by Ted Liu, event organizing committee member, co-founder of KAIYUANSHE, and Principal Technical Evangelist, Open Technology Center, Microsoft China

On 24-25 October, The Apache Roadshow 2015 - China in Beijing was successfully concluded. It was organized by KAIYUANSHE (the first ground-up Chinese Open Source alliance co-founded by CSDN, GitCafe, GNOME.Asia, Microsoft Open Tech and Ubuntu Kylin in October 2014, and now with 50 Open Source community and enterprise members) together with the community sponsorship from The Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The roadshow was aimed to establish KAIYUANSHE as a leader in the Open Source communities in China and a bridge to the international and domestic Open Source communities.

With both onsite and online coverage, there were over 5,000 persons participated the roadshow, where 1,400 joined onsite in Beijing, 3,370 watched the live streaming video (avg. 23 minutes viewing), and 200+ college students and community members attended the 4 regional sessions in Hebei, Henan, Xi'An, and Shanghai.

We have received many solid feedbacks so far:

  • Brett Porter, chairman of ASF, greeted in his Wechat message "Thank you everyone-it was wonderful to spend the time with you. Thanks again to the organizers and volunteers on such as a great event".
  • Niclas Hedhman, VP of Apache Zest, whose gave keynote about Apache Incubation, wishes to have this roadshow recur regularly.
  • J. Aaron Farr, member of ASF Incubator, who gave keynote about "The Open Source Experience of League of Legends", commented that the Apache Roadshow 2015 – China, is one of the best Apache event in the Greater China region he ever attended.
  • Many Chinese Apache committers, contributors and users are very eager to participate more China-specific Apache project-related communications, online discussion groups, meetups and even an Apache China Community formation more timely and frequently.


More highlights & details

With very limited funding and resources, we made this Roadshow happen thanking the joint efforts of KAIYUANSHE members, the sponsors – Alauda, Dataman, Easemob, eBay, Intel, Liepin.com and Microsoft, the community partners - OSS Association of China Academy of Sciences, Vzhibo, Huodongxing, Jikexueyuan, and Huazhang Press, and our media partner CSDN who did vigorous promotion, speakers & audience invitation.  And don't forget the 80+ lovely and energetic volunteers from China Academy of Sciences University and Peking University. This demonstrated the grassroots community spirit called "Community-Led Greatness".

The roadshow was very fruitful with 10 breathtaking spotlights:

1.    Keynote speech: 6 iconic keynoters spoke about community-led development (The Apache Way), Cloud computing, Big Data, Open Source software development, project incubation, and real world use cases of Apache technology, such as in the video game League of Legends.

2.    Executive Panel: Regarding to Community-Led Development, Gurus passionately probed into the practices of international communities and the thinking, expectation and challenges of Chinese Open Source movement, as well as encourages diversified participation of different races and females since international communities are mostly dominated by white men.

3.    Gurus speech: 40 Chinese technical and community gurus shared knowledge about Apache project-related, cutting-edge Big Data and Cloud computing, trend, architecture and application of Open Source software development, and practices of community governance and construction building.

4.    Project incubation: The keynote by Niclas Hedhman the co-founder and Vice President of Apache Zest, shared in-depth the processes of joining the Incubation and the graduation. This topic is one of the most interested area by the Chinese audience.

5.    Women for OSS Panel: 6 Chinese female Open Source contributors shared their journeys in participating Open Source and holding up half the sky.

6.    AMPCamp: Learning by doing. Teachers conducted lectures onsite guidance to help you quickly get started with the Apache Spark technologies through hands-on lab.

7.    Open Source Roundtable: More than 30 international and domestic leaders carried out in-depth and heated discussions over Cloud computing, Big Data, Open Source software development and community governance & building. Onsite communication went in a warm way. The sparks between ardent opinions actually reflect the development status of Chinese Open Source. Experts argued vehemently, yielded real stuff and uttered golden words now and then, which was a highlight of the Apache Roadshow.

8.    Networking & Connecting: In addition to the Apache Night networking parties on October 24 and 25, 16 one-on-one meetings between speakers/sponsors and the Apache leaders were arranged.

9.    Regional Coverage: 4 regional sessions hosted by 3 universities and a community with 200+ attendees gathered to watch and discuss the video broadcast of the Roadshow. This was a good start to advance Open Source software movements jointly by the IT industry and the academic institutes.

A touching story here: Mr. Oukan Chen, the organizer of the Apache Roadshow Shanghai session, sponsored by Shanghai Donghua University & Linuxer Community, is a disabled person who cannot speak or walk and can only express himself using his chin to type words in an extremely difficult way with his father's help. This doesn't stop him from being a solid OSS community contributor.

10.    MSFT Center One Tour: More than 50 guests are invited to visit Microsoft Center One and witnessed the amazing development & deployment of the latest technologies such as Cloud computing, Big Data, mobile computing, enterprise productivity, Internet of Things, smart home, environmental protection and energy saving.

In celebrating the 1024 Programmer Day in China, a pleasant surprise occurred at the Roadshow closing ceremony. Anders Hejlsberg, father of C#/Delphi/TypeScript, delivered a short greeting speech followed by Q&A. David Nalley wrapped up the whole event with his inspiring closing remarks. The atmosphere was hot and the roadshow concluded perfectly.


Looking Ahead

  • All presentations, videos, speech scripts, photos are in the KAIYUANSHE Forum ready for downloading http://www.kaiyuanshe.cn/portal/thread/45.html#56. ASF keynoter videos will be placed on YouTube.
  • To keep the momentum rolling by mobilizing the continuous communications and discussions around Apache projects and potentially the formation of the ground-up Apache China community.
  • AMPCamp Beijing event and the hands-on-lab environment have attracted a number of communities, enterprises, and government agencies for a series of upcoming camps, hands-on-lab and hackathons.
  • We plan to run the roadshow at least annually with ASF blessing and support going forward.


Thank You All!

  • Our keynoters - Brett Porter, David Nalley, Niclas Hedhman, J. Aaron Farr, who traveled afar to attend and deliver non-stop contributions, including speeches, panels, one-on-one meetings, roundtables, Apache Night cocktail parties, etc.
  • Special Thanks to Ross Gardler, the president of ASF, who provided advices and support all along and helped connect with ASF and many interested speakers.  
  • The roadshow steering committee: Ted Liu, Emily Chen, Zhidi Shang, Mabel Li, Hao Zhong, Richard Lin, Jack Yu, Yujuan Zhang for their all-in dedication.
  • Our honorable breakout & lightning talk speakers and roundtable guests.
  • The 80+ lovely volunteers from China Academy of Sciences and Peking University.
  • Our sponsors, Alauda, MSFT, eBay, Easemob, Dataman, Intel, Liepin.com for their kind sponsorship and support.