I regularly attend technology conferences and events. One of things I enjoy about it is serving as a proxy for the TechRepublic audience at these events and reporting back my findings. However, there are two big challenges I have faced for as long as I have been going to events. The first is choosing which events to attend, because there are so many of them and a lot of the topics overlap. The other is finding a good list of the dates and links to the various conferences and events.
With the latter in mind, I have compiled a list of conferences I think would interest IT pros of various stripes, and I have included the location, the dates, and a link to conference information. Since many of you may have budget money available to attend a conference in the second half of the year, I hope this list will help you find the best conference for your money.
July
Ubuntu Live — Portland, Oregon, July 22-24
Cisco Networkers 2007 — Anaheim, California, July 22-26
O’Reilly Open Source Convention — Portland, Oregon, July 23-27
Black Hat — Las Vegas, Nevada, July 28 - August 2
CompTIA Breakaway Conference — Las Vegas, Nevada, July 31 - August 2
August
LinuxWorld — San Francisco, California, August 6-9
IBM Share — San Diego, California, August
VoiceCon — San Francisco, California, August 20-23
Destination CRM — New York, New York, August 21-22
Financial Services Technology Summit — New York, New York, August 27-29
September
Office 2.0 Conference — San Francisco, California, September 5-7
VMworld — San Francisco, California, September 11-13
IdeaFestival 2007 — Louisville, Kentucky, September 13-15
Midsize Enterprise Summit 2007 — LaQuinta, California, September 16-19
IT Security World — San Francisco, California, September 17-19
ChicagoCon Security Conference — Chicago, Illinois, September 17-23
Intel Developer Forum — San Francisco, California, September 18-20
Open Source Summit — Las Vegas, Nevada, September 19-21
Web Innovation Summit — Las Vegas, Nevada, September 19-21
SANS Network Security 2007 — Las Vegas, Nevada, September 22-30
WiMAX World — Chicago, Illinois, September 25-27
MIT Emerging Technologies Conference — Boston, Massachusetts, September 25-27
October
COMPTEL Convention + Expo — Dallas, Texas, October 7-10
Gartner Symposium ITxpo — Orlando, Florida, October 7-12
IBM Information On Demand 2007 — Las Vegas, Nevada, October 14-19
Storage Networking World — Dallas, Texas, October 15-18
TechMentor — Las Vegas, Nevada, October 15-19
Citix iForum 07: The App Delivery Expo — Las Vegas, Nevada, October 22-25
Interop New York 2007 — New York, New York, October 22-26
CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment — San Francisco, California, October 23-25
November
Defrag Conference — Denver, Colorado, November 5-6
Windows Connections 2007 — Las Vegas, Nevada, November 5-8
SIIA OnDemand (SaaS) — San Jose, California, November 7-9
Oracle OpenWorld 2007 — San Francisco, California, November 11-15
Mobile Internet World — Boston, Massachusetts, November 13-15
LISA ‘07 (Large Installation System Administrators) — Dallas, Texas, November 11-16
26th Annual Data Center Conference — Las Vegas, Nevada, November 27-30
December
Gartner CIO Summit — Amelia Island, Florida, December 2-4
GreenXchange Conference — Los Angeles, CA, December 10-11, 2007
Enterprise Networking Summit — Nashville, Tennessee, December 10-12
I have included only U.S. conferences, and I have listed only some of the larger and broader conferences. For international conferences and conferences on niche topics, take a look at the full conference listings of two of the largest IT conference providers, CMP and Gartner.
I am going to update this list periodically, so if there are legitimate, national-level technology conferences or events not listed here, please post a note in the discussion and I will add them to the list.
