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Ask Slashdot: Good Technology Conferences To Attend?
SSG Booraem (2553474) writes I've recently been hired to a IT supervisor position at a local college. My boss wants me to find some technology conferences that I'd like to attend and submit them to her. Since I've worked in IT for 18 years but usually done scut work, I don't have any ideas. I'd appreciate suggestions with personal experiences.
I recommend the Gartner Datacenter conference, all of the major enterprise vendors in one room
I'm a network (Cisco) guy, so Cisco Live! is my go-to conference. YMMV. DEFCON sounds like the most fun to attend, as long as you keep your gear powered off.
I'm thinking 'cannibus cup'.
Perhaps there is a way to find ideas for this on the interwebs?
Ah yes! https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=information+technology+conference
You need to find better ways to cover your tracks after browsing them freshmen girls mobile photo. If boss asks about the name, just tell them it's a reference to Harry Potter, and the black hat is for wizardry
There are no good technology conferences, my friend.
It seems rather important to know your location, unless your boss is willing to pay for very big travel expenses.
usually done scut work
There might be a (wtf is) scut conference somewhere since you seem to have no other interests.
Dreamforce and TechED get my vote, sadly TechEd will no longer be around, but they are recorded and very interesting.
I work on the instructional side of technology in K-12. I would suggest the yearly ISTE conference. It rotates around the country in late June. Next year it will be in Philly, I believe. It is massive and has sessions on instruction, administration and pretty much anything else you can imagine. The vendor area usually draws the latest heavy hitters in software, services and hardware.
You may also want to check and see if your state has an ISTE affiliate group. They often hold quality state conferences as well. Here in North Carolina, we have NCTIES in March. It's good for a state conference.
Or will any old tech conference do?
Here's some:
FPL
FPGA
HiPeac
DATE
ISCA
FCCM
The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual conference in Hamburg, Germany (previously in Berlin, Germany). It is held between Christmas and New Year. You can review previous schedules and download recordings. Most talks are in English, some in German. There are also workshops and podiums.
Figure out which vendor software you will be supporting and go there. Also look for a local users group so that you can meet people that may have already solved the tricky problems. (Or with 18 years experience you can offer *them* solutions. Your boss will love the exposure your department will get.)
When you find a few, rotate through them over the years. Most conferences I find don't change/update enough in subsequent years. Plus you get a diversity of tech/people.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
This should get you started. USENIX https://www.usenix.org/confere... VMWorld http://www.vmworld.com/index.j... OSCON (must wait until 2015) http://www.oscon.com/oscon2014...
Without knowing your interests or area of expertise, there are some big ones like:
Spiceworld
Various Microsoft conferences: Exchange, SharePoint, TechEd
Some Cisco stuff
And Probably a whole host of others. Choose a vendor/specialty and search for their conferences.
Take this sig and smoke it.
SCALE.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If I were you, I'd go quickly.
Most of them are back in the nineties.
It's fun and can be informative if you know what you're looking for. Try to stay late and leave a few days after interactive is over so you can experience part of the music festival. The whole deal can be overwhelming however.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
It's a very balanced conference with tracks for just about all job types from programmer to managers and administraitors. This year it's being hosted in Portland Oregon. Their website lists the details http://www.highedweb.org/
to know exactly what you're doing. IT supervisor is about as generic as consultant.
Do you run the helpdesk?
Are you in charge of the student hourlies?
Do you have a cadre of minions running the data center?
If you don't know that, what would get you fired in 2 seconds?
I've been to the Rational Innovate conference (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/innovate/) a few years back, been trying to go again. The conference is chock full of software development / software engineering related topics from the companies that have the heritage, between Rational, IBM, and all of their partners. The location doesn't hurt, either, as flights are inexpensive and you can spend as little or as much as you'd like for the hotel.
The USENIX Annual Technical Conference is quite good.
Then probably all of the USENIX conferences. Check them here https://www.usenix.org/conferences
You also have LISA SIG (the Large Installation Systems Administration Special Interest Group) conference. https://www.usenix.org/lisa
If you work with Electronic Arts, try to get to EADC, it's great.
If you're a former grunt, then you've seen the after effect of these conferences. At best, it gets your bosses out of your hair for a few days. At worse, they come back revved up to implement the newest buzz work...for a week, until they see the cost, then it's like it never happened.
Take my advice; choose based on location and work up your justification from there. Myself, Vegas is always an attractive option, but by no means should you limit yourself. Be imaginative. /jaded and tarnished.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I've had great luck with Brainstorm, held in Wisconsin Dells every year. It's primary focus is K-12 but it does apply to college level as well. Vendor expo is pretty good, and the technical talks were great.
Comic Con... It may have nothing to do with work, but it will be interesting.. Just don't go to ogle the scantily clad female characters and certainly don't take their pictures.
Which ever one is in Las Vegas.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
For example, I adore the Web Afternoon conferences I've attended, but unless you work on websites, then there might not be a lot of useful content there for you.
A lot of tech conferences can also be sorted by industry. Medical tech is huge, for example, and has its own set of regular gatherings.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Check out uPortal.org, Kuali.org, sakaiproject.org. All are well worth your time and your College.
Good luck on your new adventure.
As others have already said, the original question is really vague since there is little information about what corner of IT work will be done. But since it is at a college, there is a good chance that it will fall under the area that SIGUCCS conference tries to cover.
http://www.siguccs.org/Conference/2014/about.shtml
I went and presented 5 or 6 years ago and found it to be an OK conference. I did not get a lot out of it from the technical presentations, but it is a really good place to get an idea of what your peers are doing, and the "hallway track" is really good.
Don't travel to conferences. Waste of time, money and other resources. Far better to use discussion groups, forums, webinars, email, etc. Physical conferences are dinosaurs. Most have died off. Some just don't know they're zombies but will soon fall apart. This is particularly true for tech conferences. We don't need to be in a place to communicate and techies know that better than anyone.
What is particularly obscene is the conferences by politicos and ecos to solve world hunger, solve pollution, solve global warming, etc. They jet around the world polluting all the way, eat huge fancy meals and declare what the rest of us should do to fix things. Hypocrites.
And don't try to hook up with them. They're out of your league. If she says "yes", she probably has a penis or in a con artist (or both).
Source: my buddy Rob found out the hard way. Of course, I always figured he liked to walk on the wild side.
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SCALE - http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I'm a datacentre guy, so the one I go to is Datacentre World - unless you have migrated every single system to the cloud the chances are you have a shedload of infrastructure to look after, and seeing what's out there to keep it safely powered and cooled is always useful.
The swag may not be as good as some of the vendor conferences, but the information can be really useful.
select conference_name
from all_conferences
where conference_location = 'HAWAII'
Figure out your requirements.
I taught in a college's IT program for a year, and was quickly promoted to the position of Lead Instructor of the department.
For me, participation was mandatory. Participation in what, though, was a different story.
I regularly attend an annual LinuxFest, and so my only task was to bring back some sort of paperwork. The brochure that listed the available seminars worked nicely.
My local Linux users' group would work fine, as long as I could get something in writing that demonstrated that I participated (by showing up).
I was also told that periodicals worked fine. So, a subscription to a computer magazine worked. However, even a newsletter worked. So those CompTIA SmartBrief counted. I could just print it out, and submit that, and that would be fine.
I believe Microsoft also had an e-news subscription. I've since been enrolled in a course from CBTNuggess.com, and I'm pretty sure those daily Nuggets Training Advisor would work just fine. If I can remain subscribed after I'm done with the course, I will, in case it helps to meet some future petty requirements. Blogs, perhaps like Microsoft's "Hey! Scripting Guy!", may be just fine.
Basically, the accreditation committee required that ongoing effort was clearly documented. ("Ongoing effort" meant like 3-6 pieces of paper per year.) However, the bar was set pretty low when it came to what that effort was. If something was computer-related, then: ah, sure, that was good enough to show that I was keeping current in my area of specialty (which was not medical, or English studies, but tech).
You might be able to start your own user's group. If that sounds too boring for you, then make it a recurring LAN Party, where people play games all night, and the first people who show up need to assemble the LAN. Just make sure it has a professionally-acceptable name ("Springfield Networks" would be okay: Springfield Deathmatches might be harder to get professional credit for). A local meeting that regularly draws three to six gamers-- I mean, cough cough backspace backspace backspace backspace, industry experts, will be a lot less expensive that traveling across the Atlantic Ocean. And so, it is more likely to be approved.
These days, you could be trendy and participate in online messaging. Us old-timers knew that as IRC chat rooms. But the new buzzwords may refer to that as online conferences, and might precisely fit your needs of attending a "conference". When you figure out the precise requirements that you need to meet, you might be rather surprised at just how simple they actually are.
At colleges, a lot of requirements upon staff members might just be there to fulfill requirements made by some bureaucrats, often outside of the organization you're working for. That was true where I worked as a college instructor; there was a lot of government regulation that needed to be followed. That was true even though we were 100% a private, for-profit company.
Be completely honest, so that you don't lose sleep about losing your integrity. However, don't invest tons of your life in an endeavor that provides no rewards to either yourself nor humanity at large. Just do what's needed so the requirements are fulfilled, and then invest your efforts in ways that will actually be beneficial. You, as the IT supervisor, will know what that is, far more than the paper pusher who just wants to make sure you're *officially* performing the necessary task of "staying current".
Then again, that was the place I was working at. Maybe your supervisor actually thinks you're behind the times, and wants to see a serious plan on filling a recognized void. Before signing up for, or attending, any of the types of things I just described, figure out what is actually expected of you.
The second step is, as some people suggested you do, using Google to figure out how to fulfill the requirements. The first step is to figure out just what the requirements actually are. Actually, kinda similar to IT work. Don't complete a
and work for a "nonprofit". Corporate IT budgets have dried up for this sort of fluff long ago. Good for you landing a job where there's free taxpayer money.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Does she even know WHY she wants you to attend some conferences? Of course not. Doubtless 'somebody else is doing it', so you must too.
LabMan (more technical) SIGUCCS (more procedural) MacIT (if you have a lot of Macs) EDUCAUSE Might be some more regional stuff, there's some smaller things that go in the midwest. I generally prefer these sorts of gatherings, less pomp, less cost, more networking, more technical meat.
Have gnu, will travel.
DEF CON - https://www.defcon.org/
s/©//g
If by chance you're using Drupal, I'd suggest Drupalcon in L.A. next year. You can view year's videos, which may give you an idea about the conference, or save you a trip. While mostly focused on the topic, I brought back a lot of non-Drupal info. There were lots of folks representing the .edu space.
OSCON is held every July in Portland, Oregon, and focuses on open source solutions to all sorts of IT needs. They have specific tracks for public sector and education. Plus, there's good beer.
Finding God in a Dog
I leave for DEFcon 22 tomorrow...
Yes it's a hacker convention & not an IT convention, but it's the best conference I've ever been to. I get exponentially more out of DEFcon ($220) than I got out of RSA (over $2,000). If money was no object I'd still recommend DEFcon. It makes you think about technology in ways you never have before. It trains you to think about bending technology to your will however you can (the classic definition of hacking), not just security related exploits.
My management usually sees the value in it. They usually tell their management it's just a computer security conference as it has negative connotations to a lot of people though. The DEFcon network is the most hostile one in the world, so you may want to stay off of it (I don't), but really things aren't that bad.
I go to this conference at least once every 2 years https://www.usenix.org/confere...
In chronological order looking forward:
MacTech Boot Camps - http://www.mactech.com/bootcam...
Small, local, inexpensive. Check to see if there's one close to you.
MacTech Conference - http://www.mactech.com/confere...
Larger, both sysadmin and developer tracks
MacIT - http://www.macitconf.com/
Larger, multiple tracks and levels of knowledge
WWDC - https://developer.apple.com/ww...
The granddaddy of them all, but next to impossible to get into these days. Mostly developer focused. May not be useful if you don't already have a deep knowledge base.
MacAdmins - http://macadmins.psu.edu/
The most education-focused of the conferences. Very knowledgeable presenters.
FWIW, I've been a presenter at MacTech Boot Camps, MacIT, and WWDC.
--Paul
You should try these 2: USENIX and SuperComputing. They are the most enjoyable for a non-academic to attend.
I would recomend the super computing conference ( http://sc14.supercomputing.org... ). The location changes from year to year. It is in New Orleans this year. It is a large conference and it will be easy for you to find activities of interest to you and your boss.
I recommend all Star Trek Conventions. You'll have to flash back a century in order to flash forward a few millennia, but its worth the head trip.... . Of course, attendees are not prone to having sex with actual women, in person.
If they have money to burn paying for conferences, tell them to give you the money.
Despite "tech" being your profession, be DAMN sure to give them a temp or fake email address. Because you WILL be spammed for the remainder of your life. I know... I was trusting once.
I recommend the Spring School on Superstring Theory and Related Topics, held in Trieste. It will open up your horizons.
I believe I heard that VMworld is now the largest IT infrastructure conference in the world. If you are already steeped in virtualization, it's a wonderful conference to learn stuff and meet people. If you're not already steeped in virtualization, it's a wonderful conference to learn where the IT world is moving, and in fact has largely already moved to.
Tableau Conference
http://tcc14.tableauconference.com/
Sometimes, you find the best stuff outside the heavy lifting tech world. I've been going to South by Southwest Interactive for the past 5 years. It's been a nice counter balance to nuts and bolts tech conferences. I get inspiration and some notion of Good Things to Do. There are plenty of smart people, and that's a major refreshment for me. The focus isn't on tech as much as interesting ways to use it.
There's now an education conference under the SXSW umbrella. That may be worthwhile to you, and easier to get funded.
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
The goto for Higher Ed types is Educause...lots of EdTech as well as all the usual suspects (Cisco, HP, Dell, Microsoft, etc.).
You might consider http://www.sans.org/ training classes/conferences. They're mostly focused on security, so that has to fit for you, but I've learned a lot in both of the classes/conferences I've attended with them.
You need training on how to communicate, because you provided precisely zero information on which to base a useful answer to your question.
There is an ACM interest group for colleges, I have been to it several times. It's called SIGUCCS. It's held yearly always in a different city. Check it out.
IT in Education conferences I would have you look at include Educause, and ACUTA. Educause is the 1,000 lbs gorilla, and everybody is there. ACUTA is much smaller, so you tend to build really good relationships with your peer institutions.
Does anyone besides government employees and Big Corporate Lackeys selling go to conferences and trade shows anymore? Conferences cost too much for most people to attend - the fees, the parking, the transport, the flight, the hotel, food. The benefit is too small. There is something called the WEB that go invented a while back (claimed by Al Gore) and since then tradeshows and conferences have plummetted. Most have folded. I was just talking last month with someone who used to manage these sorts of things and he said they had dropped so much that not just he was out of a job but the whole sector had tanked.
I help organize NCDevCon (ncdevcon.com)
We're a small, two day web/mobile/tech conference in Raleigh, NC. This is our 6th year.
This area also hosts:
* http://allthingsopen.org/ (Open source conference)
* http://hopscotchdesignfest.com/ (design festival)
Good area for conferences, tech (RedHat, RTP), beer and BBQ.
Of services that IT provides within your organization.
Next write down a list of 'what you are supporting with those services'.
Next write down a list of the most important software you use in the organization, for example: operating systems, application servers... E.g. "Linux" "VMware" "Microsoft Exchange" could be some examples.
Probably, each one of these has a conference.
Next write down a list of your job roles.... for example: what tasks do you on a daily basis.
Job roles have conferences.... for example: there are conferences for Security defense. There are new technology conferences and IT Field days; there are multi-vendor storage conferences, there are Open Source software conferences, etc.
Next you should prioritize your conferences, based on your goals for attending.
Do you need training in certain products?
Do you need to network and find potential experts to help you?
Perhaps you are looking for some 3rd party products to go with other products you use and improve productivity.
Or maybe you want to replace some product altogether..... in that case, you might want to make a new list of "Potential competitors" and think of looking into their conference for some exposure networking and training.
As one of the newly hired... and at a community college... by a group that does video games... I have heard nothing but bad about conferences. If you force underlings to go with you, do them a favor and don't make them go to ONLY educational/college related conferences... do industry stuff instead. My bosses hate hate hate the educational conferences... (we're doing simulation and game development for education ... but these guys are gamers and started off wanting to make games )
I like NANOG (http://www.nanog.org) for network engineering topics. It's geared towards large service provider networks, not so much enterprise/small business, but still quite informative and great for networking of the social variety as well.
http://ohiolinux.org/
If you specialty is geospatial analysis, the International FOSS4G conference in Portland next month, https://2014.foss4g.org/ , is brain candy.
Ah, the Melissa Ashley/Anne Howe reference. Not too obscure for this forum.
DebConf, the annual Debian conference is always a load of fun. Next one is in Portland OR, very soon.
Check out the LWN calendar for more FLOSS conferences:
https://lwn.net/Calendar/
Or any other community run/focused conference. LCA is great bang for the buck, and despite the name is mostly about F/OSS in general - not just Linux.
I attended VMworld (Europe) two times, in Cannes and in Copenhagen. Wonderful events, if you are involved in virtualization. It is peraphs a too mature technology, if you prefer more innovative topics
If you use JAMF's Casper for managing Macs and/or iOS devices, JAMF's National User Conference is a can't miss. The conference itself is even free.
Security is the future. Blackhat, Defcon, B-Sides, RSA, take your pick.
These Ask SlashDot articles are becoming increasingly annoying. How do these people get hired in a position and not know anything much less fail at basic research skills? To the submitter, have your boss send me an email.
http://lanyrd.com/ is a pretty good repository of conferences in general and has a good listing of technical conferences as well. As everyone mentions, it depends what your actual responsibilities are.
If you do anything with Linux and want to have a good way to get certifications for no additional cost, receive trainings on really fun geeky stuff, etc., I've gone to SUSEcon for two years now and will be going again this year.
http://www.susecon.com/
The conference has a strong tech focus, and is in Orlando, FL, USA. Even if you are not using SUSE Linux, many of the topics apply to any distro, or even to IT in general. It does not have nearly as much of a sales/marketing/management focus as some conferences, though there are still keynotes that reach out to that audience as well.
Just my two bits....
Educause is a great overall Higher Ed conference. Just walking the trade show floor will be informative plus you can meet your peers at other schools. Very polished presentations and check out the poster board showcase because it's a fast way to see what other schools are doing and talk to the person who did the project. They have a big annual conference and small regional conferences (colleague said the regional was very worthwhile). Make a point of looking at the attendee list beforehand and try to meet up with someone from a neighboring school that you don't know.
SxSW.edu is great for 'seeing the future'. Lots of innovative products being showcased. Big picture/high level 'what's the future of education' conversations.
SpiceWorld is great for help desk duties. Even if you don't use Spiceworks, this is the group of people that are on the front lines so skip the SpiceWorks specific talks and go the general ones.
I'm in higher ed and find the K-12 conferences to have the wrong focus. Even the tools they use are quite different than collegiate level. Spend your money on HigherEd conferences.
Let us know what part of IT you are in so the suggestions can be more helpful.
There are *no* conferences on Good Technology.
From the NotepadConf site: http://notepadconf.com/