Big Mountain Data and Dev Conference

This event will be both online and in person for Saturday ONLY.   

Big Mountain Data and Dev Conference is the premier technical agnostic conference in the state.  All sessions will be available virtually but you can also attend the sessions in person on Friday and Saturday. The event will span two days and be free and open to all. We will still have amazing content and many different technologies showcased.  

Now is your chance to present and help build and maintain this amazing technical community we have.  Presenting at the event this year will be different than past years.  We are planning to have technical sessions virtually on Friday.  We will not have any in person sessions on Friday.   

We will have an Utah Geek Events Career Development Day on Saturday which will be in person.  If your session is a professional development session and you would like to take part of the in person event on Saturday please let us know in the notes.   

We will have trainings and mentoring to help you get acquainted with presenting online with an audience both offline and online.  Zoom will be the primary technology used for all these sessions.  

We have not decided a Keynote Schedule yet. 

Sessions are planned for during the day on Friday and Saturday afternoon.  Saturday is going to be a focus on Soft skills and things to help people network in the community. Right now we are not planning any technical sessions on Saturday.  All technical sessions will be on Friday during the day.   All sessions right now will be 60 minutes in length.  We will be looking for volunteers to help facilitate conversation on various topics.

Sessions will be recorded and then added to Utah Geek Events Youtube channel after the event.    

Why present? 

1. Improve your skills and help others.  Presenting allows you to learn something even better than before and in the process you are helping others to gain information.  
2. Advocate something you are passionate about.  If you really love a technology/topic share it with others!  Passion and drive show during presentations and will help others see that as well.  
3. Name/Services Recognition.  If you are interested in getting more projects in the future or perhaps a new job/different career. Presenting on something not only shows how willing you are to learn but you are willing to help others. It is a great addition to any resume to be part of a community. 
4. Make connections/Network.  Networking is key to moving forward in your career and presenting to others is a great way to build your network since people will want to hear from you.  
5. You will get a really cool shirt!  I know we all have too many of these but you can say you are just one of a few that has a coveted "Speaker Shirt" from Big Mountain Data and Dev.

Session Selection

How we approach speaker selection. The schedule right now has room for about 20+ technical sessions(still in flux) and 10-15 soft skills sessions. This is a much smaller schedule than we have had in the past so we will be limited in what sessions we can accept this year.  Sessions will be 60 minutes in length we suggest 45 minutes for presentations and 15 minutes for Q&A.  All presenters will only have 1 speaking slot until all presenters have a slot. Once the schedule has been filled we will then go back to the sessions and take second sessions from presenters based ranking of the abstract/presentation by committee.. I have included an example below to make this clear.

Pat Submitted 3 sessions to speak and the vote breakdown was like this. session1 = 2nd rank, session2 = 3rd rank, session3 =1st rank.

Nick Submitted 2 sessions to speak and the vote breakdown was like this. session1 = 2nd rank, session2 = 1st rank.

Pat would get Session3 placed on the schedule. Nick would then get his session2 placed on the schedule. This would continue through all speakers, after the last speaker had a slot chosen then we would go back and pat would also get session1 for 2nd rank(depending on other speakers and other ranks as well).

One of the primary goals of the event is to grow the speaker community. We encourage you submit to speak.  If you are a new speaker and would like a review of your presentation or help with practicing please contact us below.  We are happy to help you out.  

This event is designed to be a combination of Big Data and Utah Code Camp.  As we mentioned earlier we want as many technical topics represented as possible.  

If you have any additional questions contact 

Pat Wright

pwright@utahgeekevents.com