conference

European Apple fans have been eagerly awaiting this year's Apple Expo. As last year's event was cancelled, and most could not really warrant the cost of travelling to America, this year's Expo was the first major Apple-related date for Europeans in two years. There were of course a lot of product releases and newsworthy events at the Expo this year but attempting to document them all would be nigh on impossible, so I will now try to present my own personal highlights.

There was excitement and enthusiasm in the air of MacExpo 2001, and there was a reason. Perhaps because Apple was exhibiting at a UK show for the first time in five years, or perhaps because Mac users currently have a lot to celebrate, there was one of the largest turnouts of visitors and exhibitors in the history of the show. In a time of economic downturn (especially in the computing market), Apple is one of the very few IT companies currently running at a profit. A major upgrade to an amazing new OS has been released, developers are flocking back to the Mac in droves, machines are increasing in power but decreasing in price, and now Apple has once again starting manufacturing non-Mac products. To top all that you can't move without seeing Macs featured in adverts, TV programs, or films, so there really is a lot to celebrate.

An event that can be as specific as an event for the use of Drupal within government demonstrates a growing interest in Drupal (and maybe openness generally) within government and its great that such an event can attract nearly 150 people.

The financial sector is an industry ripe for technical disruption. It is well-financed, has many multifaceted requirements and the vast majority of us need its services on a regular basis. The last couple of years have created a plethora of startups and product offerings to service the financial sector and the financial needs of consumers. It even has its own buzzword, 'FinTech', to really prove it has arrived.

The mobile monolith that is Mobile World Congress is over for another year. I was lucky enough to get hold of a press pass and decided to spend the week in Barcelona. Soaking up the warmer weather, joining the 90,000 other attendees and preparing for the bombardment of marketing mumbo jumbo to unearth some gems for developers.

Read on to see what one DZone Zone Leader learned at the iTake conference, including new perspectives on testing, BDD, security, and mob programming.

Check out this software development conference that's currently catering to devs in Australia, but is soon expanding to Southeast Asia.

FOSS Backstage is a new conference for open source developers and managers. Find out more information about the conference here.

Check out what we can learn about creativity and innovation from some of the more unorthodox talks given at Login Festival.

Take a look at this developer's reflection on African involvement in technology and the challenges that African entrepreneurs and technologists face.

Nestled amongst the port of Hamburg, the sound of cranes loading containers of a different kind onto vast cavernous ships, I’m at my first in-person conference in about 18 months. It’s taking place on an old cargo ship, the HMS Bleichen (German), a ship obsoleted by the arrival of containerization and now home to talks about containers of a different kind.