Here are the main places and events I intend to visit while on the road.
1. Meet ups
I have been to a bunch of great meet ups in the Washington, DC area. I am sure many of the destinations on the list also have great meet ups. I'll lean heavily towards areas that I work in, such as Python, web development, mobile development, and DevOps. However, if I see something that fits well in my schedule I would not mind attending a Ruby on Rails, node.js, or similar event.
2. Conferences
Conferences get expensive quickly and they generally last several days, so I will have to be careful with this one. But I'm keeping up with where conferences will be next year through Lanyrd. It's possible something will line up perfectly with a stop in a city that I'm planning to stay more than 3-4 days in.
3. Start Ups
I'm looking to meet with developers and founders of start ups to find out more about what they like and don't like about their location. By bringing attention to common problems start ups face in all cities and understanding the difficulties of particular locations, perhaps we can gave insight into how we can improve our situations.
4. Coffee Shops
I'll be doing a lot of my own coding while on the road. I'm very comfortable doing work in coffee shops. I look forward to checking out the best spots in every city both large and small.
5. Tourist Spots
This is a road trip so I will be taking pictures and checking out interesting landmarks and "touristy" spots along the way.
There are more spots I intend to check out in various cities, but that covers the majority of what I'm generically looking for in each destination.