ApacheCon is just a few weeks away, and I, for one, am really looking
forward to it. I think it's going to be the best yet. I think that
every time, and so far, I've been right.

We've been doing ApacheCon for more than 15 years now, and it just
keeps getting better.

ApacheCon is the main community event of the Apache Software
Foundation. Its primary goal is building community, both in size, and
in strength. We build community strength by introducing projects to
one another, and encouraging them to work together.

Of course, that can be done online, and, indeed, most of what we do at
the ASF is done online - on mailing lists, IRC, and in the code
repositories themselves. But there's something about getting
communities together, physically, that can't be replicated online.

Leading up to ApacheCon, I've been doing a number of FeatherCast
interviews with people who will be speaking at the upcoming event.
They've talked about their own talks, as well as the other related
talks that you might want to also see. Some of these are published
already, and others will be coming soon.

Here's an overview of what you can already find on FeatherCast.org, as
well as what'll be showing up in the next few days.

We started with a brief overview of why you should come to ApacheCon
(http://feathercast.apache.org/apachecon-north-america-2016-early-bird-deadline-approaching/)
To summarize: Because it's going to be awesome.

Next, Shawn McKinney did two interviews. First, he
talked about his presentation on OpenLDAP,
(http://feathercast.apache.org/shawn-mckinney-openldap-at-apachecon/)
and then he talked about his presentation on Apache Fortress.
(http://feathercast.apache.org/shawn-mckinney-apache-fortress/)

Andrus Adamchik will be presenting on Bootique, which, while it's not
an Apache project, works with a number of ASF communities. That
interview is at
http://feathercast.apache.org/andrus-adamchik-bootique-apachecon-na-2016/

Anatole Tresch will be speaking about Apache Tamaya, an incubating
project, which is a configuration solution for Java SE. That
interview is at
http://feathercast.apache.org/anatole-tresch-apache-tamaya/

I have a number of interviews that I'm still editing, but which may
already be published by the time you read this:

Sunil Shah will be speaking about Mesos: http://sched.co/6OJZ

Aldrin Piri will be presenting a half-day training class on Apache
NiFi: http://sched.co/6M3A

Roman Shaposhnik will be giving several talks. He'll be speaking at
the Big Data portion of the event about ODPi (http://sched.co/6Lzm and
http://sched.co/6Lzv) and he'll be presenting about the Incubator
(http://sched.co/6OJR). At the end of Thursday, he'll be running the
Shark Tank, where Incubator podlings come to improve their chances of
success. (http://sched.co/6OIN)

George Percivall will be speaking about Open Geospatial Standards
(http://sched.co/6M2E) but spent most of his interview talking about
the 2-day Geospatial track, which is definitely one of the highlights
of this event. You can see all the talks in the Geospatial track at
https://apachebigdata2016.sched.org/type/Geospatial

But there's more to come. I have interviews scheduled with eleven more
speakers - so I should just be able to fit them all in before
ApacheCon. Check back at FeatherCast.org every day between now and
ApacheCon for a new episode. Or, subscribe to the podcast at
http://feathercast.org/ so you won't miss an episode.

ApacheCon is less than a month away. Register today at ApacheCon.com