Every year is filled with enticing entrepreneur conferences, and trade shows that promise to help small business owners like yourself grow and boost your network while working on your personal development and growth. But researching them is time consuming, so we’ve put together a list of the top conferences for entrepreneurs in 2020.
Vancouver, Canada, April 20–24
Getting inspired is a great way to start off the new year, and what better place than Ted? It’s all about the age of amazement. In addition to Ted’s famous talks, there will be music, comedy, and tech demos.
Silicon Valley, California, February 11–12
This conference is for the global startup community and seeks to “educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs.” This year’s confirmed speakers are from companies including Slack, Tesla, Zapier, Reddit, Houzz, and more.
San Diego, California, March 1–3
If you’re looking to ramp up your social efforts, Social Media Marketing World is one of the top marketing conferences where you will discover new social media tactics and attend some great workshops. There are plenty of high-profile brands there for extensive networking, and the conference is definitely geared toward marketing, so it’s ideal for socially inclined entrepreneurs or the digital marketing member of your team.
Toronto, June 22–25
This fast-growing international tech conference has quickly attracted more than 25,000 attendees from 119 countries in just four years. Who’s in attendance? CEOs of both startups and huge companies, investors, and of course, the media. With tracks in coding, content, finance, marketing, design, security, and more, Collision is a hotbed of tech.
New York, New York, June 3–5
The 99U conference is all about creativity and ideas, from conception to execution. Master classes with creative experts drill down into idea execution on branding and being a creative. If you’ve got a branding expert or enthusiast on staff, strongly consider this action-oriented conference. Past speakers include experts from Slack, MoMA, Basecamp, Airbrb, and Radiolab.
Gartner Digital Marketing Conference
San Diego, California, June 1–3
This conference is designed for the person in your business’s CMO role to learn the skills to fuel growth, lead confidently, boost returns on marketing, and cultivate brand advocates, among many other concrete skills.
Las Vegas, Nevada, October 25–28
Money 20/20 bills itself as the largest and most engaging global trade show and conference geared toward payments and financial services for mobile, retail marketing services, data, and technology. When they say large, they mean large: there are more than 11,500 attendees from 3,500 companies and 100 countries.
There’s also Money 20/20 Europe in Amsterdam, Netherlands June 16–18.
Lisbon, Portugal, November 2–5
The Web Summit has 23 stand-alone conferences within the greater web summit all-in-one that cover topics from coding to robotics. The conference marries love of tech with other niches and passions. With more than 1,200 speakers and 70,000 attendees, they aren’t fooling around. Web Summit is an excellent opportunity for networking, learning, and deep-diving into specific interest areas.
Boston, Massachusetts, August 18–21
INBOUND is known for high-profile speakers—in 2017, their speakers included Andy Cohen, Michelle Obama, and Bozoma Saint John. With hundreds of educational sessions that focus on inbound marketing and sales, this is one of the year’s more dazzling conferences.