Suggestions for Conference Topics and Speakers

When considering future developer conferences, who do you want
to hear speak and what topics do you want to hear about? Please keep in mind you can suggest any topic or suggest any speaker, it doesn't have to be Church related!

As someone who lives too far from the major hubs of LDS activity, I'm more interesting in HOW to attend the meeting. Is there any way the meetings can move on-line?

As far as details go, we haven't worked anything out yet. Making them available to the public may or may not be an option at this point. Anything that happens will of course be made known here. However, we still appreciate any input you might have! What kind of topics would you like to hear spoken on if you were considering attending a conference near you?

I think several talks can be made on what's happening at FamilySearch. Not just FamilySearch itself, but the server farm, etc. I don't think any of that is secret (or sacred) but it's not easy to find out the info.

One thing I'd like to mention is that this is not purely Church topics or Church speakers. Rather, what professional topics and speakers are you interested in hearing regardless of who is hosting the conference?

I can think of a host of things that I would be interested in (and this is me imagining as if I didn't work for the Church!) - here is a sampling

Career-Related
Tools for staying technically relevant in an industry that continues to speed along replacing technology at an ever increasing pace
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance and yet succeeding in the work place
Finding the right technical hire

Church Technology Related
Ditto on the FamilySearch technology discussion from the previous poster (everything from the software to the server infrastructure)
Ideas being worked on for LDS.org, LUWS, MLS, etc... (The idea being that this would be sharing potential ideas realizing that many or all may not ever be funded or implemented)
PTS and how the PMO functions work

General Technology Related
Implementing Agile in a Non-Agile management environment
Testing methodology for Data Warehousing


I am sure there are more that I would add - as you can see most of mine are not specific technology related - in my opinion learning the newest framework, language, or tools is the easiest part - the weaknesses and challenges in the IT organizations I have been in (Church included) are effective managing the scope, schedule, customers, and resources. Fall down in any one of those areas and things get tough, have problems in two or more of those areas and things start to get really ugly!

Thanks for your suggestions. Anyone else?