Software Conferences in 2025
Over the years I've watched several hundred software conference talks across different video platforms. But actually visiting a conference is an expensive endeavor not all employers want to finance. The trick? Try to get accepted to a conference as a speaker and convince your employer to see this as a "free training". This was the first year I tried to implement this "simple trick" and to my surprise I got really lucky: Out of four conferences I submitted proposals to, three accepted me as a speaker.
Grazer Linuxtage
This is a free community conference around open source that is being held every year in Graz. I talked about what unexpected benefits fun hobby projects can have. Leyrer held a great workshop about how to do conference talks the evening before my own talk. His session was fun and gave me a few last-minute hints.
Another great benefit was that most talks got recorded. I was happy with how my talk turned out and I could use the recording in my other proposals to improve my chances to get accepted to other conferences.
DevOpsDays Graz
The Coding Comminuty Club Graz decided that we should finally have our very own DevOpsDays and so they booted up this conference from scratch. I put together a unit-testing workshop in which we redesigned a small console application to make it testable in a nice and easy way. But my absolute favorite moment was the speakers dinner where I set next to Maria Eichlseder. I told her about my backup tool and the cryptographic elements in it. I also confessed to her all the mistakes I made and we ended up reviewing tiny pieces of code on my phone. It ain't getting nerdier than that.
DDC Cologne
https://www.developer-world.de/ddc
This was my biggest "catch" by far. DDC is a well known .NET conference in Germany and I had the honor to do the same testing workshop I just mentioned above, but in an extended fahsion. We had an open questions/discussions part at the end of the workshop and I was surprised how knowledgable and interested the participants were. At one point I was wondering why they chose my workshop instead of some of the others, but I was told that it's sometimes nice to hear "stuff you already know" from a potential different point of view. I appreciate all the insights all of you gave me!
DDC was also the first conference I attended alone. While intimating at first, I enjoyed speaking with participants, other speakers and of course the organizers themselves.