On 03/03/2014 02:52 PM, Roman Shaposhnik wrote:
This sounds like a really good idea! In fact, if there's any chance for us
to give it a try at ApacheCON EU -- it'll be pretty nice.
Not sure how feasible it is for ApacheCON US, but on a related note:
I've always wondered about combining my two favorite passtimes:
ASF and euro boardgames ;-)
Has anybody ever tried open gaming/hacking area at these types of
conferences? Do these two mix well?
I'm reluctant to add anything else to apachecon na, just because we're
changing so many things already, and our big focus right now is getting
the audience to show up. While I know that good options for kids will
probably result in a bigger audience, we're running this event on a very
compressed timeline and budget, so we should probably wait for EU to add
extra features.
But I definitely want to pursue these ideas and see what we can add in
the future.
--Rich
Thanks,
Roman.
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 1:54 AM, 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.
Cheers,
Isabel
--
Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen
http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon
