Conference season is once again approaching. First we have MixUK, which is going to be awesome; great speakers, interesting talks, free swag, etc. What's interesting about this is that as well as the standard tracks, there's also a community track where the community can become more involved. To start with, there's the Backnetwork, a social site for attendees. Next you've the opportunity to grill the speakers, or since this is the UK, politely question them over a cup of tea. Finally, we have the Micropresentations - a madcap 7 minutes for presenters who have 20 slides and just 20 seconds per slide; it's a great way for a speaker to do a quick brain dump on a topic and would be a good way for you to get the fundamentals of a topic if, perhaps, you didn't have time to see a full session.
In a couple of months I'm off to DevConnections, where for the first time we have a dedicated data track. Julie has been the driving force behind this, concerned that data talks seemed to get lost among the differing tracks.
