These are the local Dallas area events digital business professionals must attend in 2017. Digital Business isn’t just management, or marketing, or design, or development. It’s a combination of every skill, talent, occupation, and job title in a business that uses digital technology. If you want to be more well rounded professional, business owner, marketer, or startup entrepreneur this is a list of conferences and events to help you learn and grow throughout the year. Get these on your calendar early and get your boss to sign off on for you to attend.

Digital by Dallas: Digital Advertising

Date: January 23rd, 2017
About: Digital by Dallas is a non-profit event series in its second year. The events are held at SMU and feature a mixture of local thought leaders telling informative and inspirational stories around a centralized theme. The events also feature a keynote speaker. All ticket funds collected are donated to a local Dallas-area non-profit after the event. Their first event of 2017 is focused on Digital Advertising and features a well known genius of Facebook Advertising, Dennis Yu.

Website: digitalbydallas.org
Registration: digitalbydallas.org/registration
Ticket price: $10

Entrepreneur Summit

Date: March 30th, 2017
About: This event is being held in Frisco, TX with Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec as the headlining keynote speaker. The one day event packs in talks from well known business leaders designed to help all entrepreneurs get motivated and be more successful in the coming year.

Website: entrepreneursummitdallas.com
Registration: www.regonline.com
Ticket price: $149

Dallas Startup Week

Date: April 3rd – 7th, 2017
About: A week of celebrating local startups and entrepreneurs this series of events is an annual must for digital business entrepreneurs. Attendees will hear from international business leaders like Shravan Gupta and digital entrepreneurs like Erin Robbins. Entrepreneurs meet, share ideas, and even form successful partnerships during Startup Week.

Website: dallasstartupweek.com
Registration & Ticket price: As of writing information on ticket prices and registration was not yet available. I’ll update this list when that information is sent to me.

Rocks Digital

Date: June 29th & 30th, 2017
About: This event is usually located in the Addison Conference Center in Addison, TX and encompasses SEO, Social Media, and Digital Advertising with talks from local and national leaders in those fields over a 2 day conference. Rocks Digital boasts a yearly great array of speakers and presentations from industry giants like Google and the leading local marketing thoughts leaders like Greg Gifford and Andrew Shotland. If you’re a digital marketer and you can only budget for one conference in 2017 make it Rocks Digital.

Website: rocksdigital.com
Registration & Ticket price: As of writing information on ticket prices and registration was not yet available. I’ll update this list when that information is sent to me.

Big Design Conference

Date (estimated): September 2017
About: Big Design is the event for those who want to learn more about the visual artistry of the web. From UX to Design to Content Marketing this event covers visual design from every angle with informational top notch sessions led by industry leaders to talks from Oscar & Emmy award winners. If your business or occupation is involved in or uses visual art and design, you need to attend Big Design Conference in 2017.

Website: bigdesignevents.com/conference/
Registration & Ticket price: As of writing information on ticket prices and registration was not yet available. I’ll update this list when that information is sent to me.

Digital by Dallas: Other Events

I mentioned this event earlier as a series of events. They have 3 more throughout 2017 which are also one’s I would encourage you to attend for their content, low cost, and charitable mission.

• Forgetting Google – April 24th, 2017
• Dominating Mobile – July 31st, 2017
• Content is King – October 30th, 2017

Registration: digitalbydallas.org/registration
Ticket price: $10
Pitch to Speak: You can pitch to be a speaker at these 3 events by filling out the form here: digitalbydallas.org/speaker-information/speaker-pitch-form/

State of Search

Date: October 9th & 10th, 2017
About: State of Search is a conference put on by local business group DFWSEM. The event focuses mostly on the issues surrounding search engine marketing such as SEO or PPC. However, the keynote speakers are usually from more diverse fields and the topics in the past few years have broadened out to cover more areas of digital marketing such as conversion optimization and social media marketing across various platforms. For its high-quality content State of Search stands out as a must attend event for any digital professional focused on marketing or any business owner / entrepreneur who wants to improve their own digital marketing skills.

Website: stateofsearch.org
Registration: www.stateofsearch.org/register/
Ticket Price: $500

Digital Summit Dallas

Date (estimated): December 2017
About: This conference is the most perfect way to end your year of learning and growing as a digital business professional. Digital Summit is an inexpensive and knowledge filled 2 day event for professionals that want to learn more about Marketing, UX and Design, Social Media, SEO, New Technology, and hear from some of the top leaders in business. Past keynote speakers at Digital Summit Dallas have included Steve Wozniak, Mark Cuban, and Seth Godin.

Website: digitalsummitdallas.com
Registration & Ticket price: As of writing information on ticket prices and registration was not yet available. I’ll update this list when that information is sent to me.

Disclaimer: The author is co-founder of Digital by Dallas, volunteers with the Dallas Startup Week, has spoken at Rocks Digital and has served in executive capacity for the State of Search conference.