2022 top 25 tech events calling your name

Ah, live events. Where industry elite and hopeful newcomers alike share air time. Some pitching personal brands and expertise, some the next game-changing commercial brand that you haven’t yet heard of.

If Portugal’s WebSummit is anything to go by — and judging by its sheer size and import on the continent’s scene, we think it is — what was reduced to a set of virtual affairs last year seems to be creeping back to IRL events. All the more exciting for anyone tired of Zoom networking, and Zoom anything.

Here’s a list of the biggest international tech events going down this year. And the best news for those playing it safe with large-scale in-person events — almost all of them include remote accessibility.

CES is hands down the world’s biggest gathering place for consumer tech. Its 50+ year history alone places it at the top of the list of “places to prove yourself,” and make it onto a media listicle or two.

This year’s all-digital CES 2021 will carry on the torch, launching products and providing a voice for the global brands defining the future.

Look out for speakers like keynote speaker Mike Sievert (CEO of T-Mobile), on topics ranging from IOT, to Ad tech, to Esports.

UX Salon not only features a focus on design, but is also designed with a different kind of focus.

Foregoing the open call approach, the team researches industry trends itself, individually inviting speakers with expertise on the subject. Last year’s speaker list included UX professionals from Booking.com, Dropbox and Waze. Stay tuned for this year’s line-up.

This year, Startup Grind’s global event will see 3,000 startups and scale-ups convene in Redwood City over three days. Their last event featured a diverse speaker list with a who’s who of multiple industries and institutions. From Stacey Abrams of Fair Fight Action to Alphabet’s own Eric Schmidt, each speaker is chosen for their calibre and human-centered vision.

This year’s focus: community. And they’re inviting startups and partners to join theirs, either in person or remotely.

DITAWORLD has been going for seven years strong, inviting thought leaders and practitioners to a program on DITA©, Content Management, and Content Strategy experts about DITA, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe’s DITA CCMS (XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager), and Adobe RoboHelp.

The industry veteran speaker line-up helps customers and partners create intelligent customer experiences with intelligent content, with practical sessions and new tech presentations. The event is completely virtual.

Helmed by keynotes from Netflix’s lead product designer and Google’s head of cloud engineering, UX Istanbul is an industry leading event far outside the usual Silicon Valley area watering holes. But in case you’d rather peek in from your home, the event’s Virtual Platform will cover all the talks and masterclasses virtually.

Reliably one of the biggest events in Central and Eastern Europe, Infoshare 2022 is a large-scale event for founders and engineers in the area looking to learn from the industry’s established brands. Each speaker targets one of the five focus areas of the event: business trends, dev trends, advanced dev, marketing, or innovation. They just wrapped their live 2021 event and are planning to hold this year’s event in Gdansk as well.

CreativePro Week is for creative professionals who design, create, or edit in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, or Microsoft PowerPoint. No matter your skill level, you’ll learn techniques and best practices you can start using immediately to improve your productivity.

Founders and execs from emerging startups, established brands and venture groups are all taking the stage in Transylvania in a 2-day live event. Perfect for entrepreneurs in the Central Eastern European region, participants can bounce between learnings from brands like AirBnB, Lime, NASA, Stack Overflow, and Ebay.

A completely virtual conference, Ecom World covers both tech and DTC topics with speakers from a range of industries. The remote nature makes it possible for tens of thousands to attend the 10+ tracks of panels and workshops.

Cisco Live! gathers the brands, customers, partners, prospects, tech innovators and members into one giant pool of all things Cisco.

The networking tech’s conference works to teach participants about everything from innovations from Cisco and partners to future-focused thought leadership. Each year involves a four-pronged approach to learn, network, explore and connect with Cisco technology.

AWE is a dedicated conference for professionals working with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. They educate and create new initiatives for end users and solutions to reach their goal of advancing the XR industry to 1 billion active users around the globe.

This virtual conference deals with the leading issues in user research, UX, UI, service design, and innovation. This year’s main topic is “Design for the Circular Economy,” and speakers and audience members are invited to explore zero-impact product-, service- and system-design.

Spain’s original tech conference, South Summit’s two-day affair includes speaker events and startup investor pitch opportunities geared towards generating business.

UXPA International brings designers, researchers, and academics from all over the world together in San Diego, CA at the end of June 2022. Look out for 2022’s speaker line-up, as last year featured pros from massive brands including Google, Microsoft, and PayPal.

This year, London Tech Week is focusing on how to sustainably support economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021’s speaker lineup was headed by Alan Greenspan and Hilary Clinton among other notables, so if you want to see some of the biggest speakers in the city, this is the place.

10,000 thought leaders, C-level executives, department heads, product developers, and other like-minded tech enthusiasts convene for two days of business, networking, inspiration, and festival vibes, with an emphasis on fun.

ProductCamp is an immersive 2-day event for Product Managers, Designers, Researchers, Growth Hackers and all professionals who discover, design, manage and grow digital products.

In the organizers’ own concise description, “Pirate Summit is the yearly gathering of entrepreneurs that love to solve real problems and build sustainable businesses. Although technology is discussed at PIRATE Summit, it actually isn’t a tech conference. It is a conference for those that use technology as a tool to build something valuable. As such, it is more a conference about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.”

TECHSPO is a large-scale, two day conference in Amsterdam with a focus on Internet, Mobile, Adtech, MarTech and SaaS tech. Developers and technologists are invited to showcase their product to new audiences, press, and investors - attracting revenue and new recruits at the same time. The event takes over the Johan Crujiff Stadium with thousands of visitors from the world around each day.

Sweden’s premiere UX festival has been going strong since 2014 with a small break over the pandemic. With speaker topics that didn’t shy from the hard technical stuff - like designing for AR and the ethics of tracking user behaviors - the festival’s 2022 comeback is bound to be one to keep an eye on.

Interact London 2022 is a leading design conference that explores the roles that digital design, user experience, artificial intelligence, strategy, and everything in between play in today’s society. This year’s theme is: Designing Tomorrow. The speakers and talks presented represent a mix of ‘philosophy and practice’ from some of the most accomplished thinkers and practitioners in their fields.

The live event of the startup world’s go-to news source, Disrupt is a community mainstay. Disrupt delivers for founders who want to master Silicon Valley’s equations and provides an experience for enthusiasts who want to be a part of what's happening and relevant now. Not to mention their pitch contest consecrated into the television canon in HBO’s “Silicon Valley.”

The World Usability Congress is a two day international UX conference. In 2022 it will take place for the tenth time in Graz, Austria.

CanUX (pronounced “canucks”, like the hockey team) is an independent, locally-grown, non-profit, volunteer-driven event created for people who want to learn and share their expertise about user experience, and how the profession contributes to making things work better for everyone.

There is no big marketing agency, publishing house, software vendor (or rich uncle) behind the endeavour apart from a few friends who run this conference as a registered non-profit event for the benefit of the Canadian experience design community. The event covers topics like user research, usability, information architecture, interaction design, service design, and just about everything related to the creation of compelling products, services and experiences.

You don’t always see speakers like Actress Amy Poehler or Black Lives Matter co-founder Ayo Tometi alongside Reddit’s COO Jen Wong on a list for a tech event - but that’s just proof of the wide range of perspectives that Web Summit gives its audience. Portugal’s Web Summit is a spectacular affair, with a series of curated events and topics that make for surprising connections and life-changing networking. All nestled in the picturesque city of Lisbon, it’s no surprise this event gets more popular every year.

Intrigued by the title? “Unmasked is a nod to the struggles we’ve faced in the pandemic and an acknowledgment of hope that lies ahead. Some of history’s greatest innovations stemmed from constraint. Now, it’s time to remove those barriers and allow your creative process to thrive. Speakers include designers and creative directors holding workshops and case studies in an exclusive event with wonderful chances of meeting your heroes.

There’s a speaker line-up for everyone out there, so keep an eye on the deadlines and ticket sales. Keep an eye on our social media as well. Who knows, we might just see you at some of these events! Also, subscribe to hear about legendary business pivots on our CTRL SHIFT podcast.