• Airport: YVR
• Getting to the hotel: VancouverTips
• Local Google Map of Hotel
• The Westin Bayshore is the conference location
• The conference sessions/expo will all have an ApacheCon wifi network available all day. Wifi is available in hotel rooms for an extra charge.

Conference schedule and discussions:

• See the official conference schedule
• Sign into the CrowdVine /Connect social network to create a personalized schedule (exportable as .ics and other formats) – this includes discussion boards/ratings for all sessions
• Lanyrd users can see a schedule there too.

Social Networks:

• ApacheCon on FaceBook
• ApacheCon on LinkedIn
• ApacheCon on Xing
• ApacheCon on Upcoming
• ApacheCon on Lanyrd
• ApacheCon on CrowdVine (our default social network!)

Official @ApacheCon twitter feed.

Is ApacheCon on your friends list? Let others know you’re attending by friending or signing up on your favorite social network:

• ApacheCon on FaceBook
• ApacheCon on LinkedIn
• ApacheCon on Xing
• ApacheCon on Upcoming
• ApacheCon on Lanyrd
• ApacheCon on CrowdVine (our default social network!)

Even better, you can now +1 ApacheCon postings on Google Plus. Talk about the “+1″ phrase coming full circle back to the group that popularized it years ago!

• Submit your ideas now for the CFP of ApacheCon NA 2011 – coming to Vancouver this 7-11 November. CFP submissions are open through April.
• Welcome Apache Extras! Apache Extras is the the place for all your Apache-related software that’s not an Apache project. That means that projects that might not use the Apache license or might not meet the community criteria for formal Apache projects, but are still related to Apache technology. Apache Extras gives you all the infrastructure support of Google Code, and shows your project’s interest in Apache technologies.
• Welcome to our new Executive Assistant! The ASF has hired an EA to assist with a broad array of administrative tasks, who is already helping out with our conferences and other corporate operations.
• We’ve got new top level projects! Over the past few months, the Incubator has graduated the following projects:

• Apache Thrift is a scalable cross-language framework for code generation between a wide variety of popular programming languages.
• Apache ZooKeeper, an Apache Hadoop spinoff, provides a centralized service for providing distributed synchronization of configuration information and other services.
• Apache OODT (press release) is middleware for managing data used in critical scientific applications – and features original code and contributors from NASA and the JPL. Yes, real rocket scientists work on OODT!
• Apache ESME stands for Enterprise Social Messaging Environment, and allos for secure and scalable microsharing and micromessaging applications.
• Apache Aries implements the EEG’s enterprise OSGi specification for multi-bundle applications.
• Apache River implements JINI services and allows construction of secure and distributed systems.
• Apache Chemistry (press release) is an implementation of the OASIS CMIS standard, allowing access to a wide variety of different vendor’s CMIS repositories.

There were several other interesting happenings in Apache land recently as well.

• Apache UIMA and Hadoop technologies helped IBM’s Watson supercomputer defeat humanity in the TV game show Jeopardy! As one of the human contestants wrote: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”
• The Apache Subversion project issued an open letter to a corporation who is an active contributor and user of Subversion. While this is an unfortunate situation of a third party effectively usurping some of the good will generated by the Subversion project itself, the issue is being addressed, and it looks like we’ll have a productive resolution. This underscores the importance of appropriate governance and trademark protection for open source projects.
• Separately, those interested in using Apache projects may be interested in a number of much more detailed trademark policies that the ASF is working on, in an effort to make it simpler for third parties to associate with our projects, while ensuring that our project communities get full and proper credit for their work.

• Apache Third Party Domain Name Branding Policy – where the Rationale is an important explanation of why our trademark policies are written as they are.
• Apache Third Party Event Branding Policy
• Note that we are working on a Services Branding policy which is expected to be similar to the Domain Name policy as well, for those who wish to host services using our marks and software.

• Isabel Drost did a great series of blog articles about ApacheCon Atlanta, worthy of the heydays when blogging was still king (as opposed to Twitter). In particular she covers Media Training, Hadoop and other H-projects, the keynotes and science and open source, and the last day wrapup.
• Luciano Resende blogged his sessions at ApacheCon, newcomers should especially see how to get started with open source!
• Dana Blankenhorn, a keynoter, also wrote a number of interesting articles, including about the JCP.
• Matthew Sacks of The BitSource had some great posts as well.
• Paul did a podcast about Apache libCloud, now incubating, with Coté from Redmonk, some of our favorite analysts, who also interviewed Grant Ingersoll about Apache Mahout.
• Oscar Castañeda did a great overview, including his perceptions as a Google Summer of Code newcomer to the scene, and a link an interesting Subversion visualization.
• Feathercast’s great podcasts cover Nick Burch and the FastFeather track, Marcel Offermans and OSGi, and Sander Temme with an overview and httpd security tips.
• Bob Sutor gave an interesting keynote showing his geek side titled “Data, Languages, and Problems“.

And of course there’s the official roundup from the show floor at ApacheCon. If I missed your great blog post about this year’s ApacheCon, let me know!

In other news, BarCampApache Sydney is this weekend, on 11-Dec with it’s own press release and discussion group.

And today is the big day! The Java EC’s vote on the Java 7/8 JSRs concludes today, which will determine the openness – or lack thereof – of the future of Java. I’m sure that Stephen Colbourne will be covering it.

If you’re interested in sponsoring the ASF at a higher level, we’d love that too, and I might have a bunch of buttons for you!

You may also see a number of people at ApacheCon featuring giant “Ask Me!” buttons with the Apache feather on them. Please – follow directions, and ask us your questions! A number of knowledgeable members are wearing these buttons, and will be happy to answer your questions about what the larger ASF is all about, and why the organization behind all of our great projects is also important to support.

For those who can’t make it to ApacheCon, please feel free to contact me offline or on the mailing list for your button.

Reminder: Apache and the feather logo are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation, along with the names of our many projects – and should be used with respect both for the ASF as a whole and for the many committers in our project communities.

We also offer some free events – these are open to the public, even if you can’t attend ApacheCon sessions or trainings. We do ask that you sign up in advance if possible, so organizers know how large a crowd to expect.

• BarCamp Apache is free and runs during the day on Monday and Tuesday. Sign up, show up, and lead your own session with other BarCamp attendees!
• Apache Meetups are hosted Monday through Thursday nights, starting at 8pm. We have meetups covering Apache projects like Hadoop, Lucene & Solr, Cassandra, Tomcat, Subversion, Deltacloud, Felix & OSGi, and of course the HTTP server. Meetups are free to attend by all.

If you are interested in any of the paid sessions or free events at ApacheCon, then you can show your interest by signing up on these popular social networks:

• CrowdVine supplies the official social network for ApacheCon
• ApacheCon on LinkedIn
• ApacheCon on Facebook
• ApacheCon on Upcoming
• ApacheCon on Xing

Follow @ApacheCon to learn more!

• Oakland declared November 4th as Apache Software Foundation day!
• PR about ApacheCon – yes, it’s worth reading, including a roundup of useful links at the end
• Subversion is submitted as an ASF project (on the off chance you didn’t read the million tweets about this earlier!)
• Ted Leung’s Ted Leung’s excellent wrapup, with links to great pictures
• Michael Pilato talks about designing the official show t-shirt
• Isabel Drost’s conference writeup (and link to her Heise article too!)
• Dave Johnson’s wrapup post, featuring Roller, Shindig, Social Gadgets
• James Briggs detailed writeup of each day
• Wishlists for ApacheCon by Sander and Aaron – great ways to let people know what you’re interested in
• Microsofties singing “Incubator Blues” at the Lighting Talks (fun video!)

Watch for a wrapup of the many different videos that came out of the conference soon!

• Pack layers; the weather is a beautiful sunny 70degF days/50degF nights.
• From SFO and OAK, take the BART light rail trains to the 12th Street Oakland City Center stop. From OAK, you’ll first take the AirBART bus to the BART station, which requires $3 exact change on the bus.
• The Bay Bridge is open once again, so you can drive, although the BART is highly recommended unless you need assistance.
• The Marriott hotel tower is kittycorner/diagonally across the street from the 12th street BART station – it’s closer than you think.
• All conference events are in the Convention Center, which is in the same building as the Marriott: walk through the reception area around and past the escalators to the second floor conference rooms.
• Sessions and Meetups are held on the first floor main conference halls, and in the 200-series rooms on the second floor of the convention center.

Roundup of information about ApacheCon:

• Schedule Grid
• Meetups
• CrowdVine - social networking site with attendee blog feeds
• Planet Apache – committer feeds
• Official Twitter Feed and a metafeed of #apachecon tweets and pictures

• Our CrowdVine calendar is up! You can connect with other attendees and create your own “my schedule” there to get a private ics feed of events you want to attend.
• CrowdVine also provides a great aggregation of attendee’s blogs, tweets, and photos too.
• OStatic by GigaOM is running a guest editor series on ASF people, including Jim (Chairman), Justin (President), and Shane (Director) so far, with more planned.
• There are plenty of evening Meetups planned on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday – free to attend by all.
• If you haven’t registered yet, there are still a few Apachecon discount codes available for another day or so – if you do a little digging or tweeting, I’m sure you’ll be able to score one!

Our keynote speakers have been announced: Brian Behlendorf, Kirrlily Robert and the Apache Pioneers’ Panel.

The blog traffic is now really picking up about ApacheCon US 2009.

• Jim writes a guest post on OStatic about the founding of the ASF (stay tuned there for more).
• Brian’s interview at The Bit Source, looking back at the founding and forward to the future.
• Our CrowdVine page has a blog feed of con attendees – you can sign up on CrowdVine too!
• Remember, BarCampApache, Monday-Tuesday 2-3 November is free to attend!
• Trainer’s interviews/podcasts galore!

• Hadoop training by Aaron Kimball
• Tomcat training by Filip Hanik does two interviews!
• Web Application Security training by Christian Wenz
• Lucene training by Grant Ingersoll