Pittsburgh TechFest 2013

Origins of TechFest

And it started with an idea…

Dave Hoerster and Eric Kepes, fresh off of a CodeCamp back in 2011, had a thought: what if there was an event in the Pittsburgh area that was not just .Net focused but could include all languages?

[Cue the music to the movie, 2001.]

…and Pittsbugh TechFest was born.

The next step was to contact all the leaders of the other user groups in the Pittsburgh area. The call went out, and Dave, Eric, and the other user group leaders met in a conference room with a large table.

[Cue the music to the movie, The Godfather.]

All the heads of the “families” met and sat poised to usher in a new era to Pittsburgh. They shaped what would become Pittsburgh TechFest, but there was one thing left to do. They needed to give themselves a cool nickname.

Thus, they bestowed unto themselves the moniker, the “TechFest Mafia”.

The members of the Mafia have changed some since TechFest began, but the family has stayed strong. The TechFest Mafia members are …

David Hoerster - CEO and Sponsor Management

Jen Kohlman - Event Coordinator

Jeremy Jarrell - Sponsor Management

Nicholas Zographos - Webmaster

Patty Alman - Web

Josh Suereth - Keynote Coordinator

Chris Miles - Social Media Coordinator

Eric Kepes - Speaker Coordinator

Sean McCune - Social Media Coordinator Emeritus

Greg Akins - Sponsor Coordinator Emeritus

The Pittsburgh TechFest first year was 2012 and was held at La Roche College. The first conference had over 40 sessions and a little more than 200 attendees.

This year the event was sold out of all 300 tickets in ONE WEEK! There are nearly 60 sessions ranging from JavaScript to Ruby and everything else in between.

We truly thank everyone for helping to get Pittsburgh TechFest where it is today.

See you June 1st.

API and Logo Available under Creative Commons License

Our API for this year’s conference and the Pittsburgh TechFest logo, are available through the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

For details, visit the link above. In general, the API and logo are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work as long as you do so under the conditions stated.

Don’t forget to keep us in the loop on what you create so we can let everyone else know.

h/t Dave Shah

Sponsors Gratefully Accepted!

Pittsburgh Tech Fest 2012 was a success and now we’re gearing up for Tech Fest 2013 on June 1st. The Tech Fest’s success last year was due in large part to our wonderful sponsors who made it possible to get the venue and have a great lunch, among many other things.

Well, we’re looking to do even more this year and build on last year’s success, so we’re calling for sponsors to support us again. Please check out our sponsorship info page to find out how your company can help out Pittsburgh Tech Fest and get their name in front of hundreds of Pittsburgh’s brightest and techiest.

Submit To The Will Of The Tech Fest!

Submit a presentation to Pittsburgh Tech Fest 2013.

Pittsburgh Tech Fest 2013 will be here before you know it, folks. That is, assuming June 1st is before you know it. We need speakers! We need speakers to speak tech at the Tech Fest!

Seriously, if you can open your mouth and have tech spew forth from it, then submit a presentation for consideration. Just go to our Speakers page and submit to the Tech Fest!

We’ve had some great talks submitted already, but we need many more! Don’t procrastinate. It drives Eric’s blood pressure up and makes him antsy. Nobody wants that.

We’re accepting presentations for the following topics:

• Agile/Process
• Business of Software
• Career
• Cloud
• Configuration Management
• Functional Languages
• Javascript
• LAMP
• Mobile
• NoSQL Databases
• Object Oriented Languages
• Presentation
• Relational Databases
• Security
• Testing

If you don’t feel like your presentation fits in any one or more of these, just choose the closest ones or pick one at random.

Currently, the Javascript and Presentation topics are in the lead with most number of presentations submitted. But there is still room for many, many more for both these topics. And the other topics? They really need some submissions, folks. Database, Mobile and Testing speakers… where are you?

Don’t wait ‘til the last minute. Submit today to help make the 2013 Tech Fest awesome and keep Eric’s blood pressure down!