Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions — Community over Code Glasgow 2026
Community over Code 2026 — Glasgow, UK, October 11–14
Community over Code Glasgow 2026 is over. The Birds of a Feather sessions ran on the Monday and Tuesday evenings of the conference. Thank you to everyone who hosted and took part. We’re reaching out to the people who ran each BoF for a short update on how it went — as we hear back, we’ll post those updates here.
What is a BoF?
A Birds of a Feather (BoF) session is an informal, participant-driven gathering where people who share a common interest get together to discuss it. Unlike a talk or a panel, there is no formal presentation - the attendees are the content. Someone proposes a topic, shows up with a room, and the conversation goes wherever the group takes it.
BoFs are one of the oldest traditions in open source conferences. They’re where hallway-track conversations get a room and a time slot - a chance to go deep on a topic with the people who care about it most.
You don’t need to be an expert to host a BoF. You just need to care about a topic enough to start the conversation. Bring a few discussion questions, and let the room take it from there.
BoFs That Ran
BoF sessions ran on the Monday and Tuesday evenings of the conference, 5:50–6:30 PM.
Monday, 12 October — 5:50–6:30 PM
| Topic |
|---|
| Apache Cassandra |
| Responsible AI (RAI) |
| Apache Lucene/Solr |
| Apache Groovy and Grails |
Tuesday, 13 October — 5:50–6:30 PM
| Topic |
|---|
| Content Extraction in the VLM Era |
| FOSS Suite |
Session Updates
As we hear back from the people who ran each BoF, we’ll add their updates below — how it went, roughly how many took part, and anything worth recording for the community.
Apache Cassandra
Monday, 12 October · 5:50–6:30 PM
Come talk about the present and future of Apache Cassandra — the distributed NoSQL database built for massive scale and high availability. Whether you’re a long-time operator, a contributor, or just getting started with Cassandra, this is your chance to connect with others in the community, share war stories, discuss upcoming features, and talk about where the project is headed. All levels of experience welcome.
Responsible AI (RAI)
Monday, 12 October · 5:50–6:30 PM
An open discussion about responsible and ethical use of AI in open source projects and the broader ecosystem. Topics may include bias in training data, transparency in model development, governance of AI-related projects within the ASF, and how open source communities can lead the way in building AI that is fair, accountable, and beneficial. No expertise required — bring your questions and perspectives.
Apache Lucene/Solr
Monday, 12 October · 5:50–6:30 PM
Come talk about the present and future of Apache Lucene and Apache Solr. One aspect we want to cover is current-day usage of both, collecting case studies and real-world stories to be shared on the public websites.
Update: Somewhere between 10 and 14 people attended. Turnout was lower than this BoF usually gets, possibly because it came right after the Search hackathon, and some people weren’t sure when (or whether) it was happening.
Apache Groovy and Apache Grails
Monday, 12 October · 5:50–6:30 PM
Come talk about everything Groovy and Grails. The session is aimed at anyone in the broader Groovy or Grails communities. Chat about what you are doing and what you’d like to see in future versions.
Content Extraction in the VLM Era
Tuesday, 13 October · 5:50–6:30 PM
Getting text out of files used to be the boring part of the pipeline. Vision-language models (VLMs) have changed that: scanned pages, charts, tables, diagrams, and images can now be turned into text, structured data, and embeddings. And the consumer of that output is increasingly an agent, not a person. The question has shifted from “can we extract it?” to “what should we extract, for whom, at what cost, and how do we know it’s useful?” Come compare notes on what’s working and commiserate over your ugliest PDFs. Anyone building document pipelines is welcome!
Update: A small group of two had a good, on-topic conversation. There are no outcomes to record.
FOSS Suite
Tuesday, 13 October · 5:50–6:30 PM
There is software supply chain regulation popping up all around the world (US: EO 14028, EU: CRA, …). It makes compliance mandatory for FOSS and for commercial dependents alike. Let’s make compliance work for us: come and join this BoF to discuss the current state of compliance tooling and learn about an initiative to open up sustainable funding opportunities for your FOSS project.
Update: The discussion centered on the idea from the related Governance and Policy track talk: tokens for exchanging identities between parties in open source, so that different parties can authenticate, and whether the ASF might be a home for such a project. It led to a wide-ranging conversation about what newcomers expect when they bring a new project idea to the ASF and to Community over Code, and how important timing and a shared sense of the problem are for getting a new project off the ground.
Lessons Learned
Notes for whoever organizes BoFs in future years.
- Put BoFs in the main schedule. BoFs (and the hackathon) lived on a separate page rather than in the conference app, so some attendees didn’t know when or whether a BoF was happening. Listing them in the main schedule would help.
- Mind the order of related sessions. A BoF works best after the related talk, not before it, and it shouldn’t clash with sessions its target audience is likely to attend. A BoF that comes right after a hackathon for the same community may also draw a smaller crowd.
- Small can still be good. Even a BoF with only a couple of people can be a worthwhile conversation.
Questions?
- Join #community-over-code on the-asf.slack.com
- Join apachecon.slack.com for day-to-day event coordination
- Email planners@apachecon.com