On 3 March 2014 10:54, Isabel Drost-Fromm <isa...@apache.org> wrote: > Hi, > > Maybe for this year's ApacheCon this idea is a bit too late - but I > thought it makes sense to get the discussion started anyway (maybe it even > benefits myself at a later event ;) ): > > I don't know about the US tech conferences, the trend I've observed in > past years here in Europe is that more and more events are making an effort > to be family friendly - in particular the community focused ones. There's > events which provide complimentary child day care, conferences with special > kids tracks, play and relaxation areas etc. For a more detailed overview > see also: > > http://blog.isabel-drost.de/posts/on-geeks-growing-up.html > > As a side effect, the play areas often are occupied also by "older > children" - three years ago I've seen geeks sort the balls in a ballpit at > Chaos Communication Congress by colour - working out the most efficient > algorithm to do that ;) > > For Berlin Buzzwords this year is the first year we are offering day care > for children - financially this worked out really well as a local online > babysitter service offered professionals in turn for visibility at the > event. I'm happy to share experiences after BBuzz is over. I'm also happy > to get you in touch with the people behind Chaos Communication Congress, > FrOSCon (they even shipped their kids track to another interested > conference this year), EuRubyCamp. On the Java side of things Devoxx > (biggest EU Java community event) seems to have a similar offering. I have > been told that in the US OSCON features a kids track. > > Lacking really deep knowledge about the US tech community I can only > provide insight from a European perspective - would be great to see > ApacheCon drive this trend. > Apachecon will be in europe later this year, so the european perspective is equally important.
I think the idea is good. The entrance fee to AC is pretty high, but maybe we could combine your idea with the idea of having a day (or half) where we in general open up, and give spouses, our kids etc a chance to see why we like spending soo much time with apache...meet some real people. rgds jan I. > > Cheers, > Isabel > >
