Isabel, Sorry for the long radio silence but life has been hectic recently.
The Big Data Compute, API & Microservices etc. that were seen in CoC Bratislava are examples of the cross project track idea. They were very well attended and had lots of submissions. There were other tracks that were specific to single projects and several of them struggled. The SF conferences that I have been involved in do rely heavily on volunteers. The ASF has several people with extensive experience running conferences but there is still a need for more to make the conference run smoothly. I don't know of a volunteer run conference that is not looking for volunteers. However, I also know of a fair number of conventions that run smoothly using all volunteer staff. I think the main difference is that at MileHiCon the "dealers room" (and the art show) allow sales of merchandise. I truly believe that a conference focused on developers/architects and the information that is valuable in the cross project space would be a draw for a number of small to medium businesses that want to sell to that population. Making a public space where those vendors can sell to the conference attendees as well as the non-attending public would make tables for a few hundred $/£/€ desirable and within reach. This doesn't mean forgoing major sponsorship, but it does mean that if major sponsorship is not forthcoming the conference can proceed without as significant a loss, and perhaps breaking even. I hope this provides some answers. Let me know if you have any questions, Claude On Thu, Jun 13, 2024 at 6:15 PM Isabel Drost-Fromm <isa...@apache.org> wrote: > On 2024/06/10 11:20:36 Claude Warren wrote: > > I believe that there are two issues that are retarding the acceptance of > > ASF produced conferences > > > > - The name > > - The positioning > > I would add timing: There is less money to go around for sponsorships. So > establishing one that sounds new likely will be harder than in other years. > Still it's possible. > > Renaming itself is challenging - says the one who for years told people, > that the ASF is not only about the Apache webserver. It's not impossible > though - says the one who for years now has seen Apache mentioned in one > line with the Linux Foundation, the Eclipse foundation and others. > > > > The positioning is an issue. > > > > I found that ApacheCon (I have not attended a C/C NA) felt like a > > collection of siloed conferences. If there were 15 tracks it could just > as > > easily have been 15 meetups. It felt to me that there was very little > > cross pollination. > > I attended ApacheCon 2008 through 2014 (sometimes EU, sometimes NA, > sometimes both). Looking back I came for the tech (both, projects we were > using at work as well as projects we considered competition). What pulled > me into the foundation was being able to join the hackathon, to talk to > committers at the booths. The talks that proved most valuable and relevant > belong the life span of any of the tech project were the community talks. > > So to me the gordian knot to untangle is to find content that draws > (newcomers) to the conference, find space and formats for newcomers and > existing committers to get in touch and find formats and time to give > newcomers a glimpse of the value of how we operate and how they fit into > that equation. > > That gordian knot is also very different to the easier problem that any of > the summits solves: there sales often is the most important driver. > > The hallway track that Bertrand mentioned by the way is one very important > piece in the puzzle: It is pretty much the only time and place for > conversations that require deniability. Those are also the conversations > that cannot be moved online. > > Another important piece in the puzzle is finding funding for attendees to > travel: Ticket prizes are one part of what makes the conference expensive. > Depending on distance, travel usually has the bigger prize tag attached > (both, in terms of money, time and impact on environment). While speakers > used to get more support in the past from the conference, recently the bet > was on employers to pay to send speakers - especially for juniors that may > be getting harder. > > > > multiple > > projects: not groovy, or cassandra, or kafka; but JVM language scripting, > > cluster consensus strategies, and streaming data strategies. > > How would that be different from the Big Data Compute, API & Microservices > etc. that I've seen for CoC Bratislava? > > > > In terms of funding, I think there are lessons to be learned from Sci-Fi > > and comics and other fandom based conferences. You don't have to charge > a > > lot at the door. > > Can you share more on how these conferences do that? > > In the tech ecosystem the only conferences that I know charge nothing or > close to nothing (FOSDEM, FrOSCon, Linuxtage Chemnitz) tend to get their > venue for free hosted by a university and rely heavily on volunteers > showing up and doing stuff (though I have heard that the number of those > has been shrinking for some events, for Buzzwords that number increased). > > > > The ASF conference should become the place where developers want to go to > > learn stuff, where employers want to send employees because they will > > return with new ideas and better approaches to problems, and where > vendors > > of tools for developers want to be. I think it is possible, but not if > the > > conference continues to compete with large scale siloed "Summit" > > conferences. > > I fully agree that we have a lot of valuable lessons to share beyond what > is discussed at the "Summit" type of event. > > One thing just crossed my mind: Bertrand once explained the ASF as the > Switzerland of Open Source - a neutral place for interested parties to > collaborate on projects. Maybe that's one interesting and unique aspect of > our conference? > > There's also one important observation in what Rich shared: Someone has to > do the organising - not only for the hackathon, but also for advertising, > for inviting contributors, for shaping the track, for help with finding > sponsors, etc. A lot of the cheaper conferences rely on volunteers, not > only during preparation but also on-site - I believe, more than we could > find volunteers in recent years. > > Not sure if any of the perspectives help, feel free to ignore all of them, > Isabel (still keeping the female 2008 ApacheCon EU t-shirt near and dear) > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org > > -- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/claudewarren
