Virtually There - Tech events for lockdown

Hi

I hope that you and your family are okay. I have been keeping myself busy, making use of the opportunity to learn new skills and information. One way that I have been doing this is by attending tech conferences.

I say “attending”, but in reality, I am not leaving my apartment. Many of the big global tech events have moved to be free, virtual, conferences so I do not have to fly anywhere, I do not need to worry about an expensive entry ticket, but I have the opportunity to listen and watch great content. Hoping that you may find this useful, I thought I would curate a calendar of future virtual conferences for you to attend.

Important:

  • Inclusion on this list does not suggest there is any connection between the event and any brand associated with it and Mozilla.
  • This is me telling fellow community members about future events, this is not advertising for that event. I am not being paid to do this.
  • These events may have codes of conduct that differ from the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines.

Past events:

Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience 28th - 29th April https://www.redhat.com/en/summit

Amazing event, felt like I was at an in-person conference. Really useful content about RHEL, as well as diversity and inclusion. With many live chat “rooms” to talk to Red Hatters. Some really nice digital swag available to download. Videos are on-demand through the website.

GitHub Satellite Virtual 2020 6th May https://githubsatellite.com/

Two tracks for Work and Play. Some big announcements about Codespaces and GitHub discussions that will help contributors to Mozilla. The Play track had “live coding” that I had never experienced before. Two very long YouTube videos of the content from the two tracks available openly at the website, recap at https://github.blog/2020-05-06-new-from-satellite-2020-github-codespaces-github-discussions-securing-code-in-private-repositories-and-more/

Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2020 6th May https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/businessapplicationssummit

Lots of sessions linked to Microsoft developer products. Video content available to download to watch later (I still need to watch the sessions I hoped to see live, so this is great!).

Future Events:

Microsoft Build 19th - 20th May https://register.build.microsoft.com/

DockerCon Live 2020 28th May https://docker.events.cube365.net/docker/dockercon/

Cisco Live 2nd - 3rd June https://www.ciscolive.com/

HPE Discover Virtual Experience 23rd June https://www.hpe.com/us/en/discover.html

Blackhat USA 2020 1st - 6th August https://www.blackhat.com/us-20/

DEF CON Safe Mode 7th - 9th August https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-safemode/dc-safemode-index.html

If you know of any other events that could be on this list, send me a PM through Discourse. The event should be free and open to attend, be tech-related and have a website.

When you have been to one of these events, add a reply to this thread with feedback on what you thought of it. Did the event meet your expectations? Were sessions available at different timezones? Was there any digital swag? Were there sessions on community building or diversity and inclusion? Are videos and content available afterward to re-watch?

All I ask is that you be kind in your feedback - event organisers are amazing people (we have some of the most awesome in the Mozilla Corporation and Foundation), but they too are working from home right now and have probably had to redo their plans for the year very quickly. Be nice and follow the event social media, if only for a little while - you have just been to a free event.

At this difficult time, I hope that these events (and any others added to the list) are of interest and of use.

3 Likes

Thank you for taking the time to put this together and sharing.

Hoping you are well and will remain so!

Spike

3 Likes

In the spirit of this, freeCodeCamp’s lockdown offering might also be worth a mention:

and:

Oh, and in keeping with the “This is me telling fellow community members about future events, this is not advertising for that event. I am not being paid to do this” line, I should explicitly note that I have no affiliation with freeCodeCamp; I just found some of the above useful and it seemed to fit the intention of the OP.

I am moving the list down here so it is more visible and this is the list I will keep updated. Reminder - send me a direct message through Discourse to add an event, add a reply if you have feedback on an event that you have “been” to.

Thunderbird 2020 Virtual Summit 5th - 28th May https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/2020_Virtual_Summit

VMware vForum Online Spring 2020 13th - 14th May https://content.onlinexperiences.com/FileLibrary/2138/33/VMware-VForum-Spring2020-Agenda.pdf

Smashing Meets 18th - 19th May https://ti.to/smashingmagazine/meets

Percona Live ONLINE 19th - 20th May https://www.percona.com/live/conferences

SUSECON Digital 2020 20th May https://www.susecon.com/

DockerCon Live 2020 28th May https://docker.events.cube365.net/docker/dockercon/

Cisco Live 2nd - 3rd June https://www.ciscolive.com/

HPE Discover Virtual Experience 23rd June https://www.hpe.com/us/en/discover.html

Postgres Vision 2020 23rd - 24th June https://www.postgresvision.com/

GUADEC 22nd - 28th July https://events.gnome.org/event/1/

Blackhat USA 2020 1st - 6th August https://www.blackhat.com/us-20/

DEF CON Safe Mode 7th - 9th August https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-safemode/dc-safemode-index.html 1

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020 17th - 20th August https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/

Akademy 2020 4th - 11th September https://akademy.kde.org/2020

VMWorld 28th September https://www.vmworld.com/en/us/index.html

I have removed the Microsoft events from the list having found that access is now only allowed for people with a Microsoft Account, a Work or School Account or are a Microsoft Employee. Not very open web really.