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FileMaker Conferences in 2020

Recently I discussed with a client about FileMaker conferences next year. Currently I know about four conferences to take place in 2020:
EventLanguageDateWhereLinks
dotfmp.berlin English 4th to 6th June 2020 Berlin, Germany dotfmp.berlin
FileMaker Konferenz German 17th to 20th June 2020 Meilen, Liechtenstein filemaker-konferenz.com
Claris Engage USA English 3rd to 6th Aug 2020 Nashville, USA filemaker.com
Claris Engage Europe Multilingual 26th to 28th Oct 2020 Lisbon, Portugal filemaker.com

Those conferences are very different in location, cost, language and what to expect, so lets compare them a bit:

First, if you can afford to fly to the USA, go to the big Claris Engage conference. This is the full blast with over 50 Claris people at the show, talks from Claris engineers and a lot of time to talk to them. Seven tracks with around 100 sessions. You won't be alone with over 1000 other attendees. Recent conferences had about 1200 to 1400 attendees in total. Don't forget to come a day earlier and join the training day. The conference is completely in English with a lot of US accents. With over 2800 rooms, the hotel may not run out of rooms as in previous years in other hotels. Ticket prices range from $999 up to $1699 USD depending whether you book early and whether you take 2 or 3 days. Extra training day is usually $399 USD.

Now Claris Engage Europe is the first try from Claris to run a smaller version of the US conference in Europe. We expect something like 400 people to attend as well as around 20 Claris people to join the conference. Beside the date and location not much is announced. The hotel is quite nice with two restaurants, over 570 rooms and a hotel pool. Claris said already they will look for speakers from Europe and not just repeat the US conference. And as far as we know sessions may not just be in English, but in several languages. Not sure if they organize some translation service or whether speakers will be asked to hold sessions in English beside another language. If you have something to present, maybe prepare something and submit early next year when the call for speakers starts!

For German speaking people, the FMK association will run another conference in Malbun. The FileMaker Konferenz will probably be German only with about 120 attendees. We do not expect Claris to send staff from the US as those will come to Lissabon conference. If you like to meet the German speaking FileMaker developers, please join this conference. Due to the reduced size (120 instead of usual 200), you may want to reserve your ticket early in January for about 600 to 700 Euro.

The conferences above are well planed with sessions scheduled months in advance. But if you prefer a more chaotic conference, where someone may decide spontaneously at lunch to run a presentation in the afternoon, please join the DotFMP in Berlin, Germany. It's in English with attendees from all over Europe and even a few from USA and Canada. If you like to share someone, you can try to get one of the tickets. There is an extra ticket allocation for new attendees, but the conference is usually quickly booked out, about 333 Euro each ticket.

Looking forward to a few great conferences in 2020!

03 11 19 - 20:37