Thanks so much to everyone who attended the first CloudCamp London event on Wednesday night, and to the many sponsors who made it possible. Everyone I spoke to said that they had a great time and would love to come again, which is why there will be more events. For those who could not make it this time, the talks were recorded - podcasts and videos will be posted soon.
It was a night of contrasts. Seeing 250+ people turn up on time to a central London venue at 6:30pm was a delightful shock. The inevitable network outage and subsequent discovery that the router had been locked in an office and could not be rebooted was, shall we say, the perfect counterpoint. At this point I'd like to thank Skills Matter whose team were both infinitely attentive and superlatively patient.
For me the absolute highlight of the night was the chance to meet a very large number of interesting and cool people from all parts of the industry. In true British fashion this really got going once we'd wrapped up the presentations and uncorked the wine. Immediately, dozens of groups formed. It was great to see the various cloud providers comparing notes. It was even better to see them in deep conversation with folks like Alan Williamson, who gave one of the best talks of the night, a chequered, perhaps even tartan, account of his wins and FAILs with cloud services.
As James pointed out, this particular sort of socialised interaction is something Brits feel most comfortable with... once we get going. We can be a little slow to break out of our shells. I'm reminded of the old joke in which three national stereotypes are marooned on an island and within a day the French has formed a government, the American has organised a revolution, and the Brit is still waiting to be introduced.
Which brings me on to the 'Open Spaces' aspect of the event and the lightning talks. Putting it about as politely as possible this is the area 'most in need of improvement' for next time. We'd set a limit of ten minutes per talk which of course everyone effortlessly broke. This was entirely my fault for not bringing a stop watch and baseball bat. Next time, all lightning talks will be ruthlessly limited - possibly using an Ignite format. Admittedly some speakers were so engaging that the time flew by and the questions could have gone on all night. But - that's why we brought beer and pizza.
Secondly this was the first Open Spaces event for many people who came. I must confess to having been nervous about this beforehand, and on the web site had asked people to propose talks or topics. About twelve people were enthusiastic or sympathetic enough to offer talks. I figured this would be enough to motivate others to step up from the audience but, aside from one or two fluent folks such as Mark Masterson, it just did not happen. Argh.
At the SF event there were many talks and many people who like to talk. Was London CloudCamp making people laconic, or worse yet, shy? Based on the fantastic atmosphere throughout, and the great conversations people had till late in the evening, I don't think so. I think we can make the format much better. One idea is to have more smaller rooms and start with an hour or two of Open Spaces unconference, then mingle over beers, and have a few really rapid fire talks after that. Please do comment on this blog if you have suggestions!
What else? I had a wonderful time meeting and talking with people. People like Simon Wardley who broke the ice with a tour de force involving 101 slides in 10:01 minutes. People like Phil Wainewright, here seen with some analyst type demonstrating their green credentials, if not their handling skills, on a Segway. People from Sun like Wayne Horkan, and Sara Dornsife who impress by really getting the power of 'community' and who've really worked hard on making CloudCamp successful. The exceliant Adam Vile and his grid team. Thanks are due to Reuven Cohen who kicked off CloudCamp. Ruv, thanks for coming over to help us out with London too.
I was very grateful to Ben Hood from our team at CohesiveFT who was able to show a live demo of our new instant grid in the cloud capability jointly announced with Gigaspaces - using his 3G USB dongle after the network failed. And thanks are due to Dekel Tankel for letting us do that at the end of his talk on scalability issues in the cloud.
I will not forget the sight of William Fellows celebrating his birthday, and first talk at CloudCamp, by stage diving.
In just a few months CloudCamp has gone from an idea and a few emails, to an exciting and quite real phenomenon. Not only will there be more events in SF and London, but people have been getting organised in New York, Portland, Chicago, Paris, and Berlin to name just a few. How can this happen? It's about 'you'. The 'Camp' concept is all about community. There is NO barrier to entry. Please come to the next event in your town, or get involved in organising it. All are welcome.
UPDATE (21/7/2008) - The videos and podcasts are up. For example here is Adil Mohammed's talk, an engaging introduction to issues faced by start ups using the cloud. More like this please.
Friday, July 18, 2008
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5 comments:
Alexis,
I would certainly welcome more unconference-style sessions. I think the resulting diversity in the agenda would be welcome.
Well done to all the organisers and here's to many more successful CloudCamps.
J.
Alexis, many thanks for your efforts, this was a great and informative event.
Yes, there could be some improvement in the mechanics. The 10 min limit needs to be enforced, preferably by a big noisy alarm clock... when the bell rings, get off and give the stage to the next fellow. This really does help to raise the quality of talks since it forces the speakers to focus on getting their core message across.
To ease the transition between speakers, please make sure that all speakers supply their slides in advance, and they are pre-loaded onto a machine supplied with a working remote gizmo for advancing slides.
That's for the speakers who need slides, of course. Hats off to those who went without. Perhaps if there were more slideless presenters then the audience might have felt more comfortable with coming forward to do their own impromptu talks without the crutch of a prepared deck. So this is something that should definitely be encouraged.
Live demos are pointless in a lightning talk, especially when the subject is cloud computing, where the meat of the demo is almost by definition hidden far away from the audience on some EC2 cluster! Vendors with software to show off can put up a screenshot to whet our appetites and invite interested parties to view the demo later.
Anyway, notwithstanding these suggestions I thought it was a great event. The latter section did somewhat reflect British culture, it was essentially like a pub gathering with the CloudCamp sponsors buying the rounds. But this is how we communicate and make connections over here, and certainly a lot of connections were made.
I learned a lot and will definitely come to the next one (schedule permitting).
I missed the beginning but enjoyed the talks I didi see, especially Will Fellows and Alan Williamson's. The beer and pizza was excellent and necessary in a UK event.
The problem with this kind of format, in the UK at least, is that you need to get everyone into the habit of talking early, treat them as an audience and they will remain passive. In a big room you might start with a controversial panel debate with the floor getting in on the act early. If you have smaller rooms then a lot of small sessions (maybe repeating several times so people can move about). Anything to get people actively involved early.
I agree with Neil about demos, if you have smaller roomes you could be running one continuously in a side room, it would also give people the chance to dig in deeper with questions.
Sounds really good Alexis. Well done.
It is hard to get people out of "consume" mode - especially in the evening - but its still clear that this is an event people want. So thanks to all who put this together.
If only for mentioning the "private cloud", props to the 451 guy William Fellows. For doing inappropriate marketing, slops to Gigaspaces.
I think a few themes would be welcome for next time, to stop people repeating the obvious homilies.
Some direction before "breakouts" might be good. I seem to remember at Google Android, they nudged people into interest groups.
Being a little bit prescriptive at first is never a bad thing.
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