Cloud Camp Austin 2010

June 17, 2010

Last Thursday over a 100 cloud enthusiasts gathered for Cloud Camp Austin.  The event was held at Pervasive Software‘s headquarters and kicked off after 5PM with munchies and beer.  The event brought in folks all around Austin as well as visitors from exotic areas like upstate New York (the group had been in town for meetings).

Pre camp munchies and drinks as folks assemble.

Dell was one of the sponsors along with IBM, Microsoft, Twilio, Tropo, Redmonk and our  hosts Pervasive .  As always, the event was guided along by Mr. cloud camp, Dave Nielsen.  Being an “unconference,” after a spontaneously assembled “unpanel” who was called upon to answer questions from the audience, the crowd worked together to decide on the topics that would be discussed.

Dave Nielsen explains how this "unpanel" is going to work.

What a difference a year makes

I attended last year’s cloud camp in Austin and I don’t know if its the fact the industry has evolved so much since then or that this year there was a greater percentage of knowledgeable attendees (I suspect a little of both) but this year the topics and questions were much more sophisticated/technical.  As a results the conversations were much more meaty and focused more on “how to” rather than “how do you define.”

All in all a very cool event.

The schedule created on the fly by the attendees.

If you liked Cloud Camp and you like Hadoop, you’ll love

Speaking of camps, Dave Nielsen is taking the camp idea and applying it to the world of Big Data.  The event, which will be held in Santa Clara on June 28, is imaginatively entitled, Big Data Camp Santa Clara.  This unconference  is targeted at users of Hadoop and related technologies and is held the night before Hadoop summit 2010.  So if you’re in the area and Hadoop/Big Data are your thing, check it out.

Pau for now…


Talking with Mr. Cloud Camp

December 3, 2009

I first met Dave Nielsen when I attended the Austin Cloud Camp back in April of this year.  I bumped into to him again at the cloud computing expo in Santa Clara at the beginning of last month.  He was putting on another cloud camp and checking out the expo.  I sat down with him and got him to tell me all about the phenomenon that has become cloud camp.

Some of the topics Dave tackles:

  • Cloud Camp’s un-conference format and how attendees drive the agenda and topics.
  • Where Dave got the idea and what his background is.
  • How it all  began back in June of ’08 with the first cloud camp in San Francisco and then quickly jumped across the pond and then back to the Windy City.  (There have been 50 cloud camps in 16 monts, half in the US and the other half in Europe and Asia)
  • Every city is different.  To help the cities less familiar with the un-conference format, an “un-panel” was added.
  • What’s next for cloud camp?

Pau for now…


Back from the Bay Area with a fist full of cloudy videos

November 6, 2009

This week I made the trek out of the Lone Star state and headed west to the Bay Area.  I spent the first day in San Francisco where I took our sales folks through my cloud presentation and then had meetings with a few members of the press.  Here is the outcome of a couple of those meetings:

SFOldNavy2

Down on the Peninsula

From the city I headed down to Santa Clara and the Cloud Computing Expo.  I don’t think I saw a single customer at the event but I did run into a bunch of interesting companies in attendance.  With my trusty Flip Mino I even recorded a bunch of interviews that I will be rolling out in the days to come.  Here’s the list

  • 3Tera — Barry Lynn, CEO
  • Heroku — Oren Teich head of product
  • Oracle VM — Adam Hawley, Director of Product management
  • Gluster — Hitesh Cellani, CEO and Jack O’Brien head of marketing
  • The Planet — Rob Walters, director of product management
  • Stoneware — Rick German, CEO
  • Cloud Camp — Dave Nielsen, co-founder

Stay tuned.

Zoho

A Zoho billboard in the San Jose airport, right in the heart of Google country.

Pau for now…