ApacheCon US 2004 Special Events

Here is a list of the special features, events, and activities available at the conference:

Special Features

Wi-Fi Network and Online Lounge

ApacheCon provides a free Wi-Fi network to all conference attendees. The network covers all presentation rooms and the expo area.

In addition to the Wi-Fi network an Online Lounge sponsored by Novell with 35 computers is available to all conference attendees.

IBM-sponsored Derby/Cloudscape Coding Contest

Start of Contest: Monday, Nov. 15th, 8:30, Opening Plenary
End of Contest: Wednesday, Nov. 17th, 17:00, Closing Plenary
Contest Rules

IBM is sponsoring a special contest at ApacheCon 2004 US, and donating some very nice prizes, including a first prize of a ThinkPad model T42, with 1GiB of memory, 40GiB of disk, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM, and integrated wireless networking. Another major prize will be a free round trip airline ticket (from anywhere in the world) with full registration packet to ApacheCon 2005 EU and complimentary registration to ApacheCon 2005 US.

The contest involves developing code using the Apache Derby package. There is documentation about the package on the project's Web site, and one of the ApacheCon tutorials the Sunday before the conference is a half-day devoted solely to the Derby software — and to make it even more useful, that tutorial has been made free! So if you're interested in participating but aren't sure what Apache Derby is all about, there's still time and opportunity to learn from the documentation or in an intensive class given by one of the community developers.

The contest is to take place on-site at ApacheCon. Submissions for the contest will be accepted from Monday morning until Tuesday evening, after which they will be evaluated by a panel of judges. The results of the contest will be announced at the Closing Plenary session on Wednesday evening, and the prizes will be awarded at that time. NOTE: You must be present at the Closing Plenary in order to win any prizes!
See the Contest Rules page for further details.

Derby Contest BOF!
Join Derby developers and community leaders to get help building your project for the contest!
Monday, Nov. 15th, 20:00-22:00 in Zeus - Online Lounge

Free Video Stream of Keynote Sessions

ApacheCon provides free video streaming of all its keynote sessions.
Video streams will be made available at apachecon.lpbn.org. Please note that ApacheCon is in Las Vegas and thus in the US/Pacific timezone.

Events

Networking Welcome Reception

Monday, Nov. 15th, 18:00, expo area

The Welcome Reception is a great place to renew old acquaintances and meet new friends!

Join conference attendees, speakers, and exhibitors for a fun-filled evening of great food and drink. This popular event features plenty of hors d'oeuvres and refreshments.

Keynote Presentation - Miguel de Icaza

Tuesday, Nov. 16th, 11:00

Miguel de Icaza, founder of the Gnome project, Ximian Inc. and the Mono effort, will discuss, in his usual fun-spirited and illuminated manner, the future trends of application software development, desktops, open source software, ASP.NET, WebServices, Mono and Apache technology.

Keynote Presentation - Doc Searls

Wednesday, Nov. 17th, 11:00

Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. He is a popular speaker, presenter, and writer and his Web log is avidly read on a daily basis by thousands of people.

Doc Searls talks about the accelerating uptake of open source software and the growth of the core open source community. What are the differences between the value systems of core open source communities -- such as Apache's -- and the growing population of practitioners who mostly see open source products as cheap and handy building material? What are the similarities? How can we make sense of both in a larger context that is only beginning to emerge?

Other keynote presentations will be announced soon.

PGP Keysigning Event

Monday, Nov. 15th, 7:30pm

We will have a repeat of the popular PGP keysigning event from last year at the end of the Welcoming Reception. Note that having a PGP key and sending it into the keysigning organizers are required to effectively participate in the event. This is an important event, especially for anyone who signs ASF project releases, so we can increase our web-of-trust.
Please see http://wiki.apache.org/ApacheCon/PgpKeySigning for some background on this event.

Bird-of-a-Feather Sessions

Monday, Nov. 15th, 20:00-22:00
Tuesday, Nov. 16th, 20:00-22:00

Lead or attend a Bird-of-a-Feather session (BoF). Meet with other Apache users and developers. The BoFs at ApacheCon are very informal gatherings of persons interested in a particular topic.

All our BoFs are scheduled in the main scheduling grid now, so please look there for the updated schedule. Room assignments for BoFs are as follows, reading the schedule grid from left to right:

BOF 1	BOF 2	BOF 3	BOF 4
Parthenon 3	Parthenon 4	Parthenon 5	Zeus (Online Lounge, back left corner)

Don't miss these special activities designed to maximize the value of your time at the conference.