On 03/03/2014 04:54 AM, Isabel Drost-Fromm 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.
Last week I attended SCaLE, where there were lots of activities for
kids, including a game night, and various places around the event where
kids could build things - electronic and otherwise. At Ohio LinuxFest,
there's a kid track of the conference, for older kids who want to learn
stuff about technology. They had programming classes, and sessions about
science, as well as a trip to the science museum down the road.
I remember OSCon having child care years ago, but either they don't do
that any more, or it wasn't as noticeable last year, but they did have
places in the exhibit hall where kids could build thing, use 3d
printers, learn to program, play video games, and a variety of other
things. And I saw a number of families with their smaller kids at the event.
Unfortunately, I probably won't get to bring my kids to an event any
time soon, due to school and other complications, but I'd be very much
in favor of this kind of thing for the younger Apache members.
I'll ask Angela what our options are for Europe.
--
Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen
http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon
