Developer Conferences for the Summer?

modi123 asks: "It's getting close to the middle of the year and I am looking for a developer conference or two, so that I can fill my educational quota. TechEd in Orlando is out (I was the last yell 'not it' and I have to remain behind to man the system), my boss won't allow me to travel to TechEd Euro in Barcelona, and I am at a loss on where to go. My areas of expertise are VB.NET, MSSQL, and application development, while I dabble in AI, info sec, and GUI development. Do you have any suggestions where I can go? Side note, I keep hearing about this 'defcon' thing — would that benefit an app developer, or is that mainly an overblown info sec experience?"

No posts after 29 minutes? Seriously?

[dgatwood]

The trolls must be asleep tonight. Well, FP and all that....

You might check out the Apple World-Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). It's in June this year, IIRC. They're doing some sessions on web content this year, and you might enjoy learning about other plaforms while you're at it..

http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/ [apple.com]

Re:DEFCON

[dshaw858]

DEFCON, while fun, is more of a giant party with some technical talks than an actual educational experience. If you're looking for something to further your technical prowess, rather than a fun weekend off in Vegas, I wouldn't recommend DEFCON.
I'd look into all of the USENIX conferences, or maybe CRYPTO if you're so inclined.

- dshaw

Re:

[modi123]

I thought about this, but alas we are a windows shop only. Most mac commentary or suggestions are quashed with our 'mac-faq-whack'n-stick'. *shrug*

SIGGRAPH

[chaboud]

Siggraph [siggraph.org] is always fun. It's a mix of creative and technical people, with plenty of interactive "art" (nearly games).

Most people I know, even the non-graphics ones, love it.

Re:

[modi123]

I found my new horse! I am pushing this one hard core...

Not even Tech Ed?

[EmperorKagato]

You may want to take a look at local User Groups for .NET Development.

Get a couple of books

[Timesprout]

And read them on a beach somewhere.

Summary makes development

[pembo13]

on MS platforms sound/seem more boring that I remember some how.

Re:

[modi123]

Heh.. how much more so would it be if I told you I wrote 'purchasing' software? *gag*

Akademy

[PeterBrett]

What about Akademy 2007 in Glasgow [kde.org]?

OSCon

[tf23]

You may find OSCON [oreillynet.com] interesting.

Try BARcamp

[jrexilius]

I'm organizing BARcamp for Chicago http://barcampchicago.com/ [barcampchicago.com] Check the main BARcamp site to see if there is one in your area or someplace you'd like to travel to. http://barcamp.or/ [barcamp.or] You might also consider getting involved in Googles summer of code.. not sure what the details are with that though.

Re:

[agent dero]

It's BarCamp you silly goose. I would highly recommend organizing BarCampChicago similar to how we organized BarCampAustin 2 [barcamp.org] this past March. I mc'd most of the day and helped get presentations rolling and the likes. We got some of the companies at SXSWi to open up bar tabs (Microsoft, thanks to Chris Bernand, pitched in $1000 that went pretty quick, thanks to Dave Morrin from Facebook for the $500 tab and burritos too). Towards the end of the evening Soulhat played a show and we all ended up having a good

CCC

[Mr2cents]

August 8th to 12th, there's the Chaos Communication Camp 2007 [events.ccc.de], camping + geeks + lectures + beer. What more could you want?

Re:

[Clover_Kicker]

camping + geeks + lectures + beer. What more could you want?

Hookers and coke?

Branch out of .NET

[BestNicksRTaken]

A VB/MSSQL developer who knows nothing about security - surely not!

I'd say look into some FOSS conferences like EuroPython or LinuxWorld/Expo.

Re:

[modi123]

Yup, i am in the process of trying to branch out, but I have to find something a few clicks away from what I am currently doing, else I get the lovely response "it's not germane to what you are paid to do".

Agile 2007

[StarvingSE]

This conference used to only cover extreme programming, but has since combined with other agile conferences under one umbrella. It is a week long in Washington D.C (Aug 13 - 17), and includes workshops, research in progress, research papers, and demonstrations on the latest research in agile software development. It is IEEE sponsored, and more on the academic side as opposed to a developers trade show type of event.

<shameless plug> I will be presenting a research paper on thursday during the confere

Black Hat

[kmsigel]

I would highly recommend Black Hat in Las Vegas in late July/early August. Even if you aren't a "black/white/whatever hat" (I certainly am not) it is very interesting to see what that community is doing. I always come away inspired by something.

DevConnections in Vegas

[Iamthefallen]

It's not until Nov 5-8, but it might be a good trip. It's not very in depth, but it does give you a heads up about what's going on in the Microsoft world of development. Some sessions were excellent, some extremely lame.

But if a given session sucks, hey, you're in a hotel/casino in Vegas.

http://www.devconnections.com/ [devconnections.com]

Re:

[BigJimSlade]

Ugh. I went to the 2005 DevConnections because it was the launch of VS 2005. What a waste of money (not mine, my former company's money). Very low on content. If you're actually looking to beef up tech skills, I'd recommend going to a multi-day training session. I went to WinDev in 2004 and the Pluralsight guys were there. Fritz Onion and Keith Brown are both excellent speakers. They frequently offer training sessions in MS technologies that I would highly recommend.

Mobile Developer Days

[mollevp]

If your interested in mobile development, you can check out the Mobile Developer Days 2007: http://mobiledevices.kom.aau.dk/team_and_organizat ion/events/mobile_developer_days_2007/ [kom.aau.dk]

A useful reply for a MSFT developer

[anomalous cohort]

Try PDC [microsoft.com] which, IMHO, is more useful than TechEd for application developers using MSFT technology. It's going to be held early October this year in LA.

Conferences this side of the Mississippi?

[StarvingSE]

Why is it that most of the conferences listed here are our west in california or vegas? I know those are fun locations, but why can't they hold a few of the bigger conferences and conventions over here in the midwest?

If anyone knows of some, please let me in on it!

Re:

[modi123]

the only one I know of is the HDC in omaha... (heartland developers conference)