
Show HN: I built a database of tech conferences to know what to attend to next - cezarfloroiu
https://conferencelist.co
======
meesterdude
Well done! this is one of the best "Show HN" posts I've seen. Solving a simple
& actual problem, and not needing to specify what language or framework you
used as justification for it. I really wish more posts were like this.

I wish I could click a keyword in a conference list and then see more
conferences with that keyword.

Also, the top date menu is confusing for me. I actually thought for a while
the 18 was for Day of month, not year. But at least year makes more sense than
some ranges that would end mid-month.

I tinkered and came up with two alternatives (I like the bottom one more)
[http://i.imgur.com/P0sz1aA.png](http://i.imgur.com/P0sz1aA.png)

Keep up the great work!

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Thanks a lot! Tags will be clickable soon & will review the top menu to make
it clearer. Thanks for your feedback, appreciated!

~~~
samstave
+1 on the execution

+1 to the request for the clickable tags - as that was the first ting I tried
to do.

Good job. The only suggestion I can think of right now would be to add a link
to the linkedin group surrounding that conf.

------
raymondgh
I've seen event aggregators come and go. Usually they die off when the
maintainer gets bored of the events. Anything different planned here?

~~~
cezarfloroiu
I promise to not get bored and to add more value to it soon;) Or to find a way
to automate the maintenance while adding more value :)

~~~
dispo001
You could add...

A calendar with a tag cloud that can be toggled.

A world map with the same tag cloud.

Work backwards and make it into an archive of-

a conference about conferences.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Haha a conference of about conferences is def. not in my mind. But everything
else you suggested, it is! Thanks!

~~~
dispo001
I was joking but after thinking about it the Meta Conference might attract a
small but fascinating audience. I doubt it would be boring. Organizing it is
probably the easiest conference ever organized. You just ask for help along
with the invitations.

It's such a dumb idea it <s>might</s> will actually work.

------
saurik
How is this different from [http://lanyrd.com/](http://lanyrd.com/)?

~~~
callahad
Lanyrd is a dead site walking. They were acquired by Eventbrite ~4 years ago,
and haven't seen any meaningful updates since May 2014. Their social media
accounts have been completely dead for two years. The site has frequent uptime
and spam issues, and attempts to reach out to Eventbrite folks are met with
complete silence.

And yet, it still exists, running along with juuust enough inertia to crowd
out any potential replacements.

If you're reading this and work at Eventbrite: Please, lobby internally to put
Lanyrd out of its misery.

~~~
andrewgodwin
I can't say much on the subject, at least not without official approval, but
understand that the original Lanyrd team have not forgotten about the site;
asking us to fix it isn't really giving us any new information (sadly).

If you want to make requests of any kind you're better off reaching out to
Eventbrite directly.

~~~
dwightgunning
Interestingly, IIRC there were only 2 people involved in the creation of the
site, maybe even up to the time of the acquisition.

It's a shame it's been left to languish.

Seems like this should be a feature of papercall.io which seemingly has a more
obvious path to sustainable revenue.

------
fuzzygroup
If you're looking for additional sources of events, you could try adding the
events from [http://techmeme.com/](http://techmeme.com/). They have a sidebar
which is always current. They also have:
[http://www.techmeme.com/events](http://www.techmeme.com/events) which would
add a lot of flow.

------
ghgr
The "Where" filter doesn't seem to work:

Where: Germany "We couldn't find any results. Select other filters, or let us
know if we miss a conference."

Where: Cologne, Germany "Pirate Summit - Cologne, GermanySep 6 - 7"

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Fixed, it was meant to search the exact location, while Keywords would allow a
wider search. But you can use Location filter to do this as well, now.

~~~
perseiden
hmm still won't work. I type in germany/ Cologne / Deutschland in Location and
can't see the Pirate Summit one. If I type in Cologne, Germany I can see all
entries ;)

------
hamax
This will sound like a strange suggestion, but think about collecting people's
emails and sending out an email every quoter or so with a list of conferences.
Of all the newsletters I wouldn't mind this one at all.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
It isn't :) It is basically a must do before any launch, but I did not expect
so much interest to be honest so I only focused on the core functionality
first.

------
prawn
Just some design thoughts that you could consider:

I think you could better separate the actionable filter items from the
branding parts. So, in a thin top tier, have your brand top left, "Find
conferences near you" in the middle, and perhaps "Add a conference" top right.
This will give you more room to fit conferences on screen - at the moment it's
a bit sparse - 500px before I get to the listing itself.

Then you can have the filters and search boxes in their own area and have more
room to make it really obvious that their use impacts the list below without
the line "Know a conference..." in between.

You could consider updating "Upcoming conferences" with info pertaining to the
search. e.g., "Conferences in Jul-Sep 2018".

I can appreciate that "18" alone saves space, but my first thought was that it
was September 18th. You could use 2018 or '18 maybe?

Put a max width on the conference icons and a margin on the right - the widest
ones are butting up against their names.

~~~
Too
While on the design topic. Use PNG instead of JPG for logos. They all bleed
artifacts badly right now.

------
mcpherrinm
Pretty cool! Still a lot of work on missing conferences, but hopefully that
can self-correct if it becomes popular and organizers submit their
conferences.

Most security conferences are missing. Black Hat, bssides (except canberra,
apparently), defcon, toorcon, recon, usenix, chaos computer club congress,
RSA.

------
Confiks
While technically not a conference, you're missing a big one: SHA2017 in The
Netherlands [1]. Starts the 4th of August, and there are still some tickets
left.

[1]
[https://wiki.sha2017.org/w/Main_Page](https://wiki.sha2017.org/w/Main_Page)

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Will add it. And will make sure to load the one from next year, once that one
will be announced :)

------
gargarplex
I did something similar (as an SEO gambit). Filterable by country (click the
map). Feel free to take my data!

[https://codefor.cash/startup-developer-tech-
conferences-2017...](https://codefor.cash/startup-developer-tech-
conferences-2017.php)

------
znpy
Nice idea, but buggy implementation: if I search for "Germany" nothing shows
up. If I type "Berlin, Germany" (an event show up).

You might want to fix this.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Yep. Keyword search is meant to tags only. I will extend it to search in
everything tomorrow.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Fixed!

------
cyrofox
DataFox also has a solution for indexing valuable conferences that syncs with
your Salesforce.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq5uauwm4TU&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq5uauwm4TU&t=0s)

~~~
rlh1271
Would like to second DataFox as a valuable tool for identifying conferences
that our Salesforce prospects are attending.

------
jonfriese33
When I type in a city to the "Where" box and hit enter, it flashes quick but
doesn't seem to filter.

Also whenever I type anything into the "Keyword" box nothing is returned.

~~~
elsbree
Looks like they hit the daily request limit on the Google Maps API (you'll see
the error message if you hit Cmd-Option-J in Chrome).

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Indeed! I did not expect so much traffic! I'm working now to restore it.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Fixed! Sorry everyone!

~~~
ta11ey
broken again

------
adventured
You should perhaps consider turning this into a paid email list service, that
routinely sends out an update on the conference list with a bit more
information on each. Charge maybe as low as $5 or as high as $12, per year. A
couple thousand subscribers over time and you have yourself a nice side
business. If you make it inexpensive enough, people will be happy receiving
the updates via email, rather than having to remember to visit your site
regularly.

------
s73ver
Suggestion: Add the conferences talk submission info and deadlines, so you can
use it to find out what conferences to talk at.

~~~
danenania
This would be a great feature for me too. I'm looking for conferences I can
apply to speak at, and it's often kind of difficult to extract basic info like
this from event sites.

It would also be good to see similar info for conferences that have exhibitor
booths.

------
wichert
Nice idea. The searchability is certainly nice.

For a much more complete listing (although with a somewhat different focus)
you can also use the LWN community calendar, which has been around for what
feels like forever: [https://lwn.net/Calendar/](https://lwn.net/Calendar/)

------
bdcravens
Notice that the app doesn't really keep a history of state. After executing a
search, back arrow on browser doesn't do what the user would expect. Either
give a "reset" option, or better, don't break the browser and implement
something like pushState()

------
aaossa
I loved it! Already submited a local conference. Hope you make it to the front
page :) You could stick some users if you create some kind of newsletter
according to location and/or event tags. If you want some help, I would work
on this!

------
lesterpig
Nice work! There is still room for improvements, but this website will
certainly provide a lot of value to developers.

As an additional feature, considering the target audience, I would suggest to
add some API with filter option, using CalDav format for example [0]. Everyone
would be able to fetch latest data from conferencelist in their local
calendars ;)

[0]:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4791](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4791)

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Thanks & indeed, I plan to add the API soon! Cheers!

------
andreashansen
Nice, a much-needed tool! Suggestion: make it a collaborative effort to keep
it updated. In practice, it can be solved rather easily. Host the website on
Github Pages. Have a single file in the github repository named e.g.
conferences.json which the website reads over AJAX. Anyone can submit pull
requests (PR) to add to or modify the conferences.json file, effectively
allowing community members to help you maintain the website's freshness.

------
Gys
Some things I would like:

\- See fees (including deadlines for each phase ?)

\- Subscribe (by email) to tags (new conferences with a certain tag) and/or
ending of Early Bird phase (or other phases)

\- Have rss feed based on tag(s)

\- See similar conferences (based on tags)

\- Button to add a conference to my calendar (or maybe have Google calendar
feed, based on tags)

\- Filter by region; I do not mind flying a few hours, meaning anywhere in
Europe for me. But I will never go to the US and not easily to Asia.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Really good points, thank you. Will add them soon:)

------
xexers
You're missing all of the QA conferences!

[http://testingconferences.org/](http://testingconferences.org/)

------
xando
Great idea go for it!

lanyrd.com is long dead without any good replacement. I'm not too sure why
they keep the website up. What it does it only confuses people. I know that
this probably out of their control right now. Eventbrite killed the really
good website.

The service they had was solving real problem. Now you are solving real
problem. Good luck!

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Thanks a lot, all this feedback gives me wings :)

------
hammerha
Looks nice. I've wanted something like this. It would be better if I can
subscribe a search result.

~~~
StriverGuy
[https://www.techconferences.io](https://www.techconferences.io)

Full disclosure - this is my site -- but you can join and keep track of
conferences.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Haha, good one! Yours is more a database than mine, indeed! :)

------
LorenzoLlamas
Ugh. Why is everyone excited about yet another online directory? Is it because
it is tech conferences and people here are just jazzed by lists of dorky
things they can do besides mow their lawns (sorry, for folks outside SF who
actually have lawns), or do their regular maintenance on their car?

This is not a problem that needs a solution. It's yet another developer (or
wanna-be 'need a job in development' person) who needs a puff portfolio piece
that shows he knows how to connect a few database fields with a front-end
display - and mixed with search! Wow! (Well, it mostly works anyway).

I have yet to see one of these ShowHN pieces be anything but the latter. They
should split ShowHN into ShowHNFluffYouBuiltToGetAJob and
ShowHNStuffThatSavesLives, because I'd only be interested in the second one.

And of course, you have to have your submissions vetted by the guy who not
only "promises" to always maintain this (I call), but who obnoxiously floats
his Twit handle over the footer as you scroll... he either doesn't believe in
crowd-sourcing genuinely or doesn't want to deal with a user-end database.
Likely, he'll turn that "I don't charge to be listed" into "listings are only
$99/year" pretty quickly.

Whoever said this guy was solving a "simple and actual problem" is sadly
misleading this poor fellow. It was not a problem. Conferences are not
concerned that there are not enough listing sites out there. Conference
attendees are aware of, in their respective circles, where to go and what to
attend. It's not a simple problem. It's not a problem at all.

What is a problem is the proliferation (i.e. clutter) of the internet of
everyone and their sister building fluffy stuff with .co and .io domains. Can
I just block all such domains from my browser? My internet would actually be
better if I could.

Sigh... the death of the Yahoo Directory was heading toward this all along,
wasn't it?

------
wanderr
Does this do direct match on location only, or search in a radius? San
Francisco only shows things happening in the city proper, no surrounding
areas. Could be that's all there is but I'd expect other parts of the bay to
show up as well.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Direct match on location now, radius next. Plus the database is still in
process of being loaded; it's just started, I'm sure I miss tons of
conferences for _now_ :)

------
simon_acca
Nice, thank you for this! I would suggest ordering the events by distance from
the typed location, instead of filtering with a perfect match.

This way the user only has to type one location instead of trying a bunch of
places near him/her.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Thanks! That's next, coming in a few days :)

------
TheArcane
AutoSens isn't listed on it.

[http://auto-sens.com/autosens-brussels/](http://auto-sens.com/autosens-
brussels/)

------
fuzzygroup
I am all in favor of side projects but I found a number of disturbing errors:

* There are no conferences for either Ruby or Elixir * There are no conferences on bitcoin * There is only one conference for React * You can leave data in the form on where by not picking autocomplete and then it appears to have searched for it but gives incorrect results * The only way to clear the date settings is to reload the page

I love the concept and the lack of knowing what conferences are happening even
nearby is a very real problem but I think there are issues with your database
and your search interface.

~~~
sdoering
I could add to that, that for Location: Germany and Keyword: Python the page
really recommends PyData Delhi (India) while PyCon DE 2017 is upcoming on
October, 25th.

Sorry - love the idea. Am disturbed by the subpar execution.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
PyCon DE was added:)

------
kumarski
Spingo.com maintains these all and so does predicthq.com.

------
kafkaesq
Nice. An ability to filter by price (and actual availability), application /
submission deadline, and volunteer opportunity would be useful, also.

~~~
cezarfloroiu
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll add it!

~~~
kafkaesq
"Hipmunk for conferences." You might be able to make an actual thing out of
this.

------
mauerbac
I built something very similar: [http://confir.io/](http://confir.io/)

------
mberger
It crashed when i tried submitting a conference with a lot of tags. Where can
I submit a bug report?

~~~
cezarfloroiu
hello@conferencelist.co

~~~
mberger
Got a reply, fix is in the works! Love it!

------
rospaya
Excellent page! I suggest adding a filter for continents (where > Europe
doesn't work).

------
harrisreynolds
Another use case for this is finding conferences to speak at. Nicely done!

------
pspeter3
Thanks so much! I've been looking for something like this for Asana.

------
garysieling
Are you manually entering conferences in your database?

------
sainib
Have any of you open sourced your app, by any chance?

------
Norfair
How about sorting by deadline for submissions?

------
contingencies
Nothing in Shenzhen.

