Strange Loop in St. Louis - https://thestrangeloop.com/

Big Omaha - http://www.bigomaha.com/

Thanks to my previous employer, in St. Louis, I attended the first two Strange Loop conferences. Although I wasn't able to go the third year (2011) I saw it's been growing by leaps and bounds. I think Strange Loop has the potential to be one of the big professional software conferences.

Strange Loop is undeniably awesome and everyone should endeavor to go sometime, but as a multi-disciplinary conference aiming for 1000 attendees this year, it's neither niche or small, unless I misunderstand the OP. A "cool conference" though, for sure.

I second Big Omaha. Third year going.

In the UK, the annual conference of the ACCU ( http://accu.org/ ) is usually worth attending. Next one won't be for another year though. Here's the schedule for the last conference, if anyone is interested in the sort of stuff that usually gets covered: http://accu.org/index.php/conferences/accu_conference_2012/a...

(What counts as small in this context btw?)

For iOS development, 360iDev (http://360idev.com, Denver, September) is very good. World class speakers, great community feel, and quite affordable.

Surge Conference in Baltimore is pretty good. And it's cheap. I call it "Velocity w/out Javascript"

http://omniti.com/surge/2012

Top of my list: MicroConf

Agreed. I was there a few days ago, hands down the best conference I've been to.

in Germany : Chemnitz Linux Days / Chemnitzer Linux Tage. Happen usually on a weekend in March. Entrance fee is 8 Euros. Great value, very nerdy, never sold out,

http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2012/info/index?cookielang=e...

Front end conf in Tampa bay is great http://frontendconf.com