What Conferences are You Excited to Attend in the Next 12 Months?
28 points by travisgriggs
28 points by travisgriggs
I've let conference attendance slide in the last few years (last was ElixirConf 2023), and would like to get back in the habit. I value them from a professional development/community POV. I've even got a trip to Europe planned in the next year and could dovetail that--since I'm suspecting that the "good conferences" are happening more and more outside of the states.
Software You Can Love has historically had interesting talks and is in Vancouver, Canada this year. They haven't released the agenda yet, but I bet it'll be good.
Realistically, that's probably the only one I'll go to this year unless I get a job with a education/conference budget. But I'm hoping your question gets answers for more out-there conferences. Paradoxically, those tend to be the ones that give me the most directly applicable ideas and inspiration. Watching talks from HYTRADBOI or Strange Loop and similar get me really excited to program and try things. Conferences that are mainly marketing can have value, but they aren't really the same.
Hmmm... I'm in the PNW, so that definitely looks interesting. I've been sitting just outside the firelight with Zig, but intrigued greatly by it for embedded work. I will definitely watch this one closely.
It's been about a decade I last attended a conference, and even more when I last spoke at one. So I'm very excited to visit RustWeek 2026 in a couple of weeks, and have some fun on the stage Wednesday morning.
Also, if you plan to go to a conference in Europe, look for anything organised by the Chaos Computer Club or its associates. These are the best conferences I've ever attended.
LocalFirst in Berlin in July looks to be stacked with cool speakers and set in a nice location
I'm a Python Software Foundation board member so deeply biased here, but I'm looking forward to PyCon US in Long Beach in a couple of weeks. It's always a really great time.
The only tech conference I really go to, Akademy. Though I'm dreading the travel.
I do also enjoy going to local anime/comic-cons, since I like cosplaying https://akselmo.dev/posts/cosplay-images-2024/
LOCO'26 in Lancaster, UK. This is a conference I wanted to go to last year but didn't have the time. This year I do, and maybe I'll even have enough time to submit something :)
Obviously, IWP9, since I'm an organizer. I'm also very very tempted to attend Systems Distributed, and hoping I'll have something ready to present at EuroBSD
Recommendations in / near Germany, because I try to abstain from air travel as far as possible
SciPy 2026 (as a speaker!) and RustConf 2026. My summer is packed.
Bornhack is not free but the others are.
Carolina Code Conference in August. It's a polyglot conference so the talks run a wide gamut from COBOL to Gleam and they do a lyrical code t-shirt every year where each lyric line is a different language.
Any advice for affording conferences without employer-sponsorship? So many events seem like they would be great to attend, but spending $700 out of pocket is out of the cards for me.
Propose talks and try to attend as a speaker. Most events don't charge speakers sa registration fee, and some will cover flights and hotels for speakers.
I'm going to my first PyCon in Italy! I'm EU based so it's cool to have something that's not too far and it looks like it'll be a great time!
edc Vegas
I'm working on a talk for this year's SeaGL which happens in November of this year, as well as Emacsconf which usually happens in December. SeaGL is great because I live in Seattle, and it's a great time to see friends I usually don't get to see in person. Emacsconf is great because it's totally virtual, and run by devoted Emacs nerds from all over the world, and also... Emacs ;)
I will be at Toronto Tech Week this May, though not particularly excited. Coming for a change of scenery.
Soo excited to see friends at Rustweek!
I’m here in Europe (from California) for that reason: so many great conferences! Next week is COMOcamp (Collaborative Modeling unconference), then I’m back in June for DDD Europe, SoCraTes UK, and Event Modeling conf. Then back to Germany for Play4Agile (another unconference) and (hopefully SoCraTes Germany). Unconferences are my favorite types of events.
The main two I am looking towards are the Open Transport Community Conference 2026 (early October in Bern, Switzerland) and 40c3. FOSDEM is also nice and I'll likely attend next year thanks to all the friends there, although this year the program was a bit too LLM-filled to my likings.
Also, next year's Wikimedia Hackathon, although that might technically be just a bit over the 12 months away. The current edition is happening this weekend, and it's the first time I'm missing it due to other life commitments after attending for the past 3 years.
Shameless plug because I chair it but the Functional Architecture workshop at ICFP is August 29th! Submissions close on June 1st but we always accept lightning talks even up to a few days before the workshop.