Ultimate list of 2017 digital and content conferences

Skyline view of Paris with Eiffel Tower in background.

conference signIs your perfect learning opportunity here? Our annual roundup of events for digital communications professionals aims to help those who are looking to further their career and professional development in 2017.

There are nearly 50 events listed here and many take place on our recruitment homeground of Europe, focusing on all the key areas we recruit in, from tech comm and content strategy, to UX and metadata, to augmented and virtual reality content.

We cover many of the conferences listed below on the Firehead blog, or you can subscribe to Firehead to catch up on digital comms and recruitment trends quarterly by email. We’ll also be updating this list through the year.

Did we miss any great conferences? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

JANUARY

Agile Content Conf, London, UK, 30-31 January 2017
All about using agile methods to work together digitally and move away from linear workflows where publication of content is the final step. Case studies from Facebook, American Express, GOV.UK, Breast Cancer Care.

FEBRUARY

CS Applied, London, UK, 9-10 February 2017Two days of advice, solutions and real-life experiences focused around the theme of ‘Benchmarking content – how do we know we’re doing a good job?’ The event has been organised and curated by leading content strategist Rahel Bailie.

XML Prague, Czech Republic, 9-11 February 2017
#xmlprague
A conference on markup languages and data on the web featuring topics such as: web markup, semantic visions and reality, publishing for the 21th century, XML databases and big data, and the state of the XML union.

Webstock, Wellington, New Zealand, 13-17 February 2017
#webstock
Lively conference that attracts some of the biggest and most interesting new names in digital to New Zealand.

World IA Day, global, 18 February 2017There are 65 locations and 29 countries taking part in this one-day annual celebration, hosted by the Information Architecture Institute. Find one near you.

MARCH

Mobile Trends Conference, Krakow, Poland, 8-10 March 2017
#mtc2017
Now in its 6th year, Poland’s biggest IT conference is dedicated to mobile techniques, technologies and marketing with more than 30 lectures across three days.

SXSW Interactive, Austin, US, 10-16 March 2017
#sxswi #sxsw
One of the biggest and best web gatherings in the world takes place in Austin, Texas, each year. Buy a badge for Interactive section or take in the SXSW film and music festivals as well as technologies converge.

Social Media Marketing World, San Diego, US, 22-24 March 2017
#SMMW17
A mega-conference for 4,000 marketers organised by the Social Media Examiner.

IA Summit, Vancouver, Canada, 22-26 March 2017#iasummit
This will be the 18th IA Summit for professionals in information architecture and experience design. Karaoke is promised/threatened. This year the theme is: ‘Designing for Humans’ – it’s time for IA to meet AI.

Intelligent Content, Las Vegas, US, 28-30 March 2017
#intelcontent
The Intelligent Content Conference (ICC) is now in its 9th year and focuses on how to plan, create, and deliver strategic content.

Big Data Innovation Summit, London, UK, 30-31 March 2017
Listen to 25+ leading executives working within Big Data, covering case studies, extraction of knowledge from data, data mining and getting the most from your customer data. They also run another more marketing-oriented big data event in June (details here).

APRIL

MadWorld, San Diego, US, 2-5 April 2017
#MadWorld2017
Technical communication and content strategy conference offering 40 sessions, 20 expert speakers and a network of attending technical writers, documentation managers and content strategists.

DMWF Expo Europe, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3-4 April 2017
#DMWF
A showcase of digital marketing technologies and strategy, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, eCommerce, influencer marketing, content marketing, data, analytics and mobile marketing across five dedicated conference streams.

An Event Apart, Seattle, US, 3-5 April 2017
Covering digital design, code and UX, the Seattle conference kicks off the first of six events that take place throughout the year and across major cities in the US.

CMO Digital Leaders Summit Europe, Turnberry Resort, Scotland, 3-5 April 2017
A chance to tune in to 65 senior digital marketing decision-makers and business leaders on the theme of ‘Optimising Digital Experience, Communication and Strategy in the Hyper Connected Era’.

Digital Media Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark, 24-26 April 2017
#dme17
European publishers discuss digital impacts in mobile, social, paid content, business innovation and advertising. In 2017 the three themes are: membership and subscription reloaded, reclaiming the premium ad market and revenue frontiers.

Intra.NET Reloaded, Berlin, Germany, 27-28 April 2017
#intra_reloaded
Leading event for 350+ intranet professionals and internal comms teams to discuss the latest issues in digital internal communication and knowledge management.

MAY

STC Technical Communication Summit, Washington DC, US, 7-10 May 2017
#STC17
STC’s 64th annual conference offers 80+ sessions talking all things tech comm.

Adobe Digital Marketing Summit EMEA, London, UK, 10-11 May 2017
#AdobeSummit
A chance to connect with more than 3,000 digital marketing professionals and brush up on tools and trends in digital marketing.

Beyond Tellerand, Dusseldorf, Germany, 15-17 May 2017
#btconf
Running since 2010 in Germany, this conference gathers speakers on creative web design and development. What does the title mean? The exact translation for the sentence is: “Take a look beyond the edge of the plate”.

SMX London, London, UK, 23-24 May 2017
#smx
Search Marketing Expo is a conference series by Search Engine Land, covering hot topics and latest thinking in the world of SEO, SEM and online marketing.

UXLx: User Experience Lisbon, Portugal, 23-26 May 2017
#uxlx
More than 20 user experience workshops, 10 talks and networking with 500 attendees from 40 different countries.

Creative ProWeek, featuring PePcon, Atlanta, US, 24-26 May 2017
PePcon, a conference focused on print and ePublishing, will be folded into a multi-conference CreativePro Week in 2017.

LavaCon Dublin, Ireland, 22-24 May 2017
#lavacon
LavaCon comes to Europe for the second time, gathering content strategists, content engineers, documentation managers and other content professionals together to talk content strategy, technical communication and more. This year’s theme is ‘Spanning silos, building bridges’, and Megan Gilhooly from Amazon has been announced as a keynote speaker.

Augmented Reality World Expo (AWE), Santa Clara, US, 31 May-2 June 2017
#awe2017
Now in its 8th year, AWE is the largest augmented and virtual reality event in the world bringing 5000 AR/VR professionals together to ‘make the world more interactive’.

JUNE

Confab Central, Minneapolis, US, 7-9 June 2017
#confabMN
Content strategy conference featuring 600+ content strategists, 30 sessions and a workshop day with the chance to learn the topics, trends and best practices shaping content strategy today. Star Trek’s LeVar Burton is a guest speaker this year.

UA Europe, Harrogate, UK, 8-9 June 2017
#uaeurope
An annual conference for technical communicators, focusing on software user assistance and online help trends, technical developments and best practice.

UnGagged London, London, UK, 15-16 June 2017
#LDNTechWeek
SEO and digital marketing tactics are on the table at this headline event of London Technology Week (12-16 June 2017). If this isn’t your topic, there are many more events at London Tech Week.

The Content Marketing Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland, 8-9 June 2017
#TCMA2017
TCMA is aimed at helping businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs become better marketers through sharing resources, examples and case studies.

eTail Europe 2017, London, UK, 20-22 June, 2017
The event for eCommerce and multi-channel retailers, featuring speakers from Argos, John Lewis, Clarks, Tesco and other big names.

JULY

WebVisions, Barcelona, Spain, tbc July 2017
#webvisions #wvbcn
One of a number of WebVisions events in 2017 exploring the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy for an audience of designers, developers and industry leaders.

MozCon, Seattle, US, 17-19 July 2017
Advice from industry leaders in SEO, social media, community building, content marketing, brand development, CRO, analytics, and more.

SEPTEMBER

Content Marketing World, Cleveland, US, 5-8 September 2017
#cmworld
The largest content marketing conference (4000+ attendees, ), organised by the Content Marketing Institute, also gathers a variety of keynote speakers from Kevin Spacey and John Cleese to Mark Hamill last year. Who will it be in 2017?

Social Media Week London. London, UK, tbc September 2017
#SMWLDN
SMW is a worldwide event taking place 12+ cities throughout 2017 with official and independent events bringing together speakers from the likes of BuzzFeed, National Geographic and Forbes.

Confab Intensive, Denver, US, 11-13 September 2017A set of deep-dive workshops on topics spanning UX, CMS, editorial, workflow and governance.

PLAIN2017, Graz, Austria, 21-23 September 2017#PLAIN2017
PLAIN’s 11th international plain language conference will be on the theme of ‘Improving customer relationships’ and aims to share know-how on how plain language creates trust, satisfaction and loyalty of customers in private businesses and public administration. One for plain language professionals but also those from fields such as information design, marketing, corporate communications, technical writing and usability.

Technical Communication UK, Nottingham, UK, 26-28 September 2017
#tcuk #tcuk17

The annual TCUK conference is the leading event for technical communicators in the UK.

EuroIA, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Sweden, 28-30 September 2017
#euroIA
Europe’s 13th annual information architecture/user experience summit features presentations, panels and plenty of networking opportunities for IAs and UX designers. The theme for 2017 is ‘Adaptation and designing for change’.

OCTOBER

B2B Marketing Forum, Boston, US, 3-6 Oct 2017
MarketingProfs run this three-day event sharing the latest trends in B2B marketing – now celebrating its 10th year.

Velocity, London, UK, 18-20 October 2017
O’Reilly’s European wing of three Velocity conferences taking place this year for web professionals working in web operations and performance.

TC World and Tekom, Stuttgart, Germany, 24-26 October 2017
#tekom #tcworld
The TCWorld conference and the Tekom fair is the largest global event and marketplace for technical communication.

NOVEMBER

LavaCon Portland, US, 5-8 November 2017
#lavacon
A multi-day conference for content strategists, documentation managers, and marketing professionals. Founded in 2002, LavaCon has grown from its technical communication roots to include sessions on project management, content strategy, UX, social media, mobile devices and more.

Web Summit, Lisbon, Portugal, 6-9 November 2017
Web Summit is relaunching as 21 conferences in one, each with their own stage, schedule, exhibition area, workshops and networking evening events. For example, more than 10,000 digital marketers attended PandaConf, their conference within Web Summit, in 2016, while Content Makers serves content creators.

J.Boye Aarhus 17, Aarhus, Denmark, 7-9 November 2017
The global knowledge-sharing community returns to Aarhus for the 13th time for a three-day event covering content strategy to UX to tech trends you should know about.

Integrated Live, London, Uk, 15-16 November 2017
Formerly The Digital Marketing Show, this ‘new look’ free event recognises that everything is now digital and the importance is now instead on the context and the message.  It features 120+ speakers discussing trends in modern marketing.

Intra.NET Reloaded, London, UK, 27-28 November 2017
#intra_reloaded
The intra.NET Reloaded London event brings together 100+ decision makers from corporate IT, communications and business departments to discuss all things intranet.

Image: (CC) DKalo/Flickr

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