A Bright Future for CloudCamp

With all the discussion about CloudCamp and it's future, I though I'd take a brief moment to review our history as well as look at our future.

It's been almost exactly one year since I held the first CloudCamp in Toronto Ontario as part of the Mesh08 conference. Based on the success of that first event, I sent out an email to the Google Cloud Computing mailing list. Upon sending that email I was inundated with more then 100+ responses from both companies interested in sponsoring as well as individuals looking to help orgnanize. Of those responses I selected a few key people who really put together the first "major" CloudCamp at the Microsoft office in downtown San Francisco with Sun as our first paying sponsor. The initial team included Dave Nielsen, Jesse Silver, Sam Charrington, Sara Dornsife, Alexis Richardson and Whurley with the goal of organizing just one hell of a Cloud event/party in San Francisco.

Shortly after this Alexis Richardson and a team from the U.K. held another CloudCamp in London at which point CloudCamp's popularity exploded. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think CloudCamp would grow into the phenomenon it has become with something like 25 events at last count and dozens more planned. To be honest I am humbled by the communities rapid and overwhelming embrace of CloudCamp over the last year. But I'd like to remind you that CloudCamp has grown organically thanks to a dedicated team of hard working individuals (Dave, Alexis, Tom, George, Sam, Jesse, Sara as well as other regional organizers) who have gone out of their way to make CloudCamp a success and I would like to personally thank you for this. This would have never have happened without your hard work and dedication.

Recently a few have indicated that my intentions have not been honorable. This is completely untrue and not fair. Please keep in mind that CloudCamp has never had any real strategy, plan or organization other then a bunch of like mind folks who share a common passion for Cloud Computing.

As many of you know we've been working to organize ourselves into a legal structure. This takes time, CloudCamp isn't our full time job, we all have other responsibilities, but I assure you this will happen, soon. Dave has been activily working on a CloudCamp plan that we hope to share with the community in the near future. Once we have solid plan and legal organization, I will happily transfer all related IP, domains, etc to the control of the organization.

Going forward I believe in what we've created and will do everything in my power to ensure a sustainable long term future for CloudCamp.

Thank you for your continued support.