I had an interesting chat with Bob Plumridge of SNIA whilst at SNW-Europe where we discussed the differences between the European organisation and the US organisation; possible directions for the Academy events and SNW-Europe and what we want to see from the industry organisation.
There are significant differences between the US and the European SNIA organisations; SNIA in the US is a fairly inward looking organisation, focusing very much on the development of standards and discussion between vendors, whereas the European organisation is generally more outward looking and focused on the education aspects. Educating end-users about technology concepts and trends but in a way which does not focus on one vendor or another.
I’ve only ever attended SNW Europe and not its sister conference in the US but the comments I have heard from people are that the European event gets a lot more end-users and is less of a industry networking event. This should mean that it has more value and attendance is certainly up.
But it may be time for it to change again or at least evolve so that it maintains value. Here are some of my thoughts which I shared.
1) Education sessions seem to be aimed at a relatively low-level of assumed knowledge. There might be scope for a more advanced track.
2) Perhaps cover areas which although not traditionally storage but do have applicability to us; for example the legal obligations with regards to data security and especially with regards to locality of data when storing in a cloud infrastructure.
3) Birds of the Feather sessions; where like minded storage folks can talk about the things which are impacting them and their businesses.
4) Ensuring that we have good attendance from some of the more interesting start-ups.
The vendor neutral presentations are good but they only go so far; I do wonder if it might be allowable to let the vendor who has just struggled through a presentation to either take questions and not having to be completely neutral in their answers or allowing them a five minute lightning pitch at the end of a presentation.
Or perhaps have a session which is just lightning pitches? Or a vendor balloon-debate?
I think as an event, it’s good but at times it takes itself too seriously. It could perhaps do with a fun side as well…what would you like to see?
