It is with great pleasure that I will join again in 2018 the dear friends at Tech Field Day for their traditional Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe event. After the last two editions taking place in Berlin, we will leave the typical cold & gloomy Mitteleuropäischer Winter for hopefully greener pastures -or rather bluer skies and sunnier weather.
Expectations
What do I expect to hear/see in 2018 at Cisco Live Europe (shortening to CLEUR)? First of all, discovering new things for me. My immediate experience with Cisco products is limited to the compute & storage segments of the data center world, so joining the Tech Field Day at CLEUR is one of these rare “going outside of your comfort zone” events, especially considering the core business of Cisco.
The Tech Field Day crew always goes to great lengths to cherry pick network experts, but they don’t just drink their delegate cocktail flat. They like to stir it a bit, and bring some subtlety & balance to the cocktail of delegates by inviting from time to time people from other horizons (I would say clueless people like me, but it wouldn’t do justice to the other, smarter folks in the room who aren’t also network experts). I’m looking forward to the intellectual stimulation that will result from such a stir & blend of professionals hailing from diverse horizons & countries.
For me it’s always surprising and interesting to see what is happening in the networking world. There has been a lot presented in the last couple years about Cisco ACI (Application-Centric Infrastructure), I’m looking forward to see if there is something new to learn this year on the matter, i.e. is this still the battle horse of Cisco in the data center world or is there anything new showing up?
Also, I had been following HyperFlex, which I covered in 2016 and in 2017, and I’m truly curious to see where this adventure is going for Cisco. Why? First of all, the product has probably seen it’s fair share of evolution. Secondly, my operational experience with HCI systems over the last three years, coupled with a slow process of maturing my thoughts (growing up as I approach the 40-year old barrier?) are making me look at technology in a different light. Not that the architecture of a solution no longer matters. Perhaps Cisco will also have something interesting to present for the storage / compute oriented folks.
Networking at a Networking Conference
Finally, talking about networking but in a slightly different way, CLEUR is also a great opportunity to see old friends, make new ones and expand one’s horizons and thoughts. My first attendance at CLEUR16 as freshman Tech Field Day delegate was a defining moment in my professional journey. It took a lot of time for it to sink in, but by CLEUR17 I had already a clear idea of what I wanted to do next in my life, and it was a precursor to all I’ve been working for and aiming for in 2017.
With 2018 ahead, and with the hard work we put in together with my friend Arjan Timmerman (he’ll also be present at CLEUR18) on our TECHunplugged and Shinado venture, we are definitely looking at explaining what we do to vendors and meeting their representatives on the solutions area.
Beyond content creation, we have a busy TECHunplugged Conference schedule for 2018, with five cities across EMEA and North America:
- New York, USA – 22-Mar-18 [Registration]
- Amsterdam, Netherlands -19-Apr-18 [Registration]
- London, United Kingdom -7-Jun-18 [Registration]
- Denver, USA – 13-Sep-18 [Registration]
- Philadelphia, USA – 18-Oct-18 [Registration]
If you’re working for a vendor and reading this, I recommend you get in touch with us. If you’re a CLEUR18 attendee or a technology practitioner (whether VAR or End-User), I strongly encourage you to register to one of the conferences near you, all registrations are currently opened.
On a slightly lighter note, I hope that CLEUR18 in Barcelona will also have the absolutely awesome and flawless folks who made wonderful ristrettos at CLEUR16 and CLEUR17. Props to them for keeping us caffeinated. With that said, I’m looking forward to Barcelona, warmer weather, blue skies and blue sea (how the hell did I end up in Prague already?). See you soon in Barcelona!
Disclosure
This post is a part of my TFD Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2018 post series. I am invited to the event by Gestalt IT. Gestalt IT will cover expenses related to the events travel, accommodation and food during the event duration. I will not receive any compensation for participation in this event, and I am also not obliged to blog or produce any kind of content. Any tweets, blog articles or any other form of content I may produce are the exclusive product of my interest in technology and my will to share information with my peers. I will commit to share only my own point of view and analysis of the products and technologies I will be seeing/listening about during this event.