Community Development News - February 2018

Published on Monday, Mar 5, 2018 by sharan

Welcome to our monthly blog update about what is happening in Apache Community Development (ComDev)!

This month we have news about our participation at FOSDEM, we include an update on Apachecon North America and our Apache EU Roadshow events, we continue to actively look for event sponsors, we prepare to take part in GSoC and we welcome another PMC member.

FOSDEM

During February, we participated at FOSDEM. FOSDEM is a open source conference held in Brussels every year. It is completely free to attend and attracts around 4000-5000 attendees. We were allocated a booth at the event which has been a great way for projects to promote themselves to new users or potential new contributors, and also to spread the word about Apache.

In preparation, a wiki page was setup with booth volunteers could register and projects could book time on the ASF booth to promote their project. Following on from last year’s feedback, this year we had some larger roller banners, one with our feather logo and one with our list of projects. Once again people were surprised to realise just how many projects we have at the ASF or that they were already using. We also had a few project demos running via a monitor at the booth. Visitors often want to find out more details about a project or see it in action so having a visual display really helped us interact with the attendees. It was good to see the Apache Kibble demo was getting a lot of attention not only from conference visitors but also from other Apache projects too.

As usual, people came by to pick up stickers, and giveaway items. This year our items were a little different, we had some Apache balloons, Apache pens, bracelets t,-shirts and some mugs that became a most wanted item. There were also quite a few Apache project related presentations which also help generate a wider awareness of the Foundation.

A big thank you to everyone who turned up to help out on the booth or to chat to people about their projects. Special mentions goes to all the booth volunteers (Daan, Rohit, Trevor, Myrle, Andrus, Kevin, Rich, Daniel, Pono, Bertrand and Isabel).

Apachecon NA 2018

More details about Apachecon North America 2018 in Montreal were announced this month. It will take place on 24 - 28 September 2018 and there will be a range of technical tracks as well as the opportunity to connect with project communities. The Call for Papers (CFP) is now open. You can also register to attend and take advantage of early bird pricing. We have also blocked some rooms at a special room rate for Apachecon attendees.

Please use the following link to submit a talk for Apachecon or Register to attend.

Key dates to remember are as follows:

Please follow @ApacheCon on Twitter to be the first to hear announcements about keynotes, the schedule, evening events, and everything you can expect to see at the event.

Apache EU Roadshow

Our Apache EU Roadshow will be co-located with FOSS Backstage on 13th and 14th June 2018 in Berlin. Registering to attend FOSS Backstage will also give you access to the Apache EU Roadshow. Our Roadshow will focus on the latest developments in Cloud technologies, IoT, Apache Tomcat and our most popular webserver Apache Httpd!. The CFP is now closed with over 70 submissions.

Please note that any submissions for Community related, governance or Apache Way talks will be included as part of the FOSS Backstage program.

Find out more information about the EU Roadshow and also and register to attend at http://apachecon.com/acna18

Find out more details about FOSS Backstage at https://foss-backstage.de

The Community development team will be providing support for both events and and will also continue to help market and promote them.

Actively Seeking Sponsors

We are actively looking for sponsors to help sponsor our Apachecon North America and Apache EU Roadshow events. Sponsorship can range from actual presence at the event with a booth package to limited sponsorship of smaller items such as video recording, attendee or speakers event, lightning talks, or the coffee breaks.

If you are interested in helping us with any form of sponsorship, or need more information about the levels of sponsorship packages available then please contact Kevin McGrail on kmcgrail AT apache DOT org

New PMC Member

The Apache Community Development PMC is pleased to announce another new PMC member this month. Olivier Heintz has been involved with open source at Apache for several years and has shown himself to be positive and enthusiastic in helping others learn about how the ASF works.

We are sure that Olivier will be a great addition to the PMC so please join us in welcoming Olivier to the team.

Mentoring at Google Summer of Code 2018

We are involved in the next Google Summer of Code (GSoC) as one of the Mentoring Organizations for the 13th consecutive year!

The GSoC program allow students to spend their summer (three months and full time) working on an Open Source project. They can learn how to work in a team on a stable project, they can increase their technical skills but the most important skill is the understanding of how an Open Source community work to deliver a common and spontaneous effort for the public good.

You will find us with our own page in the GSoC program website and here you will find all our project ideas designed by each PMC for giving an opportunity to any student to start their first journey in one of the Apache projects.

For any student that wants to join the program and for ASF people that want to be a mentor, please take a look at our GSoC page for more useful information.

Proposals registrations from students are allowed starting on 12th March but any student is invited to get in touch with us leaving a comment on our JIRA or in the mailing list related to the chosen ASF project.

Contacting Community Development

Remember that we are always happy to get your feedback and comments so please feel free to contact us, follow our events and participate in our discussions on our mailing list. If you would like to be kept up to date with all the latest news about what is happening in Community Development then please subscribe to our mailing list by sending an email to dev-subscribe AT community DOT apache DOT org.