BarCamp Apache Sydney 2011

10 December, Thoughtworks, Sydney

The Apache Software Foundation, ThoughtWorks , Alfresco, MaestroDev, have come together to run a BarCamp in Sydney in December. The fun will start on the evening of Friday December 9th with a geeky meal followed by pub, the real action commences at 10am on Saturday the 10th (add your name to the list of attendees).

 

ATTENDEES: follow the tag #barcampsydney to join in), and join the Google Group. That way we can all keep each other informed, about resources, planning, requests for  help/crash space etc.

 

Details

Venue and overview

(See the bottom of this page for a map showing walking routes to the venue)

View Larger Map

The venue is ThoughtWorks Office Sydney. (Level 8, 51 Pitt Street, which is at the Circular Quay end of Pitt Street. The entrance is next door to the ANZ bank, and we'll have a sign by the door, phone us on the numbers on it to be let in). Barcamp is on Saturday, but we will kick off on Friday evening with drinks+meal in town, with Silicon Beach (see below). The unconference will happen during Saturday daytime.  For those planning to turn up on Friday night, there are plenty of other cheap options for overnight accommodation in Sydney (including couch surfing for free, see below).

 

The venue is fairly central, and well served by a variety of public transport options. See this map for details, and use 131500 to work out the best public transport option to get there.

 

Friday Evening

On the Friday before the BarCamp, we'll start by joining the Silicon Beach Christmas Party for drinks from 6pm, at Bar 77 (Grace Hotel, 77 York Street). When things start to wind down there, around 8.30pm we expect, we'll head to somewhere nearby for bite to eat.

For those who don't know about Silicon Beach, it's a a Sydney based group for technology, entrepreneurship and startups. Quite a few of their number were at the BarCamp last year, and joining their drinks seems a great fit (and avoids everyone wishing they were at the other event!). We expect lots of interesting discussions on open source and technology with the group. Afterwards, we'll head out for some food (likely bringing some of the Silicon Beach crowd along too), we'll come up with a plan on the night. If you're just coming for food, join us in Bar 77 at about 8, 8.15 and we'll head from there.

Restaurant wise, we expect to go somewhere not too expensive, the exact place to be decided by those who attend (BarCamp style!) and based on how many we have.

 

Themes

BarCamps are ultimately themed by the attendees: what you want to present, the BarCamp will host.

We'd love for this event to allow the various different parts of the geek community in Sydney and the wider New South Wales region to come together. Whether you're an open source hacker, student, accademic, commercial coder, hobbyist, interested amateur or any one else, we'd love to have you along! We hope that we'll allow different people to connect, share ideas, introduce projects and have fun, in the academic, open source and business sectors.

BarCamps are supposed to be fun, informative and useful. Whilst we do not intend to limit the kinds of topics you can discuss we are deliberately marketing the event to people with interests in one or more of the following:

• Use of and engagement with The Apache Software Foundations projects
• Open development techniques and practices
• Open Source and The Enterprise
• Web 2.0 style data mashups

 

Schedule

It's up to you. Here's the suggested framework. We will fill in the details at the start of play.

• 09:00 set-up/get-in
• 09:30 registration (say hello, make name badge, get swag/loot etc)
• 10:15: After a brief introductory talk, the schedule will be decided by us all at the start of the event. How it works is that we scribble down topics we're interested in and hold them up. If others are interested we then pick a slot on the programme (single or double). It's all very flexible and as topics emerge there is often splitting and lumping and reorganizing. If a session is really going strong at the end of its slot then folks simply decamp and carry on elsewhere, having free'd the room for the next slot. The schedule is expected to morph during the day
• 11:00 First session begins
• 13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
• 14:00 Sessions resume!
• 16:00 Closing session
• 16:15 clean up and off to pub

Here is an example of the schedule from an earlier Apache BarCamp. You can also see the full schedule from last year in this flickr stream (it's over a few photos). This years will become available on Flickr tagged #barcampsydney if someone takes photos!

Scheduling will occur on the Saturday morning, driven by those in attendance!

Barcamps need you!

Although we have sponsorship, a venue and a date, unconferences consist of you, the attendee! We need:

• People!
• More sponsorship: food, schwag etc.
• Projectors, stationery, and possibly some network bits (TBC)
• Offers of basic help, setting stuff up
• Offers of crash space for out-of-town visitors, on Friday and maybe Saturday 

Attendance at the BarCamp is Free, but normal BarCamp rules will apply, most importantly all attendees will be expected to participate in an active way. Ways to contribute include:

• present (informally or formally) about your favourite project
• hack together a mashup with other attendees systems
• play devils advocate in a lively debate
• have a drink with someone you have never met before

Help publicise the event

You could help by telling people about the event, or by designing and putting up a poster.

What to bring

• Laptop
• All the chargers/cables you'll need
• A plugboard to make sure we have enough sockets
• If you're using a Mac for a presentation, VGA adapters
• Spare battery (if you have one)
• Camera
• Sleeping materials - sleeping bag, pillow and toiletries (if you are using our crash spaces - see below)
• An idea for a session, presentation or talk
• A smile
• ...?

Crash space

Geeks from out of town will be in need of crash space on Friday 9th. Please put your name down if you can offer someone a piece of floor. Anyone without crash space sorted should let it be known at the meal on Friday, and we can pair people up then.

 

Attendees

Attendee numbers are limited owing to funding for things like catering. Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, we currently have space for 75 people. (We might be able to up that a bit more, depending on sponsors for food, we'll announce on the google group if we can). When signing up, please indicate if you're hoping to come for dinner on the Friday (so we know how many to book for), and also mention what you can bring to the party. Everyone at a barcamp will speak, question, blog/tweet, or help out - we want you all to participate in one way or another! If you can offer extra bits and bobs then that'd be great.

Finally, if you don't want to get a pbwiki account, then just email via the google group and we'll put you on it.

 

 

	Name	Email / Twitter/ homepage	If you can help, say how	Crash space?	Any notes (including comments on topics you want to see discussed)	Dinner Friday?
1	Aristedes Maniatis (ish / ASF)		organizer		* Cooperation between academic and private sector projects * Understanding open development * Apache Cayenne	Yes
2	Nick Burch (Alfresco / ASF)	@Gagravarr	organizer		* Open Development and the Apache Software Foundation * Apache projects relating to content, eg Apache Tika and Apache POI * Does developing open source software differ between Europe and Australia?	Yes
3	Brett Porter (MaestroDev / ASF)	@brettporter	organizer		* Apache Maven * Apache Incubator * Getting new volunteers and contributors to your open source project	Yes + 1
4	Eric Springer				* Big Data	Yes
5	Kazuyuki Kono	Alfresco	organizer			Yes
6	Ali B. Kord	University of Sydney (abag6391@uni.sydney.edu.au)			* Java * Open Source * Linux * Cloud * Mobile
7	Oleg Sakharov	@karpuscul			Would like to hear about projects recently joined ASF e.g. Tika	No
8	Ian Holsman				All things Apache
9	Abhinav Goyal	abhinav@sydney.edu.au			Etch, Ruby on Rails, C++11 (and Boost.Ruby?)	No
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If the list above is full, please place yourself onto the waiting list. We can't promise that everyone on the waiting list will be able to come, but we'll try our best to get enough sponsorship to cover food for everyone on it! We'll announce on the Google Group how we're doing.

	Name	Email / Twitter/ homepage	If you can help, say how	Crash space?	Any notes (including comments on topics you want to see discussed)	Dinner Friday?
Wait 1	Your name here
Wait 2	Your name here

Sponsors

Firstly we'd like to say a big Thank You to all our sponsors:

 

 

ThoughtWorks
Apache Software Foundation

 

Secondly, if you might be able to help out with sponsorship, please contact any of the core organisers (our emails are at the bottom of the page)

 

Catering

TBA

 

We hope to be able to offer lunch, including vegetarian options. We'll announce more soon!

 

Accomodation

Feel free to add some suggestions for accommodation in Sydney. 

If you would like more advice, please contact any of the organisers, as below.

Cercaroma.Net

 

Travel

From the Airport (Kingsford Smith):

You can catch a train from either terminal to Circular Quay or Wynyard (via Central) for $15.00.

 

Travel by rail:

Long distance trains to Sydney all arrive at Sydney Central Terminal. At Central, change onto a train that's going round the city loop (in either direction!), and it's a short walk to the venue from either Wynyard or Circular Quay stations. For details of long distance trains, please see here

The venue is near Circular Quay and Wynyard Stations (it's a 5 minute walk away). For details of how to get there, see CityRail

 

By car:

The venue is very central, so parking is expensive. TODO add suggestions here. We'd suggest you use public transport to avoid parking issues.

 

Getting to the venue:

Taxis are available throughout the city.  By foot, the venue is a few minutes walk from the city centre, being located near Circular Quay. By ferry, head to Circular Quay and walk a few minutes south. By train, head to Circular Quay or Wynyard (change at Central if you need to), and it's a 5-10 minute walk from either of them. By bus, most buses to the city centre will get you close. Please see the map in the next section. Finally, if in doubt, use the travel planner provided by 131500.info.

 

Map of Sydney

A map showing the centre of Sydney, with the Venue and nearby Stations.

 

Core Organisers

If you've any queries, contact one of these people.

	Name	Organisation	Email
1	Aristedes Maniatis	ISH / ASF	amaniatis AT apache DOT org
2	Nick Burch	Alfresco / ASF	nick AT apache DOT org
3	Brett Porter	MaestroDev / ASF	brett AT apache DOT org
4	Kazukuki Kono	Alfresco	kazuyuki DOT kono AT alfresco DOT com

 

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