The Best Developer Conferences of 2022

Unlike a lot of industries, conferences for developers are actually worth it. They aren’t just an excuse to spend your T&E budget, stay in a new hotel and see some bands that are over the hill.

Why? Between learning the actual skills of programming and the actual work of building, leading and creating teams of developers, there is a massive skills gap. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a mentor with all the answers you need to grow your career, the best way to learn what you don’t know is by tapping into the developer community.

I’ve been lucky enough to be attending conferences since my first gig debugging apps to my current role leading LinearB, so I thought it would be useful for me to create my own guide on the developer events that have helped me and will help you based on where you are in your own programmer journey.

Best Event For Engineering Leaders - INTERACT

When: April 7th, 2022 and Oct. 2022
Where: Virtual
Cost: Free

INTERACT, the conference for engineering leaders, is back for its second year. Hosted by Dev Interrupted, the virtual conference gives engineering team leads, managers, VPs, and CTOs the tools & insights to improve themselves and their teams. 

Totally free to attend, INTERACT stands out on this list as the only conference that delivers C-suite value at open sources prices. In fact, April’s event will showcase over $30 billion in engineering wisdom from some of the best leaders in the business from companies like Slack, Netflix, Stack Overflow, AMEX and many more.  

Dev Interrupted is community-driven and more than 1,200 engineering leaders will be in the audience.

Register Here

Best Event For Junior Developers - DevOps Days

When: Multiple events every month
Where: Multiple cities every month
Cost: $20-$50

Devopsdays is a worldwide series of technical conferences covering topics like software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them. Most devopsdays events feature a combination of curated talks and self organized open space content.

The coolest thing about devopsdays is that each event is run by local volunteers, providing attendees with an authentic local experience. 

Register Here

Best C-Level Event - GlueCon 2022

When: May 18th-19th, 2022
Where: Broomfield, Colorado
Cost: $995 – $1,295

GlueCon is a developer-oriented conference well-suited for founders, enterprise and startup executives. Topics change every year but include things like APIs, DevOps, Serverless, Edge Computing, Containers, Microservices, Blockchain-driven applications, developer evangelism and the newest tools. 

GlueCon prides itself on its community and on discussing topics “before those topics will appear at other conferences.” 

Register Here

Best Event For Developers At Large Companies - DevOps Enterprise Summit

When: May 10th-12th & August 2nd-4th, 2022
Where: Virtual
Cost: Approx. $450-$750

DeVops Enterprise bills itself as the conference for “leaders of large, complex organizations.” As with much of the industry, they’ve been shifting their focus away from in-person events to virtual events instead. 

However, they recognize that physical events have a certain indelible “magic” about them and have taken strides to ensure their virtual events deliver on the promises of a physical event with the ease of a virtual event.  

Register Here

Best Event for Freelance Devs - DeveloperWeek

When: Feb 15–23, 2023
Where: San Francisco Bay Area & Virtual
Cost: TBD

This one might be cheating to include because the 2022 conference has already happened, but it's such a good event that I had to include it - even if it won't come around again until next year.

DeveloperWeek is one of the largest conferences on this list. Each year, it attracts 8,000+ developers, engineers, software architects, managers, and executives from 70+ countries, to discover the latest in developer technologies, languages, platforms, and tools.

If you’re a freelancer, this event presents a great opportunity to not only improve your skills, but because of its immense popularity, help you land the next big client you’ve been searching for. 

Register Here

Best Training Event - swampUP

When: May 24th-26th, 2022
Where: San Diego, California
Cost: $595-$995.00

SwampUP has positioned itself as the go-to conference for training. With over 40 breakout sessions featuring globally-known speakers and brands, swampUP’s goal is to provide each attendee with actionable tips, patterns and use cases on all things DevOps. 

This year’s in-person event focuses on software supply chain security, DevSecOps best practices, harnessing the power of the JFrog Platform and building & managing your DevOps cycle.

Register Here

Best Future-Focused Conference - QCon Plus

When: May 10-20, 2022
Where: Virtual
Cost: $499-$799

QCon Plus is the conference for folks who want practical knowledge, not marketing pitches. That’s probably why it lasts two whole weeks. 

The goal of QCon Plus is to bring together innovative senior software engineers across multiple domains to share and discuss emerging trends and practices. 

Register Here 

Best CI/CD Event - cdCon

When: June 7th-8th, 2022
Where: Austin, Texas
Cost: $100-$1,250

If you’re like me and can’t get enough of Continuous Delivery, then cdCon is the event for you. 

Continuous Delivery leaders, industry icons, practitioners, and open source developers gather each year to explore how best to deliver software with security and speed.

This year’s cdCon is co-located with OpenJS World in Austin, so you get two conferences in one. 

Register Here 

I’m going to be at INTERACT, BTW! You should come!

I wouldn’t be where I am without the dev community - by far the funniest, irreverent and supportive pros in any industry. While online is the norm, I can’t emphasize how important face-to-face time can be. Don’t believe me? Meet me at INTERACT!

You're Invited to INTERACT on April 7th

Join engineering leaders from Netflix, Slack, Stack Overflow, American Express & more at LinearB's virtual engineering leadership conference, INTERACT on April 7th, 2022.

1 day, 20 speakers, 1,000s of engineering leaders - all driven by the Dev Interrupted community. If you are a team lead, engineering manager, VP or CTO looking to improve your team, this is the conference for you!

>Learn more here<

The community-driven conference for engineering team leads, managers, VPs and CTOs looking to improve themselves and their teams.