Tech Conferences 2023
At the beginning of 2023 I started to keep track of conferences people mentioned that I found interesting. I had just started my solo-entrepreneur journey and knew that building a network would pay dividends in the long run. In case it helps anyone out, here is the full list of conferences I considered going to along with whether I went and some brief thoughts about if I would attend again.
Someone asked me recently how I find conferences. The answer is fairly simple: I constantly ask people which conferences they like, and if it sounds cool I add it to a doc along with some reasoning about whether to go. I check it a month or so later and if I still feel conviction I buy a ticket.
- Open Source Summit Vancouver
- Dates: May 10 - 12
- Topics: open source developers, technologists, and community leaders
- Why should I go? In Vancouver, seems to have a very diverse variety of talks
- Attended? yes
- Review: I found OSS to be a bit too large for me. Perhaps a solid conference to go to as part of a sales/marketing motion, but found it difficult to network at. I don’t plan on attending in 2024.
- Software You Can Love Vancouver
- Dates: June 7 - 9
- Topics: zig, software development, systems programming
- Why should I go? In Vancouver, Matt Knight is running it
- Attended? yes
- Review: SYCL is a fantastic conference, and Matt Knight did an amazing job bringing it to Vancouver. I’m planning on attending the next one whether it’s in Canada or Italy. The Zig community attracts awesome people.
- QCon NYC
- Dates: June 13 - 15
- Topics: emerging trends, use cases, best practices
- Why should I go? Speaking opportunity with Christie Warwick
- Attended? yes
- Review: I spoke at QCon NYC 2023 and had a fantastic time. The quality of talks is very high, and the conference expects a lot of the speakers. I was particularly impressed that the conference organizes talk review with prior-year speakers. I would be happy to submit a talk to future QCon’s.
- Sigmod Seattle
- Dates: June 18 - 23
- Topics: Databases
- Why should I go? Access to another large pool of database researchers (like VLDB), it’s in Seattle, so it’s pretty easy to attend, looks like the topic of personal data and local first will show up
- Attended? yes
- Review: Very research heavy conference with a lot of duplication between the talks and the poster sessions. IMO just go for the poster sessions, so you can process each project in your own time and ask questions directly to the author. I found the talks to be very dry, almost indistinguishable from reading the paper. I don’t plan on attending in 2024.
- VLDB Vancouver
- Dates: Aug 28 - Sept 1
- Topics: Databases
- Why should I go? Access to a large pool of database researchers, it’s in Vancouver
- Attended? yes
- Review: Very similar to Sigmod, also not likely to attend in 2024.
- RustConf Albuquerque
- Dates: Sept 12 - 15
- Topics: Rust
- Why should I go? If I end up using a lot of rust in orbitinghail, recruiting
- Attended? no, considering for 2024
- Strangeloop St. Louis
- Dates: Sept 21 - 22
- Topics: emerging languages, alternative databases, concurrency, distributed systems, security, and the web
- Why should I go? It’s the last Strangeloop ever, Randall Munroe is the keynote, attracts a good community
- Attended? yes
- Review: Easily one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended. Extremely friendly group of attendees, fantastic talks, left feeling very inspired to build things. Would attend again if 2023 wasn’t the last year. Looking for the sequels to Strangeloop - please ping me if you know of any good options.
- SPLASH Lisbon
- Dates: Oct 22 - 27
- Topics: Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications
- Why should I go? Sarah Catanzaro is thinking of running a local-first + generative AI roundtable
- Attended? no, considering for 2024
- Handmade Seattle
- Dates: Nov 15 - 17
- Topics: Systems, software craft
- Why should I go? Seems to attract a similar community to Strangeloop. Met Abner at SYCL.
- Attended? yes
- Review: Amazing conference, plan on attending in 2024. Full review here.