15+ FREE virtual conferences and Meetups you should attend

NOTE: Updating over the weekend (3/21), instead of this evening

Are you getting antsy being stuck at home? Over the past week, more people have decided isolate themselves at home to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 aka the Coronovirus. This means that Meetups are being canceled, conferences being postponed and opportunities to collaborate have dwindled.

If you're like me, being stuck at home can bring on a serious case of FOMO, that is fear of missed opportunities. I learn best in a structured group environment, rather than alone at home. My best networking also happens at Meetups, where I can strike up relevant with other attendees.

With that in mind, I've been sharing (and creating) remote opportunities to maintain the momentum I've built IRL virtually.

Below are some upcoming events, as well as workarounds for getting through the next few weeks. I'll continue updating this list as I come across more resources. But regardless of the current limitations we're facing, let's keep coding, job searching, and growing as developers.

Free remote tech conferences:

1. Spring Live: Mar 19-20
   • Who’s speaking at this thing? It’s an amazing crew, featuring great folks from VMware, Microsoft, Confluent, Okta, Google, and more.
2. Domopalooza: Mar 18-19
   • Learn how great companies leverage data and intelligent apps to drive business forward at record speed.
3. GTC 2020: Mar 22-26
   • GTC Digital is all the great training, research, insights, and direct access to the brilliant minds of NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, now online.
4. #PerfMatters Conference: Mar 30-Apr 1
   • #PerfMatters Conference is the ONLINE web performance conference in Redwood City, California with talks by internationally renowned performance developers
5. Atlassian Remote Summit: Apr 1-2
   • Great content online during Atlassian Remote Summit 2020. More details around the content will be announced soon
6. Customer Validation Conference: Apr 7-9
   • A free online event about Alpha, Beta, and Delta testing best practices, tips, and strategies
7. Red Hat Summit 2020 Virtual Experience: Apr 28-29
   • Brings together our customers, partners, community members and Red Hatters to talk about the open source innovations and best practices that are enabling the future of enterprise technology
8. Tech Inclusion: May 12
   • A global virtual summit to connect the next wave of tech leaders from all over the world
9. STAREAST Virtual Conference: May 6-7
   • The live streamed content includes all five keynote presentations, select industry technical presentations, and dozens of interviews with speakers and other experts attending the event

Free Virtual Meetups:

1. Intro to JavaScript - Variables, Control Flow, and Looping: Mar 17
   • This workshop will be a combination of live interactive lecture and pair programming through challenges! You will go under-the-hood of JavaScript, so you can confidently tackle new problems and work through blocks.
2. How Startups Can Cope with Coronavirus and an Economic Recession:Mar 18
   • On this live and interactive event, Adeo Ressi (CEO of Founder Institute, and 9X entrepreneur and startup investor) will discuss the opportunities and challenges the COVID-19 pandemic is creating for businesses, and outline strategies for startups to survive and thrive in a recession. There will also be a long Q&A portion where the audience can ask questions.
3. Deploy Microservices on NEW Red Hat OpenShift: Mar 19
   • Red Hat OpenShift offers automated installation, upgrades, and lifecycle management throughout the container stack—the operating system, Kubernetes and cluster services, and applications—on any cloud. Red Hat OpenShift is focused on security at every level of the container stack and throughout the application lifecycle. It includes long-term, enterprise support from one of the leading Kubernetes contributors and open source software companies. Join our webinar to learn how to build with speed, agility, confidence, and choice.
4. A Developer's Introduction to Kubernetes [[CANCELED]]
   • Kubernetes is a popular open source project that aids in orchestrating containers. Kubernetes is complex, but hopefully you'll leave with a good understanding of how it works and when to leverage it for your own workloads.
5. Virtual Sundays: Mar 22
   • Free office hours for coding help—any programming language, all levels of experience. The format is super simple: you attend with a thing you want to learn or a project to build, and work (virtually) alongside others doing the same. If you have a question, we will do our best to answer, or at least point you in the right direction. More experienced folks are also welcome - we always need help mentoring!
6. Women in Data Science NYC: Mar 23
   • This year IBM Developer plans to host an evening that features an all-female lineup of speakers from research and industry to talk about the latest data science-related research in a number of domains. In addition, attendees will have the opportunity to learn how leading-edge companies are using data science for success and connect with potential mentors and collaborators in the field.
7. Virtual Thursdays: Mar 26
   • Free office hours for coding help—any programming language, all levels of experience. The format is super simple: you attend with a thing you want to learn or a project to build, and work (virtually) alongside others doing the same. If you have a question, we will do our best to answer, or at least point you in the right direction. More experienced folks are also welcome - we always need help mentoring!
8. Demystifying PWAs: Mar 25
   • Progressive web apps (PWA) allow for your web apps to have some of the capabilities of mobile apps - like offline availability or the ability to install the app. They have been gaining steam, especially since support on Safari has been improving. In this free online session, Lee Warrick will offer an introduction to PWAs and show you what you need to know to start building one.
9. Get Started with Serverless Using OpenWhisk: Apr 9
   • In this free, hands-on workshop, Upkar Lidder of IBM Developer will walk you through building three serverless applications using the open source Apache OpenWhisk platform.
10. Founder's Friday NYC: Apr 10
    • Founders Friday is a community striving to make the NYC tech ecosystem more inclusive, through tactical & candid fireside chats with founders we think are awesome. Always free. Recent founders have included Dennis from http://x.ai , Bianca from Small Girls PR (http://smallgirlspr.com/), Ben from Splash (http://splashthat.com), and Liz from WayUp (http://wayup.com).
11. Remote Labs
    • Some friends have created a discord server to stay productive in spite of being stuck at home. This is to facilitate pair programming, mock interviews and more online. If that sounds like something you would like, join the community!

Did I miss an event that you would like to add to this list? Definitely let me know in the comments. As mentioned above, I will keep updating this list when possible.