Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions — Community over Code Glasgow 2026
Community over Code 2026 — Glasgow, UK, October 11–14
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.
Schedule
BoF sessions run on Days 2 and 3 of the conference - Monday and Tuesday evenings, after the main program:
- Monday, 12 October — 5:50 PM – 6:30 PM (6 rooms)
- Tuesday, 13 October — 5:50 PM – 6:30 PM (6 rooms)
Sign Up
To claim a BoF slot, open a Pull Request against the comdev-events-site repository editing this file to add your topic to an open slot in the table below.
When you claim a slot, please also add a short description of your BoF in the Descriptions section below, following the existing examples. Link your topic in the table to the description so people can see what it’s about.
Monday, 12 October — 5:50–6:30 PM
| Room | Topic |
|---|---|
| Tay | Apache Cassandra |
| Clyde | Responsible AI (RaI) |
| Dee | available — open a PR! |
| Don | available — open a PR! |
| Spey | available — open a PR! |
| Tweed | Apache Groovy and Grails |
Tuesday, 13 October — 5:50–6:30 PM
| Room | Topic |
|---|---|
| Tay | Content Extraction in the VLM Era |
| Clyde | Foss SUITE |
| Dee | available — open a PR! |
| Don | available — open a PR! |
| Spey | available — open a PR! |
| Tweed | available — open a PR! |
Descriptions
Apache Cassandra
Monday, 12 October · 5:50–6:30 PM · Tay Room
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 · Clyde Room
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 Groovy and Apache Grails
Monday, 12 October · 5:50–6:30 PM · Tweed Room
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.
Foss SUITE
Tuesday, 13 October · 5:50–6:30 PM · Clyde Room
Hosted by Jan Lehnardt and Gregor Bransky
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.
Content Extraction in the VLM Era
Tuesday, 13 October · 5:50–6:30 PM · Tay Room
Hosted by Tim Allison (Apache Tika)
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!
Tips for a Great BoF
- Come with 3–5 discussion questions to get the conversation started
- Don’t prepare slides — this isn’t a talk, it’s a conversation
- Appoint a note-taker so that good ideas don’t get lost
- Be inclusive — make sure everyone who wants to speak gets heard
- Share your notes afterward on the relevant mailing list or Slack channel
Questions?
- Join #community-over-code on the-asf.slack.com
- Join apachecon.slack.com for day-to-day event coordination
- Email planners@apachecon.com