Bumper crop of tech conferences for your consideration

The tech conference scene is back in fully swing with several happening shortly, including SaaStock, Start-up Week Dublin, ConverCon and Web Summit.

Next week will see the inaugural e-Commerce summit, a two-day event that will bring industry experts and businesses together to develop strategies for selling online. The conference is the brainchild of ecommerce consultant Vinny O'Brien, who spotted the need for an event offering advice, support and contacts to companies who wanted to future-proof their business. Originally intending to help get the town of Tralee online, the event expanded into a national conference. It's not just for newcomers though; the event will also have workshops and talks for those who want to ramp up their online business. More than 20 speakers from companies such as Ebay, Facebook, Overstock. com and Amazon will be at the Rose Hotel in Tralee for the event.

Also taking place next week is Learnovation Summit, an educational technology event that will look at how technology is changing workplace learning and education. Three-hundred EdTech experts will attend the Croke Park conference on October 1st.

Saastock, Europe's largest software-as-a-service (SaaS) focused event, returns to the capital next month with over 4,000 attendees expected. Among those speaking at the three-day event, which is to be held in the RDS from October 14th to the 16th, are Vidyard chief executive Michael Litt and Intercom co-founder Des Traynor. Representatives from Accel, Stripe, Darktrace, Google, SurveyMonkey and Kabbage will also be at the conference.

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Build better products

UXDX, which stands for user experience (UX), experience design (XD) and developer experience (DX), is on at the RDS a week earlier. It is an IT product-management conference intended to help start-ups and large enterprises build better products more quickly. Reddit co-founder and chief technology officer Christopher Slowe, Uber's vice president of product design, Michael Gough, and Google's head of UX, Russ Wilson, are among those speaking at the event.

ConverCon, which claims to be Europe's first conversational interface conference, is back in Dublin as well. The event, which brings together many of the world's leading players in the space to talk chatbots, messaging, digital assistants and more, runs on October 17th. Speakers include SoundHound vice president Katie McMahon and Voicebot.ai founder and chief executive Bret Kinsella.

Start-Up Week Dublin, which held its inaugural event last year, is also returning next month. The programme, which is run by the international business accelerator Techstars and Dublin City Council, will run across the city from October 21st to 25th with more than 2,500 attendees, 54 events and 115 speakers across 32 venues. The initiative is aimed at would-be entrepreneurs and includes networking events, keynote speeches, panel discussions and workshops. There will also be mentoring opportunities from leading entrepreneurs and investors.

Further afield, Web Summit, the Dublin-founded technology conference, is back in Lisbon for the fourth time in early November, with the fintech-focused MoneyConf now reintegrated into the flagship event. Among the speakers booked for this year's summit are Huawei's rotating chairman Guo Ping, Microsoft president Brad Smith and the chief executives of Wikipedia, Ebay and Tinder.