Hi All
As mentioned in my last email, before we could have another ApacheCon
similar to past ones (if that's what we decide we want), we need to think
about what we'd want from it.
Some key areas to consider are:
* What things would we (Apache) do?
* What things would we (the volunteer sub-set making up planners) do?
* What won't we do?
* What things would we require a producer to do?
* What things wouldn't we want the producer to do?
* What things have other conferences out there (especially open source
related ones) found it good or bad to have in the contract with
producers?
(As a reminder, this is thinking about a conference with a producer, in a
commercial conference venue such as a hotel. We're also planning to try
out a different conference model too)
In the past, ApacheCon has had three overlapping areas it needs to cover.
I see these as:
* A detailed developer conference for our more advanced users, taught by
experts from amongst our community
* A chance for new committers / future committers to learn about the
foundation, the apache way, and to meet people from both inside their
community and the wider foundation
* A chance for the more experienced committers and members to get
together, hack on code, have fun, and share their knowledge (in formal
and informal sessions)
I'd suggest we try to maintain this (even if it can make life hard on the
producer, who has to balance the bits that bring in revenue and the bits
that just cost), do people agree?
In terms of what to ask a producer to do, hopefully we know people from
other conferences and foundations who have experience in this. (We have
people here with experience too, but we probably want to reach a wider
pool of experts if possible!). What have people known to work well / badly
at other events they've helped run / their friends have helped run? Are
there any end-of-conference reviews out there we should be reading and
learning from? Who should we be speaking to to avoid repeating past
mistakes? Any good models we should/could follow?
Nick
