What would be a good conference for him to visit ? He initially wanted to go to SC17 but i don't think he will enjoy himself there.
Any recommendation ?!
We do mostly HFT, advanced VPNs, back end clusters
I would recommend stepping a little outside his/her comfort zone and learn something completely different or adjacent to the current skill-set. For example, if the primary end-user of his efforts is a VPC on HyperV, adjacent: go to a Microsoft virtualization conference; completely different: go to vmWorld.
Also consider locale and time of year. Vegas can be brutal in the summers, but the fall and spring are Goldilocks.