Some northwest area tech conferences and their approximate dates

Somebody asked me recently about what conferences a developer in the pacific northwest looking to attend more FOSS events should consider. Here’s an incomplete list of conferences I’ve attended or hear good things about, plus the approximate times of year to expect their CFPs.

The Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) is a large, established Linux and FOSS conference in Pasadena, California. Look for its CFP at socallinuxexpo.org in September, and expect the conference to be scheduled in late February or early March each year.

If you don’t mind a short flight inland, OpenWest is a similar conference held in Utah each year. Look for its CFP in March at openwest.org, and expect the conference to happen around July. I especially enjoy the way that OpenWest brings the conference scene to a bunch of fantastic technologists who don’t always make it onto the national or international conference circuit.

Moving northward, there are a couple DevOps Days conferences in the area: Look for a PDX DevOps Days CFP around March and conference around September, and keep an eye out in case Boise DevOps Days returns.

If you’re into a balance of intersectional community and technical content, consider OSBridge (opensourcebridge.org) held in Portland around June, and OSFeels (osfeels.com) held around July in Seattle.

In Washington state, LinuxFest Northwest (CFP around December, conference around April, linuxfestnorthwest.org) in Bellingham, and SeaGL (seagl.org, CFP around June, conference around October) in Seattle are solid grass-roots FOSS conferences. For infosec in the area, consider toorcamp (toorcamp.toorcon.net, registration around March, conference around June) in the San Juan Islands.

And finally, if a full conference seems like overkill, considering attending a BarCamp event in your area. Portland has CAT BarCamp (catbarcamp.org) at Portland State University around October, and Corvallis has Beaver BarCamp (beaverbarcamp.org) each April.

This is by no means a complete list of conferences in the area, and I haven’t even tried to list the myriad specialized events that spring up around any technology. Meetup, and calagator.org for the Portland area, are also great places to find out about meetups and events.