Content is our responsibility but given I undertook to convince people outside the usual ASF crowd to submit talks I can assure you that a lack of promotion for the event was the biggest hurdle. To paraphrase the typical conversation I had (with at least two dozen people):
Ross: "Hey, you know you are doing cool stuff, you should consider submitting a talk at ApacheCon" A.N.Other: "Isn't that just for Apache people though" Ross: "Traditionally, yes. But we are trying to make it much broader than that. Apache is about producing open source software, so anything open source related is a potential fit. Anything that uses ASF software, like your work, is a really good fit" A.N.Other: "I see. But from what I see there are only Apache folks in attendance. They might be interested in hearing about our work, but I don't think it will bring value to me. I'll fix any issues in the ASF stuff that I need to, but I have little interest in talking to the Apache community as a whole. It won't bring me any direct benefit over and above fixing the issues that affect me." It's a chicken and egg problem. If we don't market the event as being something more than an ASF event it's hard to make it something more than an ASF event. I understand LF are still in the "don't tinker" mode while they learn the lay of the land, but I (and others) were very explicit when we gave them the contract. We want LF to make the event a success. I tried very hard to build a coherent track this year. I'd say only around 20% of the people I approached submitted a talk. End result, yet another ApacheCon with a scattergun approach to content. That being said, I think I'm going to be able to build a reasonably coherent track with what I've seen so far. So we are doing our bit with respect to content. It would be so much easier if LF helped us get speakers from outside the ASF. Food for thought, Rich and I have discussed this a number of times. LF promotion is only a part of it. We need ASF people to think outside the ASF box. Ross -----Original Message----- From: jan i [mailto:j...@apache.org] Sent: Monday, February 2, 2015 10:47 AM To: dev@community.apache.org Subject: Re: ApacheCon NA CFP closed On 2 February 2015 at 19:30, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote: > Agreed! > > Also, after all is said and done, and Rich has some time to breathe, > I'd like to know just how helpful LF was this time around. From the > sidelines, it seems that they really didn't do an aggressive job > promoting the event and being a pro-active producer in trying to drive > speakers. > Being one who tries to do a little more than just help, I think we need to divide issues here. Content is our responsibility, as I believe it rightly should be, so finding and driving speakers is our part, of course with the help of LF. Promoting an event before the content is known is pretty hard and not very rewarding. The real (external) promotion start 14th February, when the schedule is in place (work which just started today). All that said, I believe in general we should look for ways to motivate our projects a lot more to participate (not only with talks, but also getting people to come). just my opinion rgds jan i. > > On Feb 2, 2015, at 11:11 AM, Ross Gardler (MS OPEN TECH) < > ross.gard...@microsoft.com> wrote: > > > > Great job Rich, and those who helped. > > > > Sent from my Windows Phone > > ________________________________ > > From: Rich Bowen<mailto:rbo...@rcbowen.com> > > Sent: 2/2/2015 12:19 AM > > To: dev<mailto:dev@community.apache.org> > > Subject: ApacheCon NA CFP closed > > > > Thanks so much for people that got their last-minute papers into the > > CFP system. We currently have 235 proposals. It is still to be > > decided how many tracks we're going to run, but 6 tracks would be > > (roughly) 108 talks, just for reference. So we should be good. > > > > If you've volunteered to review, you can start any time. If you'd > > like to review and aren't in the system yet, email C. Craig Ross > > <c...@linuxfoundation.org> and ask to be added to the CFP review > > system, and cc this list, so that we have some idea of who's being > > added to the list. > > > > We have 2 weeks from today to get the talks (tentatively) scheduled > > and notify speakers on the 14th, so there's a lot of work ahead of us. > > Thanks in advance. > > > > -- > > Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen http://apachecon.com/ - > > @apachecon > >
