Nano2Sol by Marc Boucher

I thought I’d let people know what conferences are on my radar this year. Each year it’s hard to pick only a few conferences to attend, after all there are so many to choose from. So they have to be directly related to some business ideas I’m developing. So this year here are the conferences I’m attending and am considering attending.

The first is Search Engine Meeting in Boston, April 24-25. The conference brings together commercial search engine developers, academics and corporate professionals to learn from each other. I’ve had a long standing interest in search engines and directories having developed one in 1995 for Canada called Maple Square and currently do a lot of data aggregation with some new ideas in development.

Next up is Search Engine Strategies in Toronto, April 25-26. I’ll only be able to attend the second day but it should informative in helping promote all the online properties I manage.

Next up is a conference I’m really looking forward to as it’s one I’ve never attended. It’s the 2006 International Space Development Conference which is being co-hosted by the National Space Society and the Planetary Society. It’s being held in LA, May 4-7. Since the two largest space advocacy groups are co-hosting the event I’m expecting a good turnout.

When I last exchanged emails with George Whiteside on the event was that they were hoping for 750 people. I’d like to see that number over 1000, so make a point of going. It’s got a great lineup of speakers. I also hope to talk to people about any business development ideas they have for the Mars Institute or SpaceRef.

Next up is the Space 2006 conference hosted by the AIAA, September 19-21 in San Jose.

After that I hope to go to IAC 2006 in Valencia, Oct 2-6. The venue is incredible and I’m looking forward to updates on Space Elevator research.

And the last conference on my radar this year is Web 2.0 in San Francisco, November 7-9.

So I’ve got six conferences on my radar this year, three space related, three internet related. That should keep me busy.

Now there’s also a couple of other conferences I’d like to mention but which I won’t be able to attend. The first is Space Access ‘06 bringing together some of the newer smaller commercial space entities.

The other conference of note is the Mars Society Annual Conference. Why should I make mention of this conference? Two reasons, the first is that for a space advocacy organization that tries really hard to effect the political mechine in Washington to listen to them, it’s about time they held the conference in Washington. Next is the fact that they got NASA administrator Mike Griffin to speak. Of note though, the Mars Society pushee the Zubrin Mars agenda pretty hard, just one of the reasons why I left. But the conference does bring together some good people, just as long as you know what the Mars Society is all about.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Space Exploration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.