The most important event of the year was Cloud Wars Expo, which took place at the Moscone Center from June 28th-30th in San Francisco. I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in it as a speaker. As a result, I was able to attend a large number of breakout sessions and obtain valuable personal information. I traveled all the way from Australia to be a part of this groundbreaking event. Believe it or not, the time difference of 17 hours didn’t have much of an impact on me at all because the anticipation for the Cloud Wars Expo was so great among all of us.
After Covid, this was my first in-person global conference. I had the opportunity to meet quite a number of the creative masterminds behind all of that exciting stuff in person and I must say that the experience did not let me down. After a couple of years of attending conferences solely online, it was a wonderful experience to attend one in person and in real-time. Over the course of the past few years, I have watched live broadcasts and read anything I can get my hands on. The main change that I picked up on this year, beginning with the first keynote, was a tangible shift away from being essentially a marketing event and towards being an experience that was focused far more on technology.
Case studies from a diverse variety of sectors, all of which are in the process of migrating their workloads to the cloud, were presented throughout the keynotes and sessions of the conference. As you are probably aware, cloud is gaining more and more popularity. The goal of this strategy is to increase client acquisition by supplying solutions that are easily linked with any platform.
The keynote presentations took an upbeat and forward-thinking approach to the topic of technological advancement, and this tone was carried throughout the rest of the conference. Here are the three most important takeaways:
The combination of technology and human touch is important.
One of the keynote sessions that impressed me a lot was by the CIO and Head of Technology of Goya Foods, Suvajit Basu who shared how Goya Foods tackled the tough situation of Covid-19 and ensured that every resident has access to food packages. He shared the interesting aspect that technology alone didn’t help the company to sustain itself during the tough time. Instead, the human touch along with technology helped it to maintain the supply chain. I really loved this conversation between Bob and Suvajit, which opened up many different aspects to look at the problem.
Enough buzzwords: Let’s talk about implementation strategy.
This was another captivating discussion that came up after my session on RPA to IA with Paul Swider. We had an amazing interactive session and discussions even after the session. Attendees were very interested to know the implementation strategy from RPA to IA.
Paul and I were inclined toward the architecture design of the business process in automation and focused on long-term strategy. We agreed to not focus so much on buzzwords. Rather, we should focus on designing the right architecture that helps the organization enterprise-wide to scale up the automation journey rather than leaving a bad experience for the business.
The Innovation Path startup pitches showcased extraordinary business ideas.
The Innovation Path pitches were one of the main attractions of this conference. There could not have been a better way to conclude the three-day conference, as everyone had their eyes on this and waited eagerly for it. I was honored to be on the judging panel of these startup pitches. Further, I was completely blown away by the amazing ideas and problems these startup companies are trying to solve.
To be honest, it was a tough call for us to shortlist the startup of the year. For me, I would say the Innovation Path startup pitches were the perfect example of Cloud Wars Expo, as all the solutions were cloud-based with technologies like AI and ML. These startups have shown how cloud-based solutions can help in solving a lot of community problems.
Did you miss any of the sessions? Well, we have some exciting news for you!
I know many of you missed the sessions due to location constraints or flight cancellations, but do know that we love our community so much and don’t want you to miss the exciting content shared in these three days. So, we have an on-demand access option available for all attendees and Acceleration Economy subscribers so you can tune in to any session — just register here.
I am so looking forward to the 2023 edition of Cloud Wars Expo, as this event has definitely raised the bars and has set high expectations.
