As the president of Zap Technology Solutions (now Argil DX), I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to attend Adobe CQ5/AEM conferences for the past 3 years.  The two conferences that I never miss are the Adobe Summit put on by Adobe and the Evolve Community Summit put on by 3|Share.  I love both of these conferences for different reasons.

The Adobe Summit is a great production and has thousands of people in attendance.  The keynotes are amazing.  The insight into future innovations is inspiring.  The vendors on hand and all in the same place are fabulous.  The amount of information available is endless.  The Summit Bash and the after-parties are a lot of fun too.  In 2016, Adobe Summit will be moving from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas.  Just another reason to attend.

The Evolve Community Summit is entering its 3rd year.  It’s moved from November to August in 2015.  This AEM conference has a much stronger technical base to it.  It’s less about the digital marketing and more about the technology.  We spend less time talking about features and more time talking about how to solve real-world problems.  There’s a little more honesty at this conference in that people recognize that working with AEM is not all rainbows and unicorns and aren’t afraid to say so (even the Adobe folks in attendance.)  There’s more honesty about some of the short-comings and how to work around them.  Some of the brightest technical leaders in the AEM space attend this conference.

In addition to the knowledge and sessions which are provided as part of each of these AEM conferences, there’s also an opportunity to add even more learning to your time at the conference.  You can take Adobe certified classes and take Adobe Certification Exams.  If you were planning to take some training and/or get certified, this is a great way to both attend a great conference as well as get the training/certification that you need.

Let me know if you’ll be attending either of these AEM conferences and we might be able to meet up.