CloudCamp SF Recap

What a week for cloud computing, between Velocity and Structure08 on the west coast and xconomy on east coast, this week truly has been the week of the cloud. As many of you know we through the first ever CloudCamp on Tuesday evening at the Microsoft offices in downtown San Francisco. The event was a smashing success attracting more then 300+ attendees who enjoyed heated technical cloud discussions, and more the 6 hours of open bar and great food. Our signature drink, called the dark and stormy was a disruptive blend of dark rum and ginger beer which set an interesting ambiance for the evening event.

Some CloudCamp highlights included an appearance Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO who actively engaged in several of our discussions. One of the more interesting aspects of the event was our use of the open spaces format in which participants define the agenda with a relatively on the fly process, and adjust it as the event proceeds. A lot of people where skeptical at first about the format quickly became fan. The format allowed for a much more indepth look at some of the opportunities and challenges in the cloud computing. The discussions ranged from "what is cloud computing" to how to scale a db to data integration and security. There seemed to be a little something for everyone.

Dave Nielsen our MC for the evening was masterful composing a cloud event most will not soon forget. Our sponsors really came through raising more then $15,000 in sponsorship in less then 3 weeks form the point we proposed the event on our cloud group to the event itself. I'd also like to thank Sara and Jesse from Sun, Sam from Appistry and Alexis from CohesiveFT for all there help in organizing the event.

I'm actually still amazed that in barely over 3 weeks cloudcamp has managed to go from an idea to a international phenomenon with another event in London on the 16th of July as well as interest in doing cloud events in New York, Montreal, Chicago, St Louis, Tel Aviv and Sydney. We're now actively organizing the London event, so if you're interested in sponsoring and or attending I would invite you to join our mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/cloudcamp or at http://london.cloudcamp.com

I hope to see some of you at the next event!