Walking on the Edge(s)


In the next 3 weeks, I’ll have the luxury of attending four awesome web conferences, two of which – somewhat unfortunately – are  named Edge… I would highly recommend attending both conferences, but if you can’t make it, the Edge conferences are also streamed online for free!

EdgeConf

The first one is EdgeConf, taking place on September 23rd (this coming Monday) in NYC. It’s real name is just Edge, but I’ll call it EdgeConf to disambiguate… This will be the second EdgeConf ever, and the first one in the US.

EdgeConf is an expert’s conference, organized by Andrew Betts from FTLabs. It’s made up completely from panels, each focused on one of the hottest topic in today’s web, and discussing the hardest – and often unsolved – problems they surface.

The audience is just as much a part of the conversation as the panelists, both before and during the session, and we want your help in getting the best questions. If you have a question you want discussed, please add it to our Google Moderator site. You can (and should!) also browse around the current questions and vote for the ones you care about the most.

The entire conference will be streamed live on http://edgeconf.com/ when it goes live.

Akamai Edge

The second Edge is Akamai Edge, which takes place on October 9-11 in Washington DC. This is the annual Akamai conference, and as such includes a lot of great content related to Akamai products and technology, as well as some great sharing from Akamai customers (often the top sites in the world).

This year, we’ve also added two subject matter tracks – The Developer Track and Security Symposium. The Developer Track takes place on Wednesday, October 9th, starting at 1:30 Eastern Time, you can see the full agenda here.

We have four awesome presentations in the Developer Track:

  • 1:30-2:10: Gene Kim will talk about DevOps and how it can help your business
  • 2:20-3:00: Jason Grigsby will explain Responsive Web Design and its performance implications
  • 3:30-4:10: Josh Clark will take us into the future, going beyond Mobile (he’s also taking us on two 5k runs during the conference…)
  • 4:20-5:00: Geoff Moore would show how to shape our organization to tap into all of these opportunities.

The entire Developer Track is streamed live online from http://akamai.com/edge/. You can also tune in earlier (11:40 AM) to see Tom Leighton, Akamai’s Co-Founder and CEO, give a series of demos of recent Akamai tech – that session is always a crowd favorite.

The Security Symposium is made up of various panels with some great security experts, including Bruce Schneier. It will not be streamed live, but it is being recorded and will made available online shortly after.

If you’re in the DC area, and want to attend in person, you can buy a one-day pass for the conference. Use the code “Veloc2013” to get a 50% (!!!) discount.

And don’t forget Velocity NYC!

Although it’s not called Edge, I’d be remiss not to mention the first ever Velocity NYC conference, taking place the week after Akamai Edge – October 14-16.

We have an absolutely amazing lineup of speakers and topics, such as Lyza Gardner, Jason Grigsby, Ilya Grigorik, Tim Kadlec, Brian LeRoux and many, many more. We even got Steve Souders to give a full talk this time!

Beyond the “regular” web performance and mobile talks, we have some great talks from nearby realms, like having Will Law talk about Responsive Video and Dan Kaminsky talk about Security in a performance and operations world.

And if all of that’s not enough, the day after Velocity we will have another great WebPerfDays unconference, organized by Sergey Chernyshev. A great place to learn even more, and – more importantly – discuss and digest what’s going on in the web performance world today.

If you haven’t registered yet, you can use the code COMM20 to get a bit of extra discount.

That’s it – for this month…

Definitely an exciting month ahead, with two Edges, Velocity  & Web Perf Days.

I hope to see you in at least one of those. If you can’t be there, I’d encourage you to tune in online to Akamai Edge, submit your questions to EdgeConf, and come join the conversation in WebPerfDays after Velocity.