The RedMonk folks are getting ready to close the door on signups for The Monki Gras. The conference is scheduled for February 1st and 2nd in London, and features a delightful pairing of industry experts and beer. If you want to attend, you need to speak up today – the organizers are closing ticket sales on January 25th.
The Monki Gras is a follow-on conference to Monktoberfest, which took place last October in Portland, Maine. (As some would have it, “the Real Portland.”)
What’s It About?
The Monktoberfest conference was the first time RedMonk went about organizing a conference. As RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady likes to note, the conference started as a joke. What if they threw a conference that focused on beer as well as an agenda for developers?
Here’s what happens: People show up. Also? They have a pretty good time while also learning quite a bit and sharing with other conference attendees. The “hallway track” is often the best track of any technical conference, and Monktoberfest put the hallway track front and center by arranging fantastic food and beer for the breaks and dinners. Oh, and the talks were quite good too.
One More Round
Monktoberfest was a resounding success, so they said that they’d do it again. This time, they’re doing it in London a few days before another (slightly larger) developer-oriented conference: the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM).
Once again, the focus is on tech and craft beer. This time, the beer focus is on the UK’s “burgeoning craft beer startup scene” and one or two Belgian beers, perhaps. The talk focus has been expanded a bit, though. Many of the folks at Monktoberfest complained that the event was great, but there wasn’t enough of it. This time around, the RedMonk crew is adding a half-day of talks on day two starting at 10 a.m. (not too early).
Some of the speakers you don’t want to miss: Bit.ly’s Matt LeMay will be doing the “Kitteh vs Chikin” talk again, Kohsuke Kawaguchi from CloudBees will be talking about Jenkins and building an OSS community. Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse will be discussing open source foundations, and Laura Merling of Alcatel-Lucent will speak on “how telcos got API religion and what comes next.”
The Monki Gras will also feature folks from Lanyrd, Zendesk, Adobe PhoneGap, Joyent and others. I’ll also be doing a talk on day two on how developers can “bootstrap” coverage for their projects.
Tickets for the event are £140.00 and registration closes tomorrow. See you in London!
