Fast Feather Track - anyone want to take charge for Austin?

[Nick Burch]

Hi All

Hopefully most of you will know about the Fast Feather Track? For those 
who don't, it's often described as:

a series of short talks, 10-20 minutes in length, covering things that 
are new / interesting / exciting / incubating / recently changed / etc. 
It's a great chance to learn about what's hot, what's new, and what's 
coming soon! Whether that's a new project entering the incubator, 
something shortly to graduate, or an amazing new area of technology 
that'll change everything when it's done, the Fast Feather Track is the 
place for it!

It tends to be a mixture of people having their first chance of speaking 
at ApacheCon, and old-hands talking about the fun new thing that has got 
them all excited once more. As such, it's an important source of practice 
for new speakers (many of whom go on to give great full talks the session 
after), and a chance for more experience ASFers in the audience to learn 
about interesting new things in a friendly small space.

(There have also been bigger FFT sessions during lunches, where more 
experienced speakers spoke to a bigger audience about fun/new/interesting 
stuff, which has worked well as and when the lunch setup permits it)


A few years ago, I made the mistake of asking the then ApacheCon 
conference committee what was happening with the Fast Feather track that 
event, and somehow landed up running it then, and for some time to come...

However, I worry that I might've been organising it too long, and so I'd 
like to offer it up in case someone else fancies taking over running it 
for Austin?


Organisational wise, it isn't too much work. You need to write a little 
bit about what you want in the track and who should submit (plenty of 
examples on the wiki! Just search within http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon).
Then you just setup a form / google doc / etc to collect session 
proposals, put out the word to potential speakers (pmcs@, general@i.a.o, 
twitter etc), notify whoever you want to have, tell the LF what space you 
need, turn up and learn lots of new fun things! :)


So, anyone fancy trying their hand at conference organising with a nice 
small, easily manageable, fun mini-track thing? Fast Feather needs you!

Nick