It all started in October of 1998, when C2Net, the makers of the Stronghold secure Web server (based on the Apache Web server) put on a conference in San Francisco. The conference, called "ApacheCon '98", was designed for users and developers of the Apache Web server software, and included an exhibit area for vendors. There were three different tracks of talks, and a few hundred people were in attendance.
From the point of view of the delegates, the ApacheCon '98 show was a success. However, a number of difficulties combined to prevent it from being repeated the following year, and the next ApacheCon event did not happen until
ApacheCon 2000 in April of 2000.
By that time the original Apache Group had become the
Apache Software Foundation, incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation, and started expanded into project areas beyond just the original Web server. ApacheCon 2000 was the first official Apache conference, presented by the Foundation itself rather than an outside vendor.
Since the Apache Software Foundation is quite distributed, with developers and contributors from several countries and software deployed world-wide, it was determined that the ongoing ApacheCon events would likewise be distributed around the globe. Accordingly, the next conference after the April one,
ApacheCon 2000 Europe, was held in London, England in October of 2000. The third ASF-offered ApacheCon,
ApacheCon 2001, was in Santa Clara, California, USA. The fourth was to be in Dublin, Ireland, but the then-production company (Camelot Communications) went bankrupt.
There was a hiatus until November of 2002, at which point we began having annual U.S. conferences again, managed by a different production company. Conference activity outside the U.S. didn't resume until July of 2005, when S&S Verlag was retained to produce it.
The current plan is to continue this trend, holding two ApacheCon conferences per year -- one in the United States and the other somewhere else in the world.
The conferences are organised and managed by a planning committee consisting of members of the Foundation's 'conference committee' and representatives from the production company (or companies).
