Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU

[Bernd Fondermann <bf...@brainlounge.de>]

On 31.05.12 10:06, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Ross Gardler
> <rg...@opendirective.com>  wrote:
>> ...I think there is a need to define what this
>> conference is. Is it a developer conference, a user conference, a hacker
>> etc.
> ...
>
> And it would be good to clearly differentiate with
> http://jax.de/wjax2012/speaker/
>
> Their tagline is "a conference for Java, Architecture, Agile and
> Cloud" - maybe those of us who are familiar with that conference can
> help steer ours so that it's clearly different instead of competing on
> the same topics (or maybe at least competing on the same topics on the
> same days, see http://jax.de/wjax2012/specialdays/ ).

WJAX is the sister conference to its big brother JAX (taking place each 
Spring) and some other JAX events around the world. I've never been to 
WJAX, but attended JAX for some years now as a speaker. (WJAX organizers 
also edit JavaMagazin, where I'm writing a monthly 
Apache-project-focused column.)

JAX is huge, with as much as 12 parallel sessions at a time for 3 days, 
plus workshops on Mon + Fri. This can be overwhelming. WJAX has a 
similar setup with 8 parallel session. So it should be about 2/3 the 
size of JAX.

The foremost difference to ApacheCon is that WJAX is a German-speaking 
conference all over the place. Only keynotes and few sessions are in 
english. In this regard, it is not a European conference. You'll find 
not many french, spanish or even swiss people there. Let alone british.

Attendees are mostly folks having to deal with "enterprise software", in 
the sense that they often work for banks, telcos, car manifacturers, so 
the conference pretty much covers what these people are interested in. 
You won't find that many university students or people from very small 
companies there, also because of the price tag.

New hot topics will eventually come to WJAX, like BigData this year. 
Niche technologies like Lucene are only a niche at (W)JAX.

This also means that open source is seen very pragmatic at (W)JAX. If 
some software is Open Source, that's ok as long as it solves their problems.

Speakers are competent and familiar with the topic, but not neccessarily 
mega-deep into it. I've done two Hadoop talks at JAX, not being a 
committer for any of the Hadoop projects. At BerlinBuzzwords this week 
there were Hadoop committers all over the place - so I didn't need to do 
a talk and could just listen, learn and meet. (bbuzz was great, by the way!)

So, when needing to contrast with WJAX, I would probably tag ApacheCon 
EU like this:
+ pan-european
+ "meet the committers"
+ all the latest and greatest hot stuff from our projects
+ open source excellence

In the sense of Leslie Hawthorns great BBuzz keynote (see also 
https://twitter.com/bdelacretaz/status/209612024244748288 ), we could 
try to forster community in that projects are given the opportunity to 
present their top five JIRA issues they need to tackle and the top five 
issues suited for new contributors.

   Bernd

Re: Things we need to do for ApacheCon EU

[Steve Holden <st...@holdenweb.com>]

I'm wondering, given the involvement of a corporation that likely has the technical chops to pull it off, whether we might propose some sort of video link-up if we can find synchronized slots in the schedules.

Unless there's a definite benefit to ApacheCon EU attendees then it's just another fine idea, but if we might offer delegates a genuine service (like making WJAX livestream video available) then it might be worth looking into.

How valuable would any kind of parallel access to WJAX be?

regards
 Steve

On Jun 7, 2012, at 1:00 AM, Bernd Fondermann wrote:

> On 31.05.12 10:06, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
>> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Ross Gardler
>> <rg...@opendirective.com>  wrote:
>>> ...I think there is a need to define what this
>>> conference is. Is it a developer conference, a user conference, a hacker
>>> etc.
>> ...
>> 
>> And it would be good to clearly differentiate with
>> http://jax.de/wjax2012/speaker/
>> 
>> Their tagline is "a conference for Java, Architecture, Agile and
>> Cloud" - maybe those of us who are familiar with that conference can
>> help steer ours so that it's clearly different instead of competing on
>> the same topics (or maybe at least competing on the same topics on the
>> same days, see http://jax.de/wjax2012/specialdays/ ).
> 
> WJAX is the sister conference to its big brother JAX (taking place each Spring) and some other JAX events around the world. I've never been to WJAX, but attended JAX for some years now as a speaker. (WJAX organizers also edit JavaMagazin, where I'm writing a monthly Apache-project-focused column.)
> 
> JAX is huge, with as much as 12 parallel sessions at a time for 3 days, plus workshops on Mon + Fri. This can be overwhelming. WJAX has a similar setup with 8 parallel session. So it should be about 2/3 the size of JAX.
> 
> The foremost difference to ApacheCon is that WJAX is a German-speaking conference all over the place. Only keynotes and few sessions are in english. In this regard, it is not a European conference. You'll find not many french, spanish or even swiss people there. Let alone british.
> 
> Attendees are mostly folks having to deal with "enterprise software", in the sense that they often work for banks, telcos, car manifacturers, so the conference pretty much covers what these people are interested in. You won't find that many university students or people from very small companies there, also because of the price tag.
> 
> New hot topics will eventually come to WJAX, like BigData this year. Niche technologies like Lucene are only a niche at (W)JAX.
> 
> This also means that open source is seen very pragmatic at (W)JAX. If some software is Open Source, that's ok as long as it solves their problems.
> 
> Speakers are competent and familiar with the topic, but not neccessarily mega-deep into it. I've done two Hadoop talks at JAX, not being a committer for any of the Hadoop projects. At BerlinBuzzwords this week there were Hadoop committers all over the place - so I didn't need to do a talk and could just listen, learn and meet. (bbuzz was great, by the way!)
> 
> So, when needing to contrast with WJAX, I would probably tag ApacheCon EU like this:
> + pan-european
> + "meet the committers"
> + all the latest and greatest hot stuff from our projects
> + open source excellence
> 
> In the sense of Leslie Hawthorns great BBuzz keynote (see also https://twitter.com/bdelacretaz/status/209612024244748288 ), we could try to forster community in that projects are given the opportunity to present their top five JIRA issues they need to tackle and the top five issues suited for new contributors.
> 
>  Bernd
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Steve Holden steve@holdenweb.com,  Holden Web, LLC http://holdenweb.com/
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