What conferences have you attended that were the most interesting or most useful for your professional development?

Question

I recently attended the QCon 2008 (http://qconsf.com/conference) international software developer conference in San Francisco and was very pleased with the quality of the speakers - and the quality of discussions that were participated in by the other attendees.

One aspect of the conference that was a very pleasant surprise: the percentage of attendees from Europe, South America, and Asia. A very diverse collection of top-shelf talent.

The No-Fluff-Just-Stuff symposiums are excellent 3-day conferences that focus on transfering knoweldge that is immediately useful:

http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/home.jsp

The two Seattle Code Camps I've attended (and presented at) were similiar in that they are put on by developers, for developers.

http://seattle.CodeCamp.us

I'm curious what other conferences others have found most useful for their professional development?

Answer 1

Sun Tech Days were interesting, if you're into Java or Solaris stuff.

Being a developer on Websphere, I also liked this one. Nice opportunity to meet developers of the middleware.

Answer 2

The ACCU conference is the best programmers' gig in the UK.

Nominally for C++ users - but actually much more wide ranging, with discussions of many modern programming topics including agile methods, dynamic languages and so on.

Has the best speakers (Stroustrup, Alexandrescu on C++, Peyton-Jones on Haskell, Eric Raymond, Guido van Rossum etc etc), is much cheaper than more commercial conferences, and has a really good atmosphere.

This year's stars include Robert Martin (Uncle Bob) and Andrei Alexandrescu; but it is quite often the small lectures given by non-star names that provide an introduction to a technique or idea that one hasn't come across before.

This conference is for programmers who enjoy what they do for a living - it's full-on tech, with no real concessions made for corporate freeloaders who turn up hoping for free promotional memory sticks. Although much beer is drunk in the evenings - I mean, let's not be silly about it.

Answer 3

    The subsidiarity principle applies here, as usual: The more specific a conference is to your needs, the better it's likely to be for you. Personally, the most valuable conference I've attended was the first Newton Developers Conference, but I somehow suspect that won't do you much good.

    If you can't find a sufficiently specific conference, you can try what I did: Found some user/programmer groups. But be prepared to start small.

Answer 4

I really enjoyed RailsConf. I found there was good mix of topics and it has a light tone overall.

Answer 5

Most interesting? For me it was the three years I managed to get to SIGGRAPH.

Answer 6

OWASP Hartford is probably the one event that has helped my career the most...