As summer draws to a close, I’ve started thinking about upcoming conferences, and I was pleased to discover that the MacTech Conference 2012 fits into my schedule this year. I haven’t been able to make time in my schedule for previous events, but they sounded like big successes based on what I heard from attendees, and I’m looking forward to attending. This year’s MacTech Conference will take place October 17th through 19th, at the Sheraton Universal in Los Angeles.
MacTech Conference is an immersive session-based conference with two tracks: an IT track for consultants and IT professionals, and a developer track for Mac and iOS developers. Presenters are well-known members of those communities, and are on an even higher level than the people who spoke at the one-day MacTech Boot Camp in April, where I was quite impressed with the level of technical content (see “Understand and Make the News with TidBITS, TUAW, and MacTech,” 2 April 2012).
I’ll be participating in the conference at some level, though the details haven’t yet been hammered out. Other details that are in progress but aren’t yet public include the evening entertainment — two years ago the entire conference got a private tour of Griffith Observatory, complete with a behind-the-scenes talk on how planetarium animation is created and a chance to look through the observatory’s 12-inch Zeiss telescope, and last year’s trip was a tour of Universal Studio’s backlot and an insider look at the King Kong: 360 3D attraction. Although I can’t yet talk about it, I know what’s in store for this year, and it’s going to be extremely cool.
The three-day MacTech Conference kicks off with a keynote at 10 AM on Wednesday, 17 October 2012, and continues through the afternoon of Friday, 19 October 2012. All breakfasts, lunches, and dinners are provided, as well as evening entertainment on both nights, plus snack-filled breaks for networking time.
Attendee spots and hotel rooms are expected to sell out soon. For a limited time, a discounted conference registration costs only $899 for TidBITS readers and includes food, a six-month MacTech subscription, and all the sessions and activities. A small number of partial and full student scholarships are also available. Travel and hotel rooms cost extra, of course, but it’s easy to fly to LAX, and a limited number of rooms at the Sheraton Universal (where the conference will be held) are available to attendees at the conference price of $184 per night, plus taxes.
