The must attend tech events of 2015

As a Developer Evangelist, I’m often asked when and where the next coolest event is. My friends and industry peers know that I travel professionally to attend events and keep up to date on latest tech trends. Since the weather is starting to warm up, hackathons and conferences are also back from winter hibernation. Get your business cards ready, because it’s time to attend events again!

I’ve gathered a list of the not-to-be-missed events around the globe in the coming months.

Locations: Berlin, Germany / San Francisco, California / Sydney, Australia / Barcelona, Spain / Paris, France

Dates: Germany: April 23 - 25 / California: June 17 - 18 / Australia: February 10 - 11 / Spain: May 6 - 7 / France: TBD

As you may have guessed from the name, this international conference is focused on API innovation. They always have a line up of sharp speakers. I went to the event in Paris and the venue was awesome.

At the Paris API Days, there was even a speed hack - a three hour long hackathon! Developers race against the clock to integrate 8 API challenges as quickly as possible.

Locations: Amsterdam, Netherlands /  New York, NY / Sao Paulo, Brazil

Dates: Amsterdam: April 23 - 24, New York: November 18

The Next Web brings together a diverse range of attendees, from specialized developers to tech VCs. This is probably why a lot of companies choose to reveal their latest product announcements at this conference.

The Next Web is also known for their Hack Battle, which they've held for the past five years now. Designers and developers from around the world gather to hack for 36 hours.

Location: New York, NY

Dates: May 2-6

The trifecta: a good mix of hackathon, conference and startup pitches. Techcrunch Disrupt is an annual event brings in some big vendors and guest speakers. The mega conference first kicks off over the weekend with the hackathon, then moves into Startup Battlefield during the conference, where 30 companies battle it off in front of a panel of expert judges to take home the Disrupt Cup.

We attended last year and sponsored an API contest and raffled off a Parrot drone.

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Dates: May 5 - 6

Held in Downtown Vegas, Collision is structured in a manner that’s very conducive to building organic relationships. Created by Tony Hsieh, Founder of Zappos, the heart of Collision is all about “serendipitous encounters”. He has said that he himself spends an estimated “1000 collisionable hours” in Downtown each year. Hsieh’s belief is that the key to success is having these serendipitous meetings.

Our marketing team attended the conference last year and had a blast exploring the downtown area - they also met quite a few fellow European startups.

Location: San Francisco, California

Dates: May 19 - 20

A great conference with thought leadership on software and cloud communication. This year’s speaker line up includes Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup and Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon among many others.

They also have a solid lineup of after parties, with the most notable one being $BASH. The description on their homepage says “It's Coney Island for coders. Solve challenges, collect tickets, and score swag with better food and fewer frightening clowns.”

Location: Paris, France

Dates: Various dates from June 8th through December 7th

Their tagline is “Tech conferences, reinvented”. What’s unique about the Dot conferences is that it’s actually broken into 6 parallel sessions, ranging from programming languages and tech topics. The six different conferences include  DotScale, DotJS, DotSwift, DotGo and DotCSS and DotRB.

They also have a great speaker round-up, last year the creator of JS was part of the line-up.

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Dates: October 6 - 9

AWS re:Invent is a full immersion in cloud technology, with AWS boot camps and hackathons. They open the event to both customers and non-customers, so it’s a great way to get your hands on AWS if you haven’t before. For those with more advanced questions, there are also Q&A sessions with the engineering experts that built the AWS Cloud.

I’ve also heard lots of good things about their After Hours Events, I mean it’s in Vegas after all! AWS re:Invent is an excellent opportunity to improve your skills (and get AWS Certified) but to also network with a targeted group of fellow developers also interested in AWS.

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Dates: November 3 - 5

WebSummit is a massive conference of 23,000 attendees. Not only is there a great variety of startup attendees, but there is a packed schedule of after parties every night. It’s the perfect venue for networking in Dublin.

Speaking of variety, there are also loads of talks that take place simultaneously throughout the day, so you’re bound to find something that fits your interests at all times.

Location: Paris, France

Dates: December 9 - 11

LeWeb is arguably the most well-known French conference across the world,

Founded by Loic Le Meur, a serial entrepreneur based in San Francisco, LeWeb  brings in almost 4,000 participants from 80 countries each year. This year, they will be hosting a Pop-Up Lab for the very first time. Curated by Makery, the program will talk about how the makers’ ecosystem is changing up the traditional business model.

Tickets can get pretty steep, so I would recommend grabbing early bird tickets sooner than later!

What are some events we might have missed? Are you attending any of the above? Be sure to say hi to the Mailjet crew!