What are the "must go to" conferences for developers?

Question

DEFCON, and Microsoft's PDC seem pretty interesting to me. Any other really good ones out there?

Answer 1

Microsoft's TechEd is a great conference for (Microsoft technology) developers.

Answer 2

I think it depends what kind of development you do and what you are interested. Both the IEEE and ACM put on conferences on a number of topics on a regular basis.

Answer 3

I haven't had the pleasure of attending one, but any ALT.Net conference/gathering/clan meeting or whatever you want to call them.

Answer 4

Professional Developers Conference - PDC - wiki | web - only happens every few years.

Answer 5

Very similar question asked here.

Answer 6

If you're a linux developer OSCON is a good experience.

Answer 7

I really enjoy SDWest. The STROUSTRUP & SUTTER ON C++ SUPER SESSION is really great if you're into C++ -- it's educational, fairly deep and certainly entertaining. The conference does a great job of covering skill levels and languages. Get the VIP pass and make a week of it.

Answer 8

OOPSLA, OSCON and maybe the EclipseCons

Answer 9

I personally have really enjoyed the DevConnections set of conferences, a great chance to cover a variety of topics.

Answer 10

I have been attending local CodeCamps (.NET focussed). You should check to see if there are any in your area. They are free and have great content -- they accept all presenters, so if you know something well and want to present it, you should.

They are a .NET version of O'Reilly's FooCamps (and there are also BarCamps) -- I haven't been, but I bet they are similarly good.

Answer 11

I'm a big fan of MiX for Web 2.0 topics and designers. It's a small conference, so you don't feel like you're hearded with the rest of the cows. Plus it's at the Venetian in Vegas. Need I say more?

Answer 12

Not a "must go", and it's mostly game-related, but if you're anywhere near Dallas in August, QuakeCon usually features a talk by John Carmack. This year he spoke for three hours about everything from game console development trends to rocket science (literally, he's part owner in a rocket company).

Answer 13

The No Fluff, Just Stuff conferences are excellent. As the title implies: no vendor driven content, all stuff you are interested in. I've been to three of them and they have all been very fruitful.

Answer 14

Similar question here.

Answer 15

I find DevTeach really interesting.

Answer 16

I found DevConnections last year to be pretty disappointing. Probably only 1/3 of the presentations I went to were any more informative than reading a magazine. A lot of the presenters didn't have answers to questions at all.

In fairness, a lot of the questions were around WPF and other 3.0/3.5 features that no one really knew much about yet - but I think that's the responsibility of the presenters - to know more.

Answer 17

I've enjoyed both the Future of Web Apps and RailsConf Europe conferences.

Answer 18

If you work a lot with Perl, yapc is a bargain, and full of ideas.

Answer 19

For Flex developers 360|Flex is the answer.

It pretty much depends on what your working with.

Answer 20

If you can only go to one, and you are in the .NET camp, then the PDC2008 should not be missed. What other conference is going to give you a hard drive with all the bits...