Conference Seal of Approval

This is an approval that I, Adron, setup for conferences that meet the following requirements:

• Mostly ** isn’t an outragous amount of money or is prospectively free. Conferences are great fun, but often the cost is just absurd as the larger organizations gouge people to turn profits. I won’t name names, but they won’t end up on this list except under very specific criteria.
• For removing the sexist “booth babe” notion.
• Focuses on real technical and academic content, not merely a “showcase of marketing”.
• Either has a solid reputation, or is working diligently toward a “code of ethics”.
• Works to build community through education, outreach and making people the focus with the technical content.
• Is located in a city that exudes awesome, supports people over “things” and perpetuates a high value on thinking, creative workspaces, livability and other related items. Cities that meet this criteria include, but aren’t limited to cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, New York and others. Cities that are excluded currently include, but aren’t limited to; Atlanta, Phoenix, Jacksonville and others. Cities in limbo include Los Angeles & Chicago, both cities that are trying hard to fix their anti-livability and smog filled cities.

As this criteria is more clearly defined, I’ll extend this definition here.

** One of the conferences that makes the list, and gets certified is OSCON. O’reilly is a pretty solid member of the community and the software industry as a whole, so even though they’re conferences are largely in the *crazy* price range, they’re still really solid in ethos, ethic & integrity in their involvement.