Winnipeg 2015 Call For Speakers – Update!

The call for speakers for our Winnipeg 2015 Prairie Dev Con event has been open for a little while, and I wanted to post some comments and updates for those considering to speak.

Call For Speakers Deadline Extended!

I received some feedback that a bit more time to get sessions in would be appreciated. So with that in mind, the new date to submit your talks by is November 14. 2014! Please submit your talks to our online form found here.

Topic Interest

I have a survey for perspective attendees to provide feedback on what topics they’d like. Although there’s still time for people to submit their feedback, here’s the top topic areas currently:

Must Have Topics	Really Want Topics	Have Interest In Topics
Mobile Development HTML5 Microsoft.NET	Dev Practices Dev Team Management Agile Angular	JavaScript NodeJS CSS MVC Azure

When submitting talks, please keep this in mind. Also, if you have a talk that doesn’t fall into this list I’d still encourage you to submit them. I look for diversity in the conference topics and would love to see talks around security, general cloud architecture (regardless of platform), and others.

I Forgot to Mention Speakers Must Be From North America

Did it again – failed to mention on the call for speakers page on the site that we can only accommodate North America speakers (its just too expensive for our regional conference to cover overseas travel expenses).

Apologies to those who have submitted from overseas.

Any questions on any of this please let me know!

Thanks,

D’Arcy 

Will There Be a PrDC Regina This Year?

You may have heard that the next Prairie Dev Con will be in Winnipeg March 2 – 3, 2015. But what about Regina?

I would love to do a Prairie Dev Con in Regina this June! For that to happen though I need at least 5 Gold-level sponsors to come on board before I book the venue and open the call for speakers.

There are many benefits to conference sponsorship in addition to the traditional name/logo recognition on marketing material, including…

• Complimentary Passes and Special Sponsor Pricing
• Booth Space
• Vendor Sessions
• Post Event Attendee Communications

Plus in addition to helping ensure the conference is a success, sponsorship enables us to provide access for high school and college computer science students to attend and plug into the local IT community.

If you’re interested in learning more about how your organization can help make Prairie Dev Con Regina a reality, visit the sponsorship page of our website: http://www.prairiedevcon.com/SponsorInfo

Thanks!

D’Arcy

Call for Speakers – Prairie Dev Con Winnipeg March 2-3 2015!

Some exciting news to share!

Save the Date – PrDC Winnipeg 2015 happening March 2 – 3!

The next Prairie Dev Con will be held in Winnipeg March 2 – 3 2015! We’ll be opening up early-bird registration in November.

Call for Speakers is Open!

We’re now accepting session submissions for our 2015 Winnipeg event!

The four themes for our Winnipeg event are: Expand Your Horizons, Dive Deep, Get Hands On, and Dev Stories:

• Introductory or informative sessions which help expand our attendees horizons.
• Focused sessions on one aspect of a technology or methodology that assume attendees have a basic understanding of the topic before diving deep.
• Interactive hands-on sessions where attendees experience and learn through doing.
• Real-world development stories that share wisdom, insights, and lessons learned from projects and experiences with technology.

For out of town speakers, the conference covers

• Airfare
• 2 Nights Hotel

We also do a speaker dinner on the Monday night.

For more information on speaking at Prairie Dev Con, including where to submit your session abstracts, visit our ‘Call for Speakers’ page here.

Thanks,

D’Arcy

Vision for Prairie Dev Con 2015

Planning for Prairie Dev Con 2015 events are in full swing! I’m talking with potential sponsors*, lining up venues, and next week the official call for speakers will go out. I wanted to share with you the vision for the 2015 shows and what you can expect content wise.

I love attending conferences and hearing about new technology, or about existing technology and a particular way to use it. But what I really love about conferences is hearing the real-world stories of software development. Learning how systems were architected, how problems were solved, how teams were structured and worked together. I feel strongly that while technical knowledge is important, the experience of software development is just as important to share and we can sometimes learn the most from the experiences of others.

So for 2015, in addition to the great technical sessions that focus on a technology or topic, we’ll be bringing sessions that tell developer stories – the how’s and why’s of system development and implementation, the roadblocks and solutions, and the reality of bringing technical solutions to various platforms. We’ll talk from different points of view – the enterprise, the startup, and everything in between.

As I look around the prairie communities I see a shift happening – communities want to do as much as they want to learn, to experience as much as study, and innovate as much (or more-so) as to maintain. Prairie Dev Con wants to be part of that shift. I hope you join us at our 2015 events and become part of it too.

D’Arcy

To join our mailing list to get updates on Prairie Dev Con, head over to our website www.prairiedevcon.com and fill out the newsletter form on the main page!

*Sponsorship is very important to the life-blood of a conference. If you’re interested in having your organization sponsor, get all the details here.

Announcing the Prairie Dev Con Podcast!

I’m thrilled to introduce a new way for you to stay connected and interact with the Prairie Dev Con community – the Prairie Dev Con Podcast!

Every two weeks we’ll be bringing you new episodes featuring topics of interest to Canadian-prairie developers. You can check out the first three episodes on the Podcast page of our website here:

http://www.prairiedevcon.com/podcast

Also please let me know if you have any ideas on topics or speakers that you’d like to see on the podcast!

Thanks,

D’Arcy

Important Information for Receiving Prairie Dev Con Info

On July 1st Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) will take effect. To ensure that Prairie Dev Con is compliant, we're striking up a new email list and asking those who want to stay informed about the conference to sign up. Believe me, I'm not happy about asking this of our attendees and speakers but, like many other organizations who rely on email communication, the penalties for not complying with CASL are too steep not to take these precautions.

If you'd like to continue to receive information about Prairie Developer Conference events and our newsletter, please take a moment to sign up via the link below.

Although we haven't determined if Prairie Dev Con 2015 will be in Regina or Winnipeg yet, there will be a conference next year and we'll draw from those who sign up by July 31st on the mailing list for a free pass to the event!

Sign up to our mailing list – click here!

Thank you for supporting Prairie Dev Con and I hope to see you at our 2015 event!

D'Arcy Lussier
Prairie Dev Con

PrDC Java Day – Gauging Interest

Prairie Dev Con is considering holding a single-day all Java event in Winnipeg in the Fall of 2014!

This would be a multi-track event focusing on the interests of the Java community, with a hot breakfast and lunch included for $250.00.

Before I can move on this I need to gauge interest and get feedback on session content, desired speakers, and pricing. We have a short survey to capture this information and I’d be very grateful for any feedback provided! You can access the survey here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PrDCJava

If I get enough people saying this should happen, and enough sponsors/speakers getting on board, we could have a fantastic Prairie Dev Con Java Day this Fall!

Any questions on this please ping me at darcy[at]prairiedevcon.com

Thanks,

D’Arcy