With the Future of Web Apps going on today, I thought it might be good to put together some other conferences people might be interested to go see. While I work at a company that puts on conferences throughout the year, the ones I am going to list most definitely distinguish themselves from the rest of the world. They do this by using ustream to stream their conferences, offer amazing print designed handouts, and have big name design sponsors. Some of those great sponsors include Twitter, Viddler, ustream, and much more. Conferences which are sponsored by these innovative companies give you a good insight of how the conference might be. FOWA looks to be the type of conference where only the elite live. I say that because it is true, having speakers from the WordPress world as well as Kevin Rose from digg.com.

While the company I work for mainly puts on conferences for larger corporate companies, I enjoy going to conferences which designate their target audience as being designers, web developers, ruby on rails developers, ajax developers, and much more. So here are a couple of conferences and events I am planning to attend this upcoming year, and I suggest you not only look into the conference, but also look at the types of services they use to promote their conference.

1. An Event Apart

A fairly good publication in my opinion, this event has some amazing people coming to speak in April. One of those being the man behind The Zen of CSS Design (Dave Shea), design director at Google (Jeff Veen), and many more people. An Event Apart usually puts on a very professional style conference, but with very innovative speakers. Not only will you learn a thing or two about your subject matter, but you will find that you are not the only person in the world who believes the same things you do. Trust me, I know it is hard to find a living person who believes in your standards of design (if you are like me, if you don’t know my style already, please view archives). Trying to book my flight and hotel as soon as possible. This event is taking place April 24 - 25, 2008 in New Orleans.

2. PodCampAZ

One amazing man behind the idea of this innovative PodCamp. While half of the PodCamps I have seen are just a meetup wrapped around the idea of podcasting and streaming social media, Brent Spore really put a new spin on the idea. Wrapping this PodCamp in innovative speakers from some of the top bloggers, to some of the internet streaming stars, Brent Spore dragged a lot of attention with last years PodCampAZ by promoting the meet-up through twitter, digg, pownce, and almost every social network. The reason it became so popular and so hyped, was for the goodies involved, the streaming video marketing, and all around feel of the “family” oriented style to this conference. Can’t wait for next year, Brent Spore has told me that it may be taking place November 8 - 9 in Arizona, but that date is not certain. Stay tuned to the PodCampAZ Web site for more information. P.S. They would prefer to call this an “un-conference,” but I am speaking generally for all of my visitors not in the “loop.”

3. Chicago’s PodCamp / PodCampChi

While I have yet to be to a PodCamp, I thought supporting my home town and supporting the development of innovative minds in Chicago might be beneficial. I am still planning on holding events in Chicago in the next year, no matter them being meetup.com events or being full on conferences, I have something in the works. I feel that Chicago is lacking the sort of creativity and innovation that the above conferences hold. FOWA is just a good example of something that SHOULD come to Chicago, but the cold weather and busy city doesn’t attract many. We will see how this un-conference holds up. Some of the speakers so far are people only involved in podcasting and not really involved in marketing and general buzz. But I hope to be speaking, or volunteering at this event. This event will be taking place June 6 - 8 in Chicago.

As I have mentioned before I am announcing that I will be planning some sort of small event in Chicago in the next coming months. If you are interesting in learning more, please email me as I will have a meetup.com account all planned out, as well as speaking topics and possible speaker opportunities. Please email me at patrickalgrim{at}gmail.com

Are you going to some events? Which ones will you be going to? Tell us all in the comments, spread the word, market, and gain friends through promoting your favorite events!