Conference Love

Conferences - some people are addicted, and others have never been. What is the point of conferences? What's an unconference? Why shouldn't I just stay home and watch the livestreams? Jason Dixon (Monitorama), Bridget Kromhout (devopsdays Minneapolis), and Pete Cheslock (devopsdays Boston) give their two cents (and more) about why conferences are the place to be.

What was the first tech conference you attended?
What are things you get from a conference that you cannot learn other ways?
How can I maximize my value out of attending a conference?
If I’m going to a conference where I don’t know anyone, how can I still have a good time?
You both have planned conferences. What are some of the things that go into organizing that people might not be aware of?
What is your favorite conference story?
How do you learn about new events to attend?
How do you pick which events you know about to go to? There are a lot, and it can be hard to narrow down when you only have a 1-2 conference limit from an employer, or your own resources.
What was the coolest piece of “swag” you got from a conference?
Does the swag at a conference weigh in for you at all? I hear a lot of noise around the big Google events because everyone knows they are walking away with hardware.
Lets talk about conference etiquette, and discuss some of the points in Bridget's article

Notes:
Introversion and Tech Conferences by Tom Duffield
Check Outs
Jason

Some of my favorite talks, first a couple from John Rauser:

Look at Your Data
Investigating Anomalies

And another recent one from Kyle Kingsbury at Strangeloop:

Jepsen II: Linearizable Boogaloo

Bridget

Local meetups on http://meetup.com (and this is the Minneapolis startup I mentioned: http://congruence.io)
MonkeyLectric Bike Lights: http://www.monkeylectric.com

Pete

FPM - http://github.com/jordansissel/fpm
Deb-S3 - http://github.com/krobertson/deb-s3
STM Aero Backpacks - http://www.stmbags.com/catalog/laptop-backpacks/aero-small-laptop-backpack/

Trevor

Borderlands the PreSequel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpgMBivKR-w trailer video is hysterical. Whether you’re going to play or not.
Jetbrains free for students *(.edu)
Netflix spoilers http://spoilers.netflix.com/spoil-yourself

Matt

Tech Douchebags podcast - http://5by5.tv/tdb
Spoonium (containers for Windows) - http://spoonium.net/
Columbia Treadlite 10L Backbpack - http://www.amazon.com/Columbia-Treadlite-Backpack-Black-Size/dp/B0058XJXZW (hattip to Ryn Daniels @beerops)