Hello Mudda, hello Fadda, here I am at CloudCamp Boston. Camp is very entertaining and they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining. (apologies to the late Alan Sherman)
Well, I just got back from CloudCamp Boston and it did rain on my way home. Coincidence or not? I stumbled on CloudCamp the other week while attending a Webinar that featured CloudCamp creator Dave Nielsen. And since I'm interested in everything having to do with cloud computing, I jumped over to the CloudCamp Website (www.cloudcamp.com) and registered for their unconference in Boston along with 300 other CloudCampers. Technically, CloudCamp Boston was in Cambridge at Microsoft's New England R&D Center, which is also the home of the Microsoft - Novell Interoperability Lab.
I was unfamiliar with the concept of an unconference so I consulted YouTube to see how Dave Nielsen described it. I also viewed some previously recorded CloudCamp unconference sessions from CloudCamp Atlanta. So with my on-line introduction to CloudCamp under my belt, I schlepped over to Cambridge on one of the hottest and muggiest days of the summer. I arrived at Microsoft's New England R&D Center a few minutes before CloudCamp kicked off. Just to be clear, CloudCamp Boston was not a Microsoft event although the company is a sponsor of CloudCamp and had representatives in attendance.
After welcoming the CloudCampers and making some acknowledgments, John Treadway of CloudBzz and Judith Hurwitz, author of Cloud Computing for Dummies (October 2009) delivered an intro to cloud computing just to be sure we all knew why we were there. Then each CloudCamp Boston sponsor was allocated a 5-minute presentation, and I do mean 5-minute, to explain their angle on cloud computing. Next, Dave and John outlined how an unconference works, including the self-selection of an unpanel to answer questions generated by the CloudCampers.
In an unconference you create the conference agenda, quickly, by proposing session topics, then you see who is interested by a show of hands. The most popular cloud-related topics are then assigned meeting spaces and the topic proposers take nominal leadership roles in getting the discussions going. After several hours of attending unconference sessions, the CloudCampers reassemble in a large group and someone from each session provides highlights of their discussion.
CloudCamp Boston was provisioned with excellent food and drink to accompany the social networking (schmoozing) opportunities. The time went by all too quickly and six hours after it began, CloudCamp Boston came to a close. But don't worry if you missed it, there is already talk of bringing CloudCamp back to Boston in the fall, which seemed like a world away while walking back to the Kendall-MIT MBTA station in the subtropical night breeze.
My take-away from CloudCamp Boston was there are a lot of people excited about cloud computing and how it will reshape the IT landscape by turning it into a cloudscape over the next 10 years. There was a palpable sense that the shift to cloud computing is already underway and that it is gaining serious momentum. Hats off to the CloudCamp Boston organizers, to the sponsoring organizations and to Microsoft for hosting the event.
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