In short order, I’m going to be giving a bunch of talks at various places in the universe, and am both excited and a little bit overwhelmed by the upcoming schedule. A lot of people don’t realize that I’m not an evangelist – it’s not my job to go to conferences or prepare talks. I’m usually plenty busy keeping one of the world’s most-visited web sites up and running, accessible, and fast. I do feel that it’s important to share knowledge about how to develop at scale, and so I frequently find myself giving talks to help spread the word.

The next couple of months will be fairly hectic, but I wanted to share the schedule in the hopes that I’ll meet many of you soon.

WebDirections USA

My first stop in my whirlwind tour is WebDirections USA in Atlanta. I’ve never been to Atlanta before, so I’m really looking forward to the trip. I’ve had the pleasure of conversing with Maxine Sherrin the past couple of months, and I’ve heard wonderful things about the conference in general. This will be the first conference I’ve presented at that is a mix of design and development topics. I’ll be talking about High Performance JavaScript, based on some of the parts of my book by the same name. If you haven’t yet bought your tickets, use the discount code WDUSA-ZAKAS to get a few dollars off.

Google

Last year I met Bryan McQuade of PageSpeed fame at Velocity. We’ve been talking off and on about me dropping by when I’m in the area. Since I’m going to be in Boston the week after WebDirections USA, I’m going to swing by the Google office in Cambridge for a talk about web performance. I’ll be covering a mix of topics, including parts of my Velocity talk from this year (Performance on the Yahoo! Homepage) as well as parts of High Performance JavaScript. It’s really cool to see web development alive and well back in my old stomping grounds.

Fronteers

Perhaps the biggest deal for me is a trip to Amsterdam to speak at Fronteers. I’m excited about this because, believe it or not, I’ve never been outside of the United States before. Thanks to Peter Slagter and Krijn Hoetmer for helping with all of the arrangements. One of the things I love about Fronteers is that it’s not-for-profit, so every penny taken in goes back out to the speakers and attendees. They certainly wouldn’t be able to import the incredible list of speakers otherwise! I’ll be speaking in Dutch on the topic of High Performance JavaScript. Just kidding, I can’t speak Dutch. Yet.

YUIConf

In November, I’ll have finally made my way back to California and will be speaking at YUIConf. For the first time ever second straight year, we’ll be inviting the outside world onto the Yahoo! campus to learn about YUI – this time, with more seats available. Prices are scandalously low to reserve your seat to hear from some of the top front end minds at Yahoo!. I’ll be putting down my performance hat and slipping into my testing gloves with a talk on JavaScript testing with a focus on continuous integration (CI) environments. Also, I’ll be making a big announcement about YUI Test as part of my talk. You won’t want to miss it.

Hope to see you there!

I usually only go where I’m invited because I’m usually too busy to seek out speaking opportunities, so if you would like to see me somewhere in particular, be sure to let me or the organizers know. I’m going to be in the Boston area the week of September 26 and the week of October 11. If there are any web development events or you’d just like to meet up and talk about the related topics, do get in touch – I’d be happy to oblige (schedule permitting, of course).

After YUIConf, I plan on taking some time off from speaking through the end of the year, so please be sure to say hi if you see me out and about. And I hope to see a lot of you at these various events soon.

**Update (10-Sep-2010): **Thanks to Jenny and Craig for pointing out this is the second year that YUIConf is open to the public. Last year I was recovering from surgery so wasn’t too involved.

Disclaimer: Any viewpoints and opinions expressed in this article are those of Nicholas C. Zakas and do not, in any way, reflect those of my employer, my colleagues, Wrox Publishing, O'Reilly Publishing, or anyone else. I speak only for myself, not for them.