogs.apache.org/conferences/ as their new blog
(blogs.apachecon.com redirects to the new location).

• New Members

The conference planning committee has voted to add Ross Gardler and
Jean-Frederic Clere as new members. Both received 9 +1 votes (and no
other votes).

ApacheCon Europe 2009 News (23-27 March)

• ApacheCon in Amsterdam has ended successfully. Despite the difficult
  economy, the conference attracted more than 360 attendees for the main
  conference and trainings. The free project MeetUps on the first two days
  have been very successful and attracted about 300 attendees.

• The conference video archive will be online by 15th of April.

• A press release will be published 15th of April.

• Signing the contract addendum was delayed, but this has now been done.

ApacheMeetUp BarCampApache Asia 2009 (Aug/Sept)

• Event leads are Justin Erenkrantz, Sanjiva Weerawarana, and Xiao-Feng Li.

• The expected timeframe is late August/early September, but the precise
  dates have not been finalized.

• The current plan is to hold the event in a minimum of two locations:
  Colombo, Sri Lanka and Beijing, China. Shanghai, China is being explored
  as a potential third location.

• The event will be free to attendees, with one day of invited talks, and
  one day of BarCampApache.

• The goal is to have a shoestring budget and to try to have those costs
  covered by local sponsorships.

• Xiao-Feng has already discussed with a local University regarding
  receiving space in Beijing. It is also expected that Sanjiva would be
  able to find an appropriate space in Colombo.

• It is expected that SCP will be retained to handle the conference
  logistics.

• Final details regarding location and scheduling should be available in
  time for the May report.

ApacheCon US 2009 News (2-6 November)

• The planning meeting was a huge success (defining success as making many
  new, innovative and original plans and entertaining lively debate).

• Tutorial speakers will be notified very soon as to their acceptance, and
  again assigned mentors to work with them through the entire approach to
  the show, the goal is not to need to cancel any accepted tutorial session.

• The tracks will not be programmed until a letter is sent to all PMCs this
  week with an invitation to partner with the Planners on their project's
  related material (track sessions, meet-ups, symposium etc.) This should
  be in draft within two weeks, and final in four weeks.

• The show will consist of a 2 day BarCamp, and Hackathon together co-located
  in the (very large) main hall. This part of the event culminates with the
  10th Anniversary BFBB (Big Feather Birthday Bash) on Tuesday eve. Wed-Fri
  will follow a typical format during the day, and expand on the idea of project
  specific symposiums/unconference tracks for PMCs which choose to participate.
  Wed-Fri eve (and Sun/Mon eve overflow) will have space available for project
  meetups for those who wish to organize them, with the alternative of BOF
  sessions for projects who would rather have those.

• SCP has not completed the budget, so the registration fee schedule, speaker
  compensation etc are all up in the air. Various alternative scenarios have
  been requested for ConCom to review.