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What is the equivalent of E3 in the UK?

Develop in Brighton is a huge event for game developers. GameCity in Nottingham is another important one.

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What tech conferences will be taking place in Seattle the summer of 2013?

We have a list of upcoming (mostly tech) professional events and conferences in Seattle here: Conferences in Seattle | Conferences & Events | Lanyrd

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What are some personalized ways to search for an event?

For conferences and professional events, try out our service http://lanyrd.com/—if you sign in with Twitter (or LinkedIn) we’ll show you events the people you are connected to are speaking at or attending, and we can make further recommendations based on your interest graph if you let us know which topics you are interested in.

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What should tech conferences, events and planners do to add diversity?

JSConf did something very clever that helped them get 25% female speakers last year: Beating the Odds—How We got 25% Women Speakers for JSConf EU 2012

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Which London Underground line is the deepest?

The Northern line has both the deepest point below ground (220 feet, at Hampstead) and the deepest below sea level (70 feet, south of Waterloo)

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What are some great Big Data conferences around Dallas Texas?

We have a list of Big Data conferences and events in Texas on Lanyrd—there’s a DFW Big Data meetup which might be a good place to start (they have an event happening on May 15th).

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Why is site search so bad on most websites?

It’s not so much that site search is bad, it’s that your expectations have been raised enormously high by the incredible quality of search provided by search engines like Google.

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What are the best web design and web development conferences/ meetups in Central & Eastern Europe (2013)?

We have a list of Web Design conferences and events in Central and Eastern Europe on Lanyrd—you might find our full list of Conferences in Central and Eastern Europe useful as well.

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What are the best web solutions available for coordinating people you send out for events?

We recently released a product that solves exactly this problem. Lanyrd Pro is designed to help companies that promote themselves through attending, speaking at and sponsoring events co-ordinate their event strategy internally and promote it externally.

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What are some cool and cost-effective things to do for and at a wedding reception?

Lawn games! Croquet, pétanque, coits and the like. Cheap, fun, easy for people to pick up, won’t ruin any suits and (at least for a UK wedding) traditional without being overly cheesey.

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What is the best place to post a call for papers in the computer science community?

Our service Lanyrd has a feature to help keep track of conference CFPs. We tend to have more commercial conferences than academic ones, but those topics are definitely relevant to our core audience. For example, our Cloud conferences and events page shows six upcoming CFPs at the moment.

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What are some interesting and unusual tactics to draw people to your booth at a large conference or convention?

Make sure you have people on the stand who know their stuff—ideally people who built the thing you are promoting. Make it worthwhile for people to come and talk to you. Don’t have booth babes who are there for their looks rather than their expertise.

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Which should I learn: Python or PHP?

Python will teach you more about programming than PHP—and you’ll be able to learn PHP easily if you learn Python first.

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What could be the reason my login with Twitter stopped work in web site?

Yes, there have been breaking changes recently. You need to make sure you are running on Twitter’s API v1.1: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api...

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How should I start learning Python?

I’d start by going through the official Python tutorial. It’s really good: The Python Tutorial

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What are the best books/tutorials to begin learning about memcached?

There isn’t really enough of memcached to justify a whole book—it’s a pretty straight-forward API.

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What’s the best material on scalability?

Cal Henderson’s book Building Scalable Websites offers a good grounding.

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What are the simple ways  to gain more self confidence in public speaking?

Be confident that you understand your subject matter. Practice, out loud, in private, as many times as possible. Have notes in your pocket so you know you can fall back on them if you really need to (you probably won’t, but I find knowing they are there helps with nerves). Then get as much speaking experience as you can. BarCamps / Unconferences are a useful place to get started.

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How should one maximize their professional conference experience?

Take a look at How to maximize the conference experience as an attendee?

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Does anyone ever had the experience where they could carry on a conversation with someone very well, but stutter and go blank when public speaking (eg. informal introduction) in front of a crowd?

This is extremely common, and will certainly go away with experience... but being well prepared is never a bad idea with respect to public speaking! Even for informal introductions it’s worth figuring out what you’ll say, writing it down, rehearsing it out loud several times in private and memorising it.

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What are some ways to organize conferences at a very low cost?

Find a venue sponsor: venues are the biggest expense for most events, and if you can find a company with their own conference-suitable facilities who will provide the space for free you’ve just massively slashed the cost of the event. Most BarCamps (at least in London) work on this basis.

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Why do academic conferences cost so much?

They’re usually a whole lot cheaper than industry conferences, where tickets can cost more than a thousand dollars.

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What are some ways to get a job from attending a conference?

Talk to people. Ask if they are hiring—if they aren’t, ask if they know anyone at the conference who is hiring. Make sure you have lots of business cards. Get other people’s business cards. Follow up afterwards. Connect with people on LinkedIn.

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What are some hidden features of Python?

Generators and Iterators are pretty amazing. These two tutorials will really open your eyes as to how powerful they can be:

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Where can I find out about upcoming conferences, conventions, and trade shows in design, publishing, and elearning?

Our site, Lanyrd, is a crowdsourced directory of conferences and professional events. We’re extremely strong in areas such as Mobile, Web Design and User Experience, but we also have listings for Publishing and E-Learning. Try these pages:

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How do I get started with node.js?

You don’t run Node.js in a script tag on your website. Node is a technology for writing servers in JavaScript—you can think of it as a replacement/alternative for PHP, Python, Ruby, ASP.NET etc.

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How do you get invited to speak at high profile events?

SXSW has an open call for proposals—you’ll need to submit a suggestion to the panel picker and encourage people to vote for you.

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How does one create innovation in a business conference? What’s new and different in this area?

Two formats worth investigating are unconferences and lightning talks.

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What is your review of xkcd?

★★★★★

It’s consistently excellent, and frequently throws out absolute diamonds. Here’s a great one from just a few days ago: [... 63 words]

What is the history of question and answer websites?

I’m afraid this answer will be a little vague, but I worked at Yahoo! back when they launched Answers, and the story I heard was that this category of sites was extremely popular in some Asian countries—particularly countries that didn’t yet have a large number of available native language sites on the Web. Q&A sites filled a valuable gap there by allowing people to discover information online in their own language despite there not being many existing sites.

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