ApacheCon NA 2015

The "Apache Way" is the process by which Apache Software Foundation projects are managed. It has evolved over many years and has produced over 100 highly successful open source projects. But what is it and how does it work?

In this session we'll discover at how an Apache project is (and isn't!) managed. We will see how the foundation provides an technical and legal infrastructure for each project, and how the Apache Way provides the governance scaffolding for individual projects. This provides the framework for Apache projects which are then free to apply the Apache Way to ensure their project succeeds.

Having attended this session you will have a better understanding of the inner workings of both the foundation and its projects. With this understanding you will be better equipped to engage with and benefit from Apache projects.

Kids need a community too! The Apache Way emerged over a decade ago from the shared experiences of thousands of developers with the desire to create a community that would build world class software. Our children are growing up in a world where there will be billions of lines of code to rewrite, maintain, and innovate on top of. The FIRST Robotics Competition is a unique competition designed around team building, bot building, and mentorship. The competition is full of not just technical challenges but community challenges. This talk will discuss some of the lessons learned implementing the Apache Way with kids. A community lives and dies by it's ability to be carried on by the next generation. We should all be committed to ensuring that these young developers not only have tools and knowledge but also the understanding of how to work in and build new communities.

Ever notice that the projects most likely to tell you to RTFM tend to have the worst FM? That's because the virtues of a docs team - Dilligence, Patience, and Humility - happen to be the virtues of kinder politer people, too.

Come learn some tips of writing better documentation, providing better end-user support, and just possibly growing your project community.

Rich has been doing Open Source documentation for 20 years, and some folks say he's kind of good at it.

This talk will discuss how Apache Projects could potentially impact student education while capitalizing on the energy, creativity and contributions from the budding future generation of open source community members. ASF has been participating in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) since its inception and with great success. GSoC is an opportunity for the PMC’s to recruit fresh perspectives into the projects. Alongside such direct advantages, this talk will enlist some win-win situations to projects and students. The talk will also highlight some indirect advantages like resulting in better introductory documentation, provide a recruiting channel. The kernel of GSoC is to teach open source and in case of ASF projects practicing apache way by next generation workforce. These influencing community cultures will contribute to groom advocates for open source software and inflict future employers.

How do we solve the problem of shortage software engineers and lack of CS courses in American high schools?  Roll up your sleeves and do something about it!  Come and learn how you can help solve this problem.

TEALS (Technology Education And Literacy in Schools) is a grassroots program that recruits, trains, mentors, and places high tech professionals from across the country who are passionate about computer science education into high school classes as volunteer teachers in a team teaching model where the school district is unable to meet their students’ CS needs on its own.  TEALS works with committed partner schools and classroom teachers to eventually hand off the CS courses to the classroom teachers. The school will then be able to maintain and grow a sustainable CS program on their own.

Understanding what drives growth in our open source communities can and should inform project decision making. But how can we measure the health and growth of Apache projects? How useful are metrics such as web traffic, committer activity, JIRA issues, and patches to provide insight? And how do project milestones including feature releases, becoming a TLP, and press/marketing impact metrics month-over-month?

This presentation will introduce community metrics for Apache Aurora (currently in the Incubator) and Apache Mesos (TLP that graduated July 2013). As a case study, I'll provide an overview of metrics I've collected from incubation to today, and point to milestones in their histories that have led to substantial growth in activity. Attendees will come away with an understanding of how milestones impacted these metrics, and how they may evaluate the health of their own projects.