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Meet the organisers behind October’s big tech conferences in Sydney

Meet the organisers behind October’s big tech conferences in Sydney
What do the organisers of Sydney’s best tech conferences think about their own events? And how should you convince your boss to buy you a ticket? Here’s the lowdown...

Spark Festival
10 October – 27 October
Various locations across Sydney
www.sparkfestival.co


Spark Festival is just one of the tech events featured on the TechLifeSydney blog.

Australia’s biggest event for the startup and innovation community, Spark Festival, returns in 2019 with over 100 events, across 17 days taking place across various locations throughout Sydney. 

Maxine Sherrin, Spark Festival’s program director, shares that the festival draws impact from collaboration: “It brings in the whole ecosystem and gets them involved, all the accelerator programs, all the hubs, the incubators, co-working spaces, as well as lots of startups and corporates.”

However, Spark Festival is as much for the simply curious as it is for the seasoned startup professional.

A dynamic and varied calendar of events ensures that “there really is something for everyone,” says Maxine. “We’ve got events for people working in corporate and looking to get some digital innovation happening in that space, …. investors and people looking for investment and a lot of events for people who’ve got an idea but may not know how to get started.”

With many of the festival events being free or having a small ticket fee and taking place at a variety of times, from lunchtime workshops to after-work events, your boss may not even notice you’re away from your desk.

NDC Sydney
14 – 18 October
Hilton Sydney Australia
www.ndcsydney.com


NDC Sydney is just one of the events featured by Tech Life Sydney.

Originating in Norway, NDC has been inspiring software developers through its conferences  since 2008 and the upcoming NDC Sydney conference is set to continue that legacy. 

Working from their familiar format, NDC brings together some of the most influential figures in the global industry such as, Scott Hunter director of .NET PM, Heather Downing denior developer advocate at Okta and Microsoft developer Steve Sanderson.

Fostering a strong sense of community and speaking to the quality of the content Jakob Bradford general manager of NDC Conferences says: “At our conferences you’ll actually see speakers attending other talks, you don’t see them go and present and leave, they hang around.” 

Jakob shares that while it’s important for any professional to stay on top of their game, that perhaps it’s even more crucial for software developers: “Things happen so fast and you need to keep up to date.”

At NDC Sydney the split between two days of in-depth workshops and three days of conference sessions provides attendees with the opportunity to gain deep knowledge that’s going to be directly applicable when they arrive back at work. “We want to deliver the best possible conference experience in the world for developers,” says Jakob, speaking to the value of attending NDC Sydney. “I hope that we can inspire developers in Australia, make people proud of what they do … get people energised after attending NDC and hopefully that will lead to them making better products and better software in the end.”

Leading the Product – Sydney 2019
22nd October 2019
ICC Sydney
www.leadingtheproduct.com/sydney/


Leading the Product in Sydney this month.

Leading the Product, the annual sell-out conference created by Product Management consulting and training powerhouse Brainmates, is set to deliver a raft of learning, inspiration, community connection and aha moments at this year’s conference.

With a diverse range of industries and topics covered, Nick Coster, head of training and Brainmates co-founder, shares that the team has carefully curated both local and international speakers to ensure not only that there’s no overlap but that every attendee “...takes away something actionable from each speaker.”

Brainmates general manager Sarah Mitchell elaborates on the practical focus of the conference: "We want everyone to leave, take what they’ve learnt and be able to put it into practice in the office the following day.”

With tools and methodologies to be shared by speakers such as John Zeratsky, best-selling author of Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, Leading the Product has the potential to, not only impact product management teams in a significant way, but ripple out to affect entire organisations. 

SingularityU Australia Summit
22 – 23 October 2019
ICC Sydney
www.singularityuaustraliasummit.com


This event runs during October in Sydney.

Born from a global community of changemakers, leaders and innovators the SingularityU Australia Summit is at the forefront of innovation with a focus on the convergence of exponential technologies and their benefit for humanity. 

The Summit will be offering up “...thousands and thousands of hours of research on stage in two days,” says Christina Gerakiteys co-CEO at SingularityU Australia, and in a practical sense will provoke attendees to consider the problems they want to solve and the people they want to take those first steps with. To facilitate this sense of collaboration the Summit is also taking networking as we know it into the future. “We’re creating as many satellite opportunities for people to meet and form closer relationships as possible,” says Christina. “We’ve got an app that’s going to matchmake you and organise a 15-minute meeting to ascertain whether you want to continue a business relationship.”

With a truly mind-expanding program and a cross-industry focus, Christina wants attendees to leave with confidence in a positive and optimistic future when it comes to tech, “...if you really want to stay up to date on what’s going on and you don’t want to fear the future, you want to take an active part in creating it, that’s why you should come.”

Web Directions Summit 2019
31 October & 1 November 2019
ICC Sydney
https://www.webdirections.org/wds/


Web Directions has a special offer for TechLifeSydney readers.

Web Directions has been shaping Australia’s digital landscape and supporting professionals in the industry since 2004. For the first time, this year’s Summit combines a focus on design, engineering and product, fully catering to the modern product team “...there’s not anything quite like it anywhere in the world, let alone Australia,” says Web Directions co-founder John Allsopp. Nearly 50 local and international speakers will take to the stage from the likes of Atlassian, Google Hardware, Slack, Seek, PayPal, IBM and Facebook.

“We see our mission as helping people to continue to stay ahead of the curve,” says John, explaining that the Summit focuses on delivering attendees a sense of a 12-month roadmap directing what technology, practices and ideas they might want to focus on, and the technologies that perhaps aren’t worth the effort.

For those that are attempting to twist their boss’ arm so they can attend, John says the Summit “...is about making people better at their job, and after every conference attendees leave saying, I can’t wait to get to work on Monday and put this into practice.” 

As a special incentive for TechLife Sydney readers the Web Directions Summit is offering a $300 discount on Summit Silver tickets and a $400 discount on Summit Silver tickets to Web Directions Culture 2019 running in conjunction with the Summit on 30 October 2019. Use code TechLife upon registration to redeem these offers.
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