which conferences have you been to? I am a cs student in Canada. are there any specific conferences that you would recommend?
Have you decided as to a specialisation viz embedded systems, programmaing, networking, securty, database etc? Are you considering any Cloud, or AI/ML concentrations?
There are a few annual conferences, some monthly, with others being weekly. For example, PyCon (being held at different cities in the US & Canada (actually in Salt Lake next week) ), DefCon (Vegas, in Aug.) ), BlackHat (Vegas, in Aug.), Def44 (London) etc., are great annual conferences. BSides, esp. in Chicago are great, and I would imagine similar meetings are being held in Canada - I attended one in Montreal some years ago, when PyCon was being held there.
- There are annual
Cloud conferences, be it Azure (Microsoft), GCP (Google), or AWS (Amazon), mostly in the US.
- ISSA, mostly geared towards InfoSec (CyberSec) has local chapters; these are the best to start with, and are where you would find neophytes, seasoned gurus, and enthusiasts.
- Secure360 annual conference, mostly geared towards managers, is decent.
- For AppSec, OWASP local chapter conferences are mostly in every city, and great networking arena for fresh developers.
- There are annual IEEE conferences, but if you are in your earlier years, these might be intimidating, unless of course you are a brave soul, in which case, do attend.
- On the AI/ML front, there are a few good ones; this year, I shall be attending the 'AI World Congress', Jun., in London, and if time permits, the Chicago Data Sci. Conf.
- Universities incl. Tianjin (China), MiT, Standord, and Berkley (US) used to host InfoSec, AppSec, AI/ML conferences. I do not know if that is still the case post Covid-*
These, along with others, are some of the ones I regularly attend/attended, but there are others to consider --- you get the gist.
I shall share if others pop to mind.