5 Easy Reasons For Your Boss to Send You to NGINX Conf 2018

Rob Whiteley of F5

General Manager, NGINX Product Group

August 7, 2018

So many tech conferences, so little time. However, if you use NGINX, or are considering a commitment to the NGINX Application Platform, you may well find NGINX Conf 2018 to be a must.

We always see our conference as important, of course – and for four years running now, conference attendees, training recipients, and sponsors have agreed. But this year is special.

Since last year’s conference, we’ve added key features, such as gRPC and HTTP/2 server push, to our web server software; updated NGINX Plus three times (by the time the conference rolls around); and introduced the first general‑availability releases of NGINX Controller, NGINX Unit, and the NGINX Ingress Controller. (Together with NGINX ModSecurity WAF, these technologies make up the NGINX Application Platform.)

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NGINX Conf 2018 is your opportunity to see them all together, demoed and explained – along with a once-a-year chance to hear from and talk to many members of the core NGINX development team.

This blog post will give you a few key reasons to justify attending to your boss – and, in many cases, for your boss to come too! (We’ll leave it up to you whether having your boss along is a good or bad thing…)

NGINX Conf 2018 will be held October 8–11 in Atlanta, Georgia. The days break down as follows:

• Monday, October 8: Training (intermediate NGINX, module development)
• Tuesday and Wednesday, October 9–10: Keynotes and conference sessions
• Thursday, October 11: Training (advanced NGINX, module development)

So you can take in the conference in just two days, then add a day or two of training on either side, to make your visit three or four days total.

The conference will be held at the Loews Atlanta Hotel, conveniently located in Midtown, a bustling commercial and residential neighborhood hosting dozens of restaurants and nightspots plus the “highest density of art and cultural institutions in the Southeast” (Wikipedia). Getting to Atlanta is easy and convenient – ATL is the world’s busiest airport and one of the most easily reached. You can easily get to and from Loews, and all over Atlanta, via the MARTA transit system.

How do you quickly and easily justify a visit to our most excellent conference? Here’s how – copy and send what follows to your boss!

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Hi Boss,

I’d like to go to NGINX Conf 2018 happening October 8–11 in Atlanta, Georgia. Here’s why:

1. Get trained. NGINX Conf has the strongest training agenda ever – twice as much training (on both Monday and Thursday) as last year! The Developing NGINX Modules course that filled up so quickly last year will be back, delivered on both training days. And I can mix and match Developing NGINX Modules with the NGINX Core, Securing Apps with NGINX, Advanced Load Balancing, and Advanced Caching courses.
2. See what’s new. This year will be the first appearance at a conference of NGINX Plus R16, and NGINX will be demoing GA versions of NGINX Controller, their monitoring and management tool, and the latest version of NGINX Unit, as seen at the top of Hacker News. All that, plus the NGINX Ingress Controller you’ve been hearing so much about. Demos and talks will show how to use these powerful tools to simplify and strengthen our stack.
3. Meet the team. I’ll get to meet the founders and core members of the NGINX development team. They’ll be staffing the NGINX booth, giving talks, and leading training sessions. These are the people who build NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus, which we and millions of others count on every day. I can compare notes on best practices and get some of our questions answered. I’ll also get to meet peers who have solved many of the challenges that we may run into in the future.
4. Get the big picture. Of course the “what” and “how” are always important, but the conference will also give us a rare opportunity to find out “why”. As we see every day, application development and delivery are in upheaval, and the NGINX Application Platform could become a big part of the solution.
5. Check out a vibrant city. With a MARTA station just a couple blocks from the hotel, it’s easy to explore all the great things Atlanta has to offer. And if I need a pick-me-up, there’s a beautiful fitness center and spa in the hotel. Not that I’ll have time for any of that, of course…

Now, these are not just great reasons for me to attend. They also make a good case for you, and some of our fellow team members, to come along as well.

So there you have it: a bunch of great reasons to send me, as well as yourself and other team members, to NGINX Conf 2018, this October in Atlanta. I’d like to sign up now to get the Early Bird rate, or the best available rate if I sign up later.

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