Possible community ApacheCon Europe event

[Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com>]

Hi All

As mentioned, SAP have kindly agreed to sponsor the use of their internal 
conference facilities to allow us to host an ApacheCon there. This should 
allow us to run a more community style of event. Because we wouldn't be 
based at an expensive hotel, and because SAP would be covering the 
facility costs, we should be able to run something with a lower headline 
conference fee, and a lower attendence cost.

There are some smaller things and some bigger things we need to consider.

First up, when would we want to hold the event? Largely influencing this: 
What's the soonest we could be ready? (We will be constrained by when the 
SAP conference venue we prefer is available)

Related to this, which of the two SAP sites would we prefer? Hopefully 
Paul Gotez can let everyone know the details of the two possible sites. 
(Paul is an Apache committer who works at SAP and who's been doing amazing 
work getting the SAP approval)


Moving onto the bigger part, what sort of conference do we want to put on 
in the space? Monday-Friday? Wednesday-Sunday? 
Monady-Sunday/Saturday-Friday? How much should be conference sessions, how 
much hackathons, how much meetups, how much barcamp / ad-hoc sessions? How 
many people will we expect to come for all, and how many for just one day? 
Ratio of talks aimed at users, developers, and those interested in open 
source business/community/the apache way?

Feeding into this, I know quite a few people go to other community open 
source events, and a smaller number help organise them. What works well? 
What doesn't work? Who should we be learning from and emulating?

We also need to think about speakers, and generally about how to help get 
enough members / committers / nearly-committers along to share knowledge 
and teach the apache way. At the big hotel events, speakers have tended to 
get a conference pass, hotel nights, and some flight help if needed. 
People sharing knowledge in other ways just get cheaper conference passes, 
but still need to pay lots for hotel rooms. With an event like this, the 
conference fee should be much lower, and with no hotel attached people can 
stay nearby wherever their budget permits. How much help do we need to 
offer for speakers? And can that work with a lower registration fee, and 
hence lower total budget?

And anything else I've missed that we'd need to consider? :)

Cheers
Nick

Re: Possible community ApacheCon Europe event

[Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com>]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011, Danese Cooper wrote:
> Are you saying they are offering their accomodations?  Last time I went 
> to Walldorf, we all had to stay in Heidelburg which was really cool 
> (ancient University town that it is)...but it meant finding transport 
> out to SAP every day...

Alas not, we'd likely have to plan on the basis that everyone will need to 
come in to the venue (including speakers).

Other community style conferences do cope with people needing to go 
elsewhere to stay, so hopefully we can get over that. We'd likely end up 
recommending places that have good transport links (I'm told there are 
some!)

Nick

Re: Possible community ApacheCon Europe event

[Danese Cooper <da...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 7:22 AM, Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com> wrote:

> Hi All
>
> As mentioned, SAP have kindly agreed to sponsor the use of their internal
> conference facilities to allow us to host an ApacheCon there. This should
> allow us to run a more community style of event. Because we wouldn't be
> based at an expensive hotel, and because SAP would be covering the facility
> costs, we should be able to run something with a lower headline conference
> fee, and a lower attendence cost.
>

Are you saying they are offering their accomodations?  Last time I went to
Walldorf, we all had to stay in Heidelburg which was really cool (ancient
University town that it is)...but it meant finding transport out to SAP
every day...


>
> There are some smaller things and some bigger things we need to consider.
>
> First up, when would we want to hold the event? Largely influencing this:
> What's the soonest we could be ready? (We will be constrained by when the
> SAP conference venue we prefer is available)
>

There's a nice symmetry in "every 6 months somewhere in the world"...so I'd
vote for May 2012...although if our answer for providing options at the
cheap end of accomodations is "universities will be between sessions and
there will be cheap dorm rooms available" then we'll need to coordinate with
that calendar.

>
> Related to this, which of the two SAP sites would we prefer? Hopefully Paul
> Gotez can let everyone know the details of the two possible sites. (Paul is
> an Apache committer who works at SAP and who's been doing amazing work
> getting the SAP approval)
>

Yay Paul!  My big questions would be...

1. Which site is closest to a major airport and train station?
2. Which one has the best range of accomodation (very low-cost to high-end)
3. Will we need to arrange transport between lodgings and facility?
4. Will we be able to arrange a) fat guest wifi b) beer onsite?

>
>
> Moving onto the bigger part, what sort of conference do we want to put on
> in the space? Monday-Friday? Wednesday-Sunday?
> Monady-Sunday/Saturday-Friday? How much should be conference sessions, how
> much hackathons, how much meetups, how much barcamp / ad-hoc sessions? How
> many people will we expect to come for all, and how many for just one day?
> Ratio of talks aimed at users, developers, and those interested in open
> source business/community/the apache way?
>

Long weekends are good, but they may cost SAP extra cycles (since they have
to bring staff in to handle extra days of security, etc.).  I think whether
this is a consideration is another question for Paul.


> Feeding into this, I know quite a few people go to other community open
> source events, and a smaller number help organise them. What works well?
> What doesn't work? Who should we be learning from and emulating?
>

Please look at PyCon.  Also?  I've been thinking a lot about the
pre-conference infrastructure behind UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) and its
efficacy at transforming their conferences into work sessions via pre-work
momentum focused online in the weeks before the event.


>
> We also need to think about speakers, and generally about how to help get
> enough members / committers / nearly-committers along to share knowledge and
> teach the apache way. At the big hotel events, speakers have tended to get a
> conference pass, hotel nights, and some flight help if needed. People
> sharing knowledge in other ways just get cheaper conference passes, but
> still need to pay lots for hotel rooms. With an event like this, the
> conference fee should be much lower, and with no hotel attached people can
> stay nearby wherever their budget permits. How much help do we need to offer
> for speakers? And can that work with a lower registration fee, and hence
> lower total budget?
>

IMHO you'll need to at least give speakers free accomodations (as was done
with TransferSummit).  You may have to help keynotes with airfare.

>
> And anything else I've missed that we'd need to consider? :)
>
> Cheers
> Nick
>

Re: Possible community ApacheCon Europe event

[Ross Gardler <rg...@opendirective.com>]

On 20 September 2011 15:22, Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com> wrote:
> First up, when would we want to hold the event? Largely influencing this:
> What's the soonest we could be ready? (We will be constrained by when the
> SAP conference venue we prefer is available)

That depends on who is making it happen and what kind of event we are
talking about. If this is a traditional ApacheCon style event then I
would say a minimum of 9 months. If it is a more community focussed
event (as in targetting people already interested in Apache projects
rather than those who might become contributors) then it can be done
in less time.

> Moving onto the bigger part, what sort of conference do we want to put on in
> the space? Monday-Friday? Wednesday-Sunday? Monady-Sunday/Saturday-Friday?

Speaking entirely personally I do not like being away over weekends.
Many of us have family now and weekends are precious to us, especially
those of us who travel as part of the standard working week.

RANDOM THOUGHT: we could put effort into providing facilities for
partners and families (I'm not talking about anything significant
things like connect people together, point them at suitable
activities, and make socials open to partners). I'm not sure how many
people have partners/families that would come along though, so not
sure if this is worth the effort.

> How much should be conference sessions, how much hackathons, how much
> meetups, how much barcamp / ad-hoc sessions?

It depends on what we want to achieve. Personally I think we should be
identifying some common themes that span multiple projects. The goal
should be to bring significant benefit to the employers of people who
attend. Note this is different from what I think a producer led
ApacheCon should look like (see my reply to your other mail). For me a
community event needs to be low cost and highly educational for
project committers. A user focussed ApacheCon should be for profit and
highly educational for potential users (who may eventually be
committers, but that is irrelevant in this context).

A community focussed event should bring in key *viosionary* speakers,
not necessarily ASF people, on the chosen themes but the main
activities should be BarCamp/MeetUp/Hackathon sessions, some
pre-arranged, some designed at the event.

This would be something like:

* 3-5 "scene setting" sessions per day (e.g. presentations such as
"the next five years of cloud computing")

* 4-8 "innovation sessions" per day (e.g. interactive sessions
exploring possible collaborations between projects to address some of
the issues raised by the scene setting sessions)

* 4-8 "barcamp sessions" per day (e.g. impromptu presentations in
response to one of the above sessions)

* plenty of hacking space to follow up on the innovation ideas

Speakers should not, in the main, be from within the ASF. They should
be CIO/CTO level individuals, startup founders, product managers etc.
They should be chosen because a) they can help point our committers at
possible future trends and b) because they are our power users.

The "innovation sessions" should be facilitated by people who know how
to get people to find potential collaborations that might have
otherwise been unrecognised.

> How many people will we expect
> to come for all, and how many for just one day?

Impossible to say without knowing what we are trying to achieve. If we
looked at the above type of event I'd say 30-40 per theme. Of those
maybe 50% would come for more than one day.

> Ratio of talks aimed at
> users, developers, and those interested in open source
> business/community/the apache way?

See above - for me community events should be about adding value to
our existing community. Other events should be seeking to bring in new
users (see my other mail). That is not to say we couldn't have a user
ApacheCon at the SAP offices, it's just that I am trying to make a
distinction between user events and community events (I define user as
someone who is not yet contributing to the community).

> Feeding into this, I know quite a few people go to other community open
> source events, and a smaller number help organise them. What works well?
> What doesn't work? Who should we be learning from and emulating?

Personally I'm really dissatisfied with all of the ones I have been
to. The majority of events focus on dissemination. The emphasis on
presentation after presentation after presentation is, for me, a throw
back to a time when information was hard to come by. Today I can find
out anything I want to know about any ASF project by sitting at a
keyboard. I go to events because I want to meet people, I want to
explore ideas with people and I want to discover *unexpected* things.

There are a few that seek to break the mould, BarCamps, for example.
However, even at BarCamps people tend to just do presentations. It's
hard breaking old habits.

However, there are people out there who specialise in running sessions
that surface new ideas. They get people to interact and talk. A few
months ago I was in just such a session. Myself and a complete
stranger found that if we combined our skills we could come up with a
really innovative new product. Yesterday I heard that the "stranger"
now has seed money to build a prototype. That's what I want to come
out of conferences, sitting there in sessions doesn't achieve that.

These things don't happen by accident, they are managed. The room in
which I met this individual was a self-selecting group who had
complimentary skills and interests. As a result there were a great
many possible partnerships forged at that event.

Selling semi-structured events to bosses can be very hard though.
That't why I want to separate the community events from the user
events. Users need to learn how to use the projects, they want to be
trained and they want measurable benefits. That allows high ticket
prices. However, I would argue that committers want to learn what else
can they do within their companies. How can they bring extra value to
their employer? The risks are higher and it is difficult to measure
benefit here, so costs need to be lower.

> How much help do we need to offer
> for speakers? And can that work with a lower registration fee, and hence
> lower total budget?

Speakers and facilitators should, if possible, be fully covered.
Everyone else should be as low cost as possible.

> And anything else I've missed that we'd need to consider? :)

Are my rantings about separate committer and user events worth
discussing more generally?

Ross

RE: Possible community ApacheCon Europe event

["Goetz, Paul" <pa...@sap.com>]

Hi All,

about the locations:
Most likely: Building ROT03 - Raiffeisenring 37, 68789 Sankt Leon-Rot. This is a building mainly used for internal workshops and events. You'll find a site map for Rot on http://www.sap.com/germany/about/standorte/pdf/buildings-Rot.pdf.
The second option is a building called "Harres" (see www.harres.de) - An der Autobahn 60, 68789 St. Leon-Rot (this is not a SAP building).

More details for the ROT03 building:
There is one large Audimax for about 300 persons, three rooms for about 50 to 70 persons and several smaller rooms for about 20 persons. There's a cafeteria (coffee, tea, water) and a canteen. Wifi access should not be a problem.
A train station is nearby (Rot/Malsch), most of the employees commute from Heidelberg or Karlsruhe.
Next international airport is Frankfurt/Main (FRA). It takes about 1 hour if you go by car (A5 direction Heidelberg/Basel) and about 1:10 if you go by train (see www.bahn.de).
ROT03 is located in a industrial area - so there are not many accommodations/pubs nearby.
SAP doesn't offer accommodation, but there are lots of small hotels in St. Leon-Rot and Walldorf (or other villages around Rot, like Malsch. If you're more into sightseeing, you might want to go to Heidelberg or Mannheim - there's a nightlife (not in Rot). In Heidelberg, there are hostels as well, so staying in Heidelberg and commuting to Rot might be an option, too.
Hosting a beer-event in ROT03 seems doable, I would have to check with our Facility Management.

First things I need to know: the "When" and "How many days".
I could then ask our Facility Management, to check for available dates, rooms and other conditions.
Vacations are April/02-13 Eastern, May/29-June/06 Pentecost, the summer vacation is end of July to first week of September.
I would suggest that we select a date not during the vacations, so the last two weeks of April or first three weeks of May should be ok.

Like Alasdair, I would also vote for an event during the week - preferably Tuesday to Thursday, leaving Monday and Friday for travelling / sightseeing.

What do you think?

Best regards,
Paul

Re: Possible community ApacheCon Europe event

[Alasdair Nottingham <no...@apache.org>]

On 20 September 2011 15:22, Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com> wrote:

> Hi All
>
> As mentioned, SAP have kindly agreed to sponsor the use of their internal
> conference facilities to allow us to host an ApacheCon there. This should
> allow us to run a more community style of event. Because we wouldn't be
> based at an expensive hotel, and because SAP would be covering the facility
> costs, we should be able to run something with a lower headline conference
> fee, and a lower attendence cost.
>
> There are some smaller things and some bigger things we need to consider.


> First up, when would we want to hold the event? Largely influencing this:
> What's the soonest we could be ready? (We will be constrained by when the
> SAP conference venue we prefer is available)
>
> Related to this, which of the two SAP sites would we prefer? Hopefully Paul
> Gotez can let everyone know the details of the two possible sites. (Paul is
> an Apache committer who works at SAP and who's been doing amazing work
> getting the SAP approval)
>
>
I may have missed this, but where are these two SAP sites?


>
> Moving onto the bigger part, what sort of conference do we want to put on
> in the space? Monday-Friday? Wednesday-Sunday?
> Monady-Sunday/Saturday-Friday? How much should be conference sessions, how
> much hackathons, how much meetups, how much barcamp / ad-hoc sessions? How
> many people will we expect to come for all, and how many for just one day?
> Ratio of talks aimed at users, developers, and those interested in open
> source business/community/the apache way?
>
>
When we had the retreat in knockee I know a few of my colleagues were unable
to make it because it was a weekend. It doesn't bother me too much, but I
would suggest something Monday-Friday (or a subset of days) would be better.


> Feeding into this, I know quite a few people go to other community open
> source events, and a smaller number help organise them. What works well?
> What doesn't work? Who should we be learning from and emulating?
>
> We also need to think about speakers, and generally about how to help get
> enough members / committers / nearly-committers along to share knowledge and
> teach the apache way. At the big hotel events, speakers have tended to get a
> conference pass, hotel nights, and some flight help if needed. People
> sharing knowledge in other ways just get cheaper conference passes, but
> still need to pay lots for hotel rooms. With an event like this, the
> conference fee should be much lower, and with no hotel attached people can
> stay nearby wherever their budget permits. How much help do we need to offer
> for speakers? And can that work with a lower registration fee, and hence
> lower total budget?
>
> And anything else I've missed that we'd need to consider? :)
>
> Cheers
> Nick
>



-- 
Alasdair Nottingham
not@apache.org